From the sidelines students can get a wide variety of experiences especially when they switch their athletic uniform for a coaching shirt and a whistle.
Junior Kassidy Manners chose to share her knowledge with kids just beginning to play soccer. Manners says she decided to help coaching because she “loves kids.” She also enjoyed watching her players learn new skills and developing their soccer “careers.”
Coaching 4 and 5 year olds comes challenges, and Maners adds that she has “played soccer for many years” and passing or kicking a soccer ball is just natural to her but “to them it is a whole new world.” Coming up with drills and games that they will understand and enjoy was difficult.
The junior added that trying to please everyone, players and parents was hard but she managed as best as she could. Maners says overall she enjoyed coaching very much and is looking forward to another season of coaching next year.
A different perspective of giving back is reffing a game rather than coaching. Junior Brennan Stewart has reffed soccer games for 2 years now. Stewart enjoys begin on the other side of soccer for once, since Stewart has played soccer for many years of his life.
Stewart says “easy parts of reffing is doing the job itself, running up and down the field,” yet there are always challenges to jobs like these. Stewart said the hardest challenge he faced was “making everyone happy, not every parent would agree with every call,” adding “You just have to brush it off and continue the job you’re meant to do.” Stewart plans on continuing to help ref community soccer games in the future.
A friend of Stewart, junior Justin Gue has also participated in reffing over the past fall season. After one of his fellow teammates and friend got injured, (who had previously been reffing) the rec needed extra help. Gue stepped up immediately not wanting to let down players and coaches and according the the junior this was a great opportunity for him because he got to “ref a sport he enjoyed” and to “help kids during the game.”
Along with Stewart, parents were a handful to handle when it came to certain calls. Gue just went along with his responsibility reffing the game. Volunteering made it more fun having Stewart a long side of him. Gue said he understands the challenges of reffing but is still interested in continuing reffing around the area. Brennan Stewart