Final Reflection - Girl's Varsity Soccer Assistant Coach

As it also happened last year, the job of being an assistant coach was not very much like how I expected it to be. However, it was a great opportunity for me to look back and to learn more about myself and my last as a soccer player for this school.

Throughout being an assistant coach, I have learned that the girls and boys are very different. Also I learned that I cannot expect girls to be like boys, like I do not want the girls to expect me to be like a girl. Since I became an assistant coach, I had an opportunity to teach and to guide girls with more authority. So I gave more efforts to learning more about the practice sessions, and I have grown more apt in knowing who is more skilled than the other. I personally feel that I have grown more understanding about the position of the coaches.

While teaching the girls, I surprisingly found many aspects and external factors, which shaped myself to become the type of soccer player that i have grown up to be. I have also learned that I still do not fully agree with my coach and I still feel that I could have been a better play if I had been a soccer coach in the girl's team earlier. This is because I have learned more about coaching and playing soccer after this experience.

For the first time, I also had an opportunity to closely examine the girl's team, while participating in an important tournament. In the tournament, some of the girls played under-satisfying game, and I was shouting at that player. However, the girl did not listen to me, and only played worse than the usual. I was sent off the field, and I could not coach the girl's team anymore. From that experience, I have learned that I am indeed very emotional and hot-tempered person. Also I have learned that girls do not respond to criticism as boy's team respond to it. Although it may be a bad generalisation, I have learned that sometime there should be a carrot and a stick to motivate the people.

From this experience, I believe that I have grown to be more understanding person and a leader of the group. Also it was a great experience, as it was a great chance for me to look back to the different experiences as being part of the soccer team.