This entry is as much trying to get my feelings on paper as it is asking for comments or advice. I just don’t know how to figure this one out.

I’ve been asked to coach my son’s soccer team (U7) for the spring season and, presumably, therafter.

I’m gonna try and sort this out.

First, background: my son loves soccer. He’s very good at it, he’s quick and agile and fast and balanced. He has a lot to learn (don’t we all) about team play and sportsmanship and even the game itself, but I think he’s off to a good start.

His first season (two years ago, spring) I was coach for his team. I had a bunch of five year olds that wouldn’t listen, had no skills, and were constantly fighting the weather or infections or whatever. I also had just as many parents that would show up with a chair, plop themselves on the sidelines, and ask why the kids didn’t seem to be learning much in practice.

So the next fall (at this age they are playing fall / spring), I signed him up with another team – I did not coach. His coach was truly a godsend – fun, energetic, well versed in soccer, a real joy to be around. And he loved my kid like a son. He was able to help him learn TONS. And this wasn’t necessarily easy, since as gifted as he is athletically, my son had a hard time with paying attention and has a touch of opposition thrown in just to keep things interesting. So that was his second year.

Third year in soccer (last fall, 2004), same coach. Only the coach had also decided to coach the U9 team his older son was on. Guess what? They had games at the same time as my son’s U7 team. There are only so many nights to practice. And a hurricane hit central america and our coach (an architect) was out of town working a lot, trying to salvage projects under development.

Another thing happened (and I’m not trying to be whiny) but another U6 team from the prior year lost it’s coach and so there were several new faces on the team in the fall. These new faces had serious soccer parents, the kind that yelled and hollered not so much at the kids but at the coach. Have you seen the movie “Friday Night Lights?” Where they are badgering the coach about everything he does with the team, at dinner and around town? Kinda like that, in miniature, with seven year old soccer players.

At the last game of our fall season, the opponent’s coach came across the field afterward to congratulate my son and say he has a lot of skill. I thought it was a great compliment – he went out of his way to come say this, after we had all been yelling and screaming in the sun and mud for an hour.

Okay, so sum up: at five years old, I’m his coach, felt inadequate, but hey they are five. Six years old – great coach, had a blast, learned lots. Seven years old (fall) same great coach but more demanding parents, games now had a referee (more serious), but still learned a bunch.

That brings us to now, and the phone call I recently received. Our coach has decided he was too spread out, so in the spring and from now on, he will only coach the older team (nine year olds). Our team has no coach.

Here is my conundrum (hey, you, in the back? Go get some coffee or something, you keep nodding off. Not that I blames you). Anyway: after last season I was seriously thinking it might be best if my son switched to another team entirely. Yes, in soccer that is kinda radical at this age, the best teams are those that have “come up” together for several seasons so they know each other and their strengths and weaknesses. My kid is pretty good, but I think he needs a strong coach to get him where he needs to be.

And I don’t know if that coach should be me.

I’m getting told from other parents that they don’t want to “break up the team.” So I’ve been asked to coach. If I say no, the team members will be split among the other teams in the league. So friends won’t see each other anymore (maybe) at practice and the moms won’t hang out together.

And I can’t say that that is 100% a bad thing. As I already said, after last season, when our coach was absent more than he was there, I was thinking it might be time to move on. But now I have a chance to keep everyone together and see how things go.

I don’t know what to do.