Sunday, November 10th - 6 hours

Today a Mike and I had a conversation about unpredictable challenges since he has stepped into a director's role. He said it has been the most challenging since his own kids have started playing and having to manage problems that arise on their team. He's had to work on separating "My friend's dad Mike" from "Director/Coach Mike" and even more difficult getting parents or players to understand the difference. The current situation he's facing is on his son's team dealing with someone who is not being a good teammate (to put it nicely). It's become such a problem that the director's are considering kicking the player out of the club for the remainder of the 19/20 season. The boy is a friend of Mike's son that he has known for a while and as "Dad Mike" hasn't seen this side of the boy that's causing the problems. He tried to remain optimistic for the longest time and working with the kid without consequences on the club side, but unfortunately his attitude and actions continue to shift in a negative direction. Not that it's ever easy to have this type of conversation with a player and parents, but he isn't anticipating the parents or the boy to be able to separate the Mike's two roles from each other which means his son will likely lose a friend.

As April gets closer each day, more and more parent concerns keep coming up. I hope to stay in the coaching career path in some capacity, and this is not something I had considered yet. I have played for my friend's parents before and have considered how challenging that must be, but until our conversation today I hadn't thought of challenges beyond playing time disagreement type situations. It would be difficult from all angles to not see my kid's friend in the same light at all times and be able to switch hats so often.