On a rainy weekend...

...and with all us suffering from colds, yesterday was that time-honored season-ending event in kids' soccer, the pizza party. This one, for me, was like none other, if only because I had not only one child among the players on the team, but another as its head coach.

How would he handle the traditional coach's speech, where he would be expected to praise the players and make some inspirational comments about their season?

As it turned out, the girls had their own plan for how the day would unfold. They asked all of the adults, including "Mister Coach, Sir" to stay in another room while they got organized.

When we entered the room, they had it set up as if it were a British talk show, with one of the girls adopting a perfect accent seated at the top of the room with an empty chair next to her.

She then announced that her first guest would be the team's head coach, where she asked him directly what he felt about the team's play this season. He smiled and launched into what he could remember of the speech he had been planning to give.

He said lots of nice things -- complementing them all on how much they had improved, how hard they had competed, and how they had applied the things he taught them at practice into games.

When the "host" asked him another pointed question, he temporarily lost his train of thought and smiled. "I'm not really a public speaker," he apologized.

Then, he recovered his place and urged the girls to stay in shape over the winter, by playing futsol or basketball, by running or training or going to the gym every day.

He told them he thinks they are all talented enough to play at the next level, which for many of the girls will be high school or club soccer, but only if they are committed to staying in peak physical condition.

His comments here are against the backdrop that many of the kids complained early in the season that he was a "hard" coach, in that he made them run laps and perform a lot of drills at practice that required running, including sometimes "suicides," the sprints that are the consequence for the losing side of an intra-squad scrimmage.

Funny thing is that over the course of the season they stopped complaining, kept running and were no longer coming out of games struggling for breath or too exhausted to keep going.

He also told them he was "honored" to be their coach and to be part of their team. All in all, it was an exceptional performance, sincere, low-key, and effective. And I'm not saying that only because I am his Dad. If he had had a bad day, I'd say that as well. The girls listened carefully to him; their respect was obvious in their expressions.

Afterward, he spoke with the parents for a long time, answering their questions and elaborating on his coaching philosophy, which is remarkably nuanced for a 17-year-old, I believe.

When we finally left, and I asked him what he thought, he just said, "That went well."

Indeed.

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