for the first time in my life, i'm starting to lose interest in coaching. like, i don't want to go back to the gym next week. i can't seem to motivate myself into doing choreography. last night, i decided to give two of my kids the mask of zorro theme music - a relatively overheard piece around these parts - just because i could play enough of it in my head to do half the routine while laying in bed with my eyes closed. i hate doing songs that are overused. i hate having my kid go out there and do a routine to music that six other girls have already used that day. but i can't be bothered. i don't want to dig for new music, i don't want to spend three hours standing in the middle of my bedroom trying to match movement to an unfamiliar beat.

i'm sliding on thru this year without a page of planning to my name. scribbling down what skills to work on each rotation before practice starts does not count as a lesson plan, and such things as program plans? ha!

last year, with my motley crew of teenagers (one permanently injured, one who did it all essentially without effort but was never terribly inspired, one over-anxious perfectionist who couldn't vault 90 percent of the time cuz her step was wrong, one with the flexibility of a 2x4, and two younger ones with their own incredibly daunting issues), i thought i was slogging along. i started the year with high hopes for (most of) them, realized i wasn't getting where i thought i was going with them, and resigned myself to finishing out the year. but i still enjoyed it. okay, i did hold my breath every day hoping the two younger ones would be absent. but on the occasions when they were, it was great. i had fun with them. it wasn't the best, most intense gymnastics i've ever coached, but it was fun.

this year, i *could not care less*. seriously. okay, a part of me looks at the one who, for some reason, is still struggling with the basic skills, and says, i really want to help her get this, because i like her and i don't want her to be discouraged and walk away at the end of the season and never come back. the same part of me looks at the littlest one, who's kind of a firecracker and quiet at the same time, and adores her and wants to teach her all kinds of stuff. i nearly had her in a handstand on the low bar the last day before christmas break (if i'd had a better spotting block, i'd have had her completely vertical in a heartbeat). but then there's the one who cries and wails and has a hissy fit when she gets corrected, or when she falls, or when she doesn't like the color of the sky today, and she just tires me out. i (very, very quickly) established a rule that she can not do anything or have any turns while she's blubbering, because one thing that drives me fucking nuts is *crying*, unless there is a broken bone or gushing blood or maybe, just maybe, a really, really bad scoresheet (and in that case, you better not do it on the competition floor). so now she will stand on the beam and refuse to get off when she works herself into a frenzy because she can't land her turn properly, and what am i supposed to do? pick her up and put her on the floor? kicking and screaming like a child being abducted the whole time, i'm quite sure. i've threatened to call her mother and have her come and physically remove her from the gym herself - but her parents are practically unreachable, and i know this. the odds of me actually getting her mother, who in my opinion hasn't got a clue of how to discipline her children to start with, or father, who i don't even think i know how to reach, to come and get her are slim to none. what's worse is that the kid knows this too. i can't sit her out, because she won't go. she will stand there and stare at me, and not move. i can either argue with her, while the other kids stand there wondering what to do, or i can turn away and ignore her and find her doing her own little cartwheel routine two minutes later when my back's turned.

i've had rotten before. rotten is nothing new. the problem, i think, is the atmosphere. the discipline policy is not lax in this club, it just doesn't exist. it's not that charlotte is running the club from a financial point of view, where making a parent unhappy because their precious offspring has been sent home is a cardinal sin, because if financial were any sort of priority, well, i wouldn't be teaching one kid on saturday mornings when no one else signed up for the class, now would i? it's more that she's a freaking bleeding heart, at least when it comes to children. she doesn't want anyone to be unhappy or uncomfortable. and that extends to her coaches too, by all means, i don't mean to imply otherwise. but i guarantee that if i approach her with the idea of a discipline issue, her response will be something like, "oh ... oh dear ... well, i - i don't know what to do! we can't have that sort of behaviour going on, but i don't want to see her singled out, either ... maybe you can talk to her mother?"

i love charlotte, i swear i do. (and that's exactly how she talks, by the way. it takes a bit to get used to. i think she probably should have been born in the deep south somewhere). but she's got no backbone, when it comes down to it. the only time you hear anything strong come out of her mouth is when she's coaching from the sidelines, telling one of her girls to push or pop or snap (gymnastics is all about the one word prompt, if you didn't know). i have resolved that i have to talk to the mother, no easy feat since she brings the kid in nearly an hour late every day and i don't get to see her until after class, which defeats the idea of starting fresh with a policy firmly in place. but i'm kind of annoyed that i have to be the one coach trailblazing my way down the discipline path in a club that's been around twenty years or so.

charlotte, bless her, has great kids. they don't talk back, they don't act up, they have no reason to be benched or sent home or made an example of. (i don't attribute this to charlotte herself, necessarily, as her own children, the youngest at least, are kind of unruly. unless it's different when it's your mom. but in this case, i don't think so). while that's all well and good, it creates no standard for the rest of the gym. the boys, likewise, create no standard for the rest of the gym because their coach, while looking for all the world like he's got the stern russian disciplinarian thing going on, has little to no control over the little buggers. i can't explain this. worse, no one seems to care - except for one doting mother who, on her son's frequent mid-practice wanders out into the lobby (wtf?), will tell him to buckle down and work. (not only is this not her job, but by having drinks and snacks and things to say to him every time he appears, she is not enforcing the point. but this is another, completely different story).

so from the top, there is no example. in the mid level, where we are, there's not much going on either. L has one kid who is a fucking pain in the ass (i know because i coached for her for a couple of weekends, and this kid nearly lost her head in my hands), but she's workable. you can sit her out, and she'll fume. (i like fuming. it's good for the whole "thinking about why you're sitting on your ass" thing). but if she got really out of hand, i can't imagine what L would do with her. i don't think it would ever occur to her to send her home. nor can i imagine what S would do if one of her kids decided to go climbing the attitude tree (much like charlotte, S has pretty good kids, who aren't really likely to cause much trouble).

and down at the basic feeder level - that is to say, the rec classes - there isn't even enough discipline going on to say that little girls need to tie up their hair and wear, if not gymsuits, appropriate clothing of some sort, and take off their freaking jewellery. i am the only coach who will send their kids back out to their mothers for an elastic, or back to the changeroom to take off their socks and floppy sweatshirt and pants that are so long that you can't see their feet and armful of bangles. there are gouges in our bars from kids wearing rings. no one seems to want to make any sort of rule that might have to be enforced. this is probably why there are rec kids climbing on the spare equipment stacked in the corner, or running around getting in everyone's way all the time. god help the coach who gets a kid with a serious attitude problem in one of those groups. what the hell are they going to do with them?

i guess the truth of it is that i am used to a highly disciplined club. at my old gym, there were rules for what to wear in the gym, what you could and couldn't do in the gym, and what would happen to you if you ran afoul of those rules. you get benched. you get sent home. you get suspended, if you're competitive. you may, if you've done something bad enough or often enough, get kicked out (i don't think we ever kicked anyone out. stacie was threatened with it once, when she was still in brenna's group. she was a pain in the ass to brenna. if she'd ever behaved that way to me, i'd have booted her for sure). while people like sherryanne may have used the benching and sending home rules to serious excess (causing many of the older athletes to get upset to the point of tears when they saw the same seven-year-old crying on the bench for the fourth time in a week, and then they'd come to me saying, "ci, she's so mean to them! can't you make her stop?", because i am, as it bizarrely turns out, the champion of all teenage gymnasts), they were definitely necessary. but we don't even HAVE a bench in this damn gym! we don't have a phone in the gym! i would have to stop my entire class, sit them down, and go to the office if i wanted to send someone home!

i remember going to one gym, where i could have worked, which has several athletes competing internationally right now, which actually splintered from the gym i now work at - which is very bizarre - and that club lived up to its reputation and then some. petra screams, she berates, and she would probably send you home for looking at her wrong. she also kicks her athletes and pushes them against bar standers, and i can tell you that from the words of one of her former gymnasts, who was once kicked by petra's very own high heels. in fact, one of those international athletes is actually the subject of the being-shoved-against-the-bar-stander story - and apparantly, in full view of her mother, who said nothing and continues to allow her daughter to train there. now if petra were petra's real name, i would probably be sued or blacklisted or something just for saying that much, not that everyone in the region doesn't know the stories. but i digress. the point is, i don't want to work *there*, either. i don't want my athletes to live in fear of me, or hate me, or not know me by anything but my shouting voice. and while i'm an old-school, hard-discipline, no-crying-no-matter-how-much-it-fucking-hurts gymnast and coach, i would never call it okay for a coach to kick their gymnast for doing a tumbling drill improperly. this isn't the old soviet union, and we're not fighting for government grants to feed the athlete's family.

but my old club wasn't perfect either, because despite the fact that i was basically free to discipline as i saw fit, there was always the board of directors (non-privately-owned clubs suck for this very reason) hanging overhead, saying, "money! money! you don't want to upset anyone and have them withdraw or fail to return! money!" and maybe i can see the point a little bit, because we had a nice, big facility, with offices and a full floor and a full tumbling strip and a full pit and a full kindergym area and a full-length vault strip, and lots of room for the beam and the bars, and we had all kinds of kindergym equipment and mats and training aids like inclines and cylinders. sure, the covering on some of the mats might need fixing, and we would run into each other's space during rotations and get cranky and bitchy and snarl at each other and complain about not having enough room - and in hindsight, we were spoiled and ignorant, because what i'm working with now is not even a tenth of that. for all that we had, i'd be willing to put up with a little bit of bullshit, and for the most part, i was willing at the time. a kid who gave me a minor pain in my ass, who i'd have rather been without, was something i could tolerate for the sake of my fat paycheque, which was, make no mistake, fat. but with the kid i had to bench day after day after day, without fail, who should have been suspended and i couldn't get permission to suspend her because we didn't want to lose the money from her monthly program fees when her self-righteous mother got offended that her precious was being treated unfairly and would have threatened to pull her out, the board of directors (money) won out over the head coach and program director (integrity). so that was a bad situation, too. as i used to say all the time, money and a bunch of uninvolved parents should never dictate what goes on in a gymnastics club - or likely in any other sport.

this entry has turned so long and rambled in so many different directions that i don't know how to sum it up. all i started off meaning to say was that i'm starting to feel ambivalent at best towards coaching, and i think it has to do with the club. but i don't know what to do. i don't know if there's a club that's going to make me (even passably) happy. i want to be in a club that has a high level of discipline - but not constant screaming and occasional beating of the athletes. i want to work somewhere that has at least enough space and equipment to go around - but not because we'll put up with anyone's untalented delinquent just for their money. i would like to work somewhere where the skill level and competition results are valued - but not to the point where your job might hang on the line if your kids fail to produce one year (this goes back to petra again, just FYI. many coaches have been fired for their pre-comps' bad results. pre-comps are ages 7 to 9, also FYI - not qualifying for the olympics just yet).

i guess i'm doomed to float around until i find this perfect place. this may take years. i'm not really enthused about that prospect.

in the meantime, i've got to drag myself thru this year, and really, i'd rather just hand them off to someone else and say, "here, good luck. i'm going to work my forty hours a week and go home with no external responsibilities, no choreography, no lesson plans, no competition weekends to arrange." in all seriousness, i can't think of anything i'd like more - and that's a scary thought, because i've never lived my life without gymnastics, and i don't particularly want to. but right now, i can't be fucking bothered.

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