Cookies and story time


In 2000 and 2001 when I was president of the local youth soccer association, I and some other board members set a goal to establish soccer as a sport that would be available at our local high school. Through several meetings and discussions with the local school board and administrators as well as the high school athletic director and principal, we reached agreement and implemented boys and girls soccer for the first time at our high school beginning with the 2001 season.

It really was an unprecedented agreement and we would be only the third school team in North Idaho at our division level. Now 8 years later all 6 North Idaho 3a schools field soccer teams. It has proven a very successful and popular program.

I coached the girls team the first two years and oh my, the things I learned about high school girls. It really was a great experience though. That first year I had 23 girls turn out and only about 4 of them had ever even so much as touched a soccer ball before. We were going to be playing many bigger schools with well established programs. In short, we were going to have a ‘learning’ year.

We lost every game, many by a huge margin. We did tie one game with a team in our division. The girls worked hard and we all learned a lot. Knowing that we were probably going to get schooled in most all our games I had to decide how I was going to handle my response to that, as well as keep the girls positive and upbeat.

I think I talked about this before but I decided that if all I did was teach soccer then I was a failure as a coach. I started to have a time each week when I would talk about life experiences and challenges and how they applied to life and sports. It was just one of those things that happen and somehow become a part of who we were.

One of the first stories I told had to do with all the separate ingredients in cookies, which by themselves aren’t to tasty. But when you put them all together and add some heat, you get this wonderful delicious combination. The analogy was that all these girls were different, they all had their strengths. It was putting them all together and making a team which would make them so much better as a whole than as individual parts. Any way I brought cookies to that story. After that whenever I told a story they wanted cookies. These weekly sessions began to be called, ‘cookies and story time’. The thing was, after the end of our second year, there was a picture of all the senior girls who had stuck it out for two years. They gave it to me and they all signed it and almost everyone of them wrote about cookies and story time. It had made a difference. We did actually win some games the second year too.

We were playing in the district championship game at the end of our second season. The winner would go to the state tournament. At the end of the first half we were getting our butts handed to us. BAD. The girls came off the field at half and it was cold and rainy, and windy and miserable and they were frustrated and mad and cold and picking at each other. I gathered them all together and looked at them and finally said, “Are you having fun?” No, they said. “ Then lets do something about that.

We mixed it all up on the field at the second half. For these senior girls, it was going to be their last game. I didn’t want this to be their last memory. I moved the goal keeper to forward. Moved some of the backs around, just changed it all up. Now, they still went out and played hard, they probably played harder being in a different position. It was still raining and cold and windy and miserable. We still lost, bad, but when the game was over they came off the field and they were laughing and joking, saying “man that was fun.” And that was the goal wasn’t it?

So what does all this have to do with anything? I had a bad day on Valentines. I guess you could say I got my butt kicked. So, maybe at half time when so many of you were giving me comments and encouragement it made the rest of the game turn out ok. There are so many of you with so many perspectives and strengths, you’re just a great bunch of cookies. Thanks

march on