October 11th, 2012

For being only the second day of the unit I felt as though the classes I taught went quite well. Many of these classes today were eighth graders, so these skills in badminton were mostly review. Even though they had a background in these skills I still took the time to explain to them the different parts of history, and scoring rules. I did this in a reasonable amount of time, and we were able to get in to game play for about fifteen minutes at the end of class. The seventh graders on the other hand I took more time to explain the rules, history, and techniques. They had some background of this sport form other Physical Education classes in different grades, but as in depth as this. We were only able to perform maybe five minutes of true game play with application of skills at the end of class. Today also was my big opening debut as the stand in head coach for the Victor Junior Varsity Volleyball team. The night before I had scripted all of my rotations, and the possible tendencies of Canandaigua who were our opponent for the evening. I was completely over prepared, but I need that in order to function in high stress situations. The kids caught on well and responded to my coaching. I do not know all of the details of the sport, so I put a lot of pressure on the kids in the sense they had to remember where they were in rotation, and when they should be subbing out. The first game began as a disaster. we were down 11-21, I thought we were done, because I have never seen a deficit like that be overcome. I called a time out, and it seemed like something out of the movie miracle. I gave them a speech, and normally I stutter, but the words came out clearly. I could see the kids eyes get big and light up with focus. We came back after that and won 25-27! I felt like I was going to drop after that game, but we still had two more left. The second game we came on strong, and we were up by many points in the beginning, but slowly we fell behind, and lost 21-25. Our third game would decide the fate of that match, it was the tie breaker, where our grit and determination would be tested. The score went back and forth through the entire match. We slowly started to get behind toward the end of the game, but somehow we got a good dig and scored tying at 21-21, and we got the ball for a serve. One of my back row players was rotating front and the front row player had to substitute in for them, because the back row player was only a specialist for that position. Well the kid that plays front was not paying attention, and when I had noticed it was too late, and he ran in after the referee had blown the whistle for service. This of course caused us to be out of rotation, and lose our serve as well as a point. I thought at that moment we had lost the match , and it was my fault as head coach not realizing this rotational error. I had put too much faith in the kids to keep track of where they had to be. I was devastated, but only for a moment. I re-focused and put my thoughts to the next play. We dug another ball and scored, getting the point and the serve back. The rally went back and forth again, points being put up on both sides. We battled back for the victory, winning 26-24. It was an amazing feeling. Wins like that are the ones I feel are true wins. The ones you have to battle for, and earn. The kids did well, and I feel as though I gained a little more respect from them tonight. It was an amazing experience and I thank my host teacher for allowing me to do it.