Coaching women is extremely rewarding

Again, just for the record – I’ve never argued in favour of fighting in the women’s game, but I do believe firmly that taking bodychecking out of the game changes it so fundamentally as to make it nearly unwatchable.

While that might be the thing I like least about women’s sports, however, there are many things in my eyes that make women’s games even more enjoyable than men’s – most notably the sheer enjoyment women get out of playing just to play the game.

Last summer, I started coaching my fiancée Johanna’s team in the fantastic Girls Summer Softball League in Côte St. Luc, TMR and Outremont.

As a man coaching a group of adult women, there are a few interesting challenges – but mostly, it is a total joy to be around the players because they bring not only intensity and drive to the field, but also a kind of innocence to the game that you just don’t find in men’s sports.

The team we’re with this year, The Knockouts, has five or six players on it who honestly could suit up in my league and wouldn’t look out of place in terms of skill, but where it’s interesting is in their overall understanding of the strategy, the techniques, and the reasoning behind why things are done one way or another.

When you watch a men’s game, you’ll see a lot of the basics: catching pop-ups with two hands, planting the right foot on the first base bag and stretching out to shorten the throw, hitting cutoffs, making double plays, etc.

In the women’s game, however, most of these things are non-existent at the beginning of the year, and that creates almost a blank slate for coaches to work with.

The thing is that most of the women in the league didn’t have the chance to play baseball growing up, so their skills and knowledge are raw.

When you take a player with natural talent – and there are many of them in the league – but somewhat of a lack of knowledge, it creates almost an ideal coaching situation: unlike when coaching children, these women have adult attention spans and adult attention to detail – which means that you can see the learning take effect almost instantly.

On the flipside, it’s always a challenge as a man to realize that I am not coaching a group of men and thus, my level of patience must be higher than normal – after all, while some things may be obvious to my teammates in the men’s league, they might not be so to the women I’m coaching.

The one thing I always say I know about women is that I don’t know anything, but overall, coaching them has become one of the most rewarding sports experiences of my life.

In fact, I would wager that most of them have no idea how much fun it is for me – even when I’m losing my mind when they don’t listen!

I think more people like myself who grew up playing these games – men and women alike – would be well served by taking some time to coach, be it coaching men, women or children.

If your heart’s in the right place, coaching can be an extremely rewarding experience, and that’s not about whether your team wins or loses.

The first time one of your players or your team as a whole executes something you taught them, you’ll understand.

As for The Knockouts, I can only hope the women I’m coaching don’t get tired of hearing me tell them to plant their back foot, be patient, and play the game hard!

For more on the Girls Summer Softball League, please visit: http://www.esportsdesk.com/leagues/front_pageesd.cfm?clientID=3333&leagueID=8955