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by Gb Bongiovanni

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When it comes to sports there are many different aspects of the game that can be challenging and overwhelming, things that may challenge your mind, your guts, and not to mention your check book. For the last four months I have entered a journey that believe it or not is tougher than all of those. Forget being a manager, a talent scout, or even a GM what I accomplished was more than all of that. I wasn't the interim coach of the Buffalo Bills, or a talent scout for the Cleveland Indians, and no I didn't talk to Kobe Bryant about getting Phil Jackson back. I coached a girl's soccer team full of five and six year old girls.

My journey started four months ago when a group of girls, including my daughter, decided to take on soccer for the first time. Being an avid sports lover and always wanting to coach in some way shape or form I decided to coach the girls. After assembling the team and a team of adults to keep the sanity we started practice for the first time. Now being the coach I went all out. Not only did I have an organized plan but also an outline of what I wanted to accomplish for the season and for the parents. Once I started talking to everyone at that first practice I noticed that things were not going to go exactly as I had planned.

Five and six year old girls are princesses, hence the team name Princess Power. They are into Barbie's and think that boys have cooties and things of that nature. Since I was only twenty years older than them I figured that I would be able to understand them, and boy was I wrong. A girl's attention span at this age lasts for about thirty seconds at a time. So if you don't intend on getting your point across right away consider yourself in trouble.

Being a mainstream avid sports fan the only sports I know practically everything about are baseball, football, and basketball. Coaching soccer though requires a good knowledge of the game so after learning as much as I possibly could I relied on my assistant coach to teach the fundamentals and referee the games. * Note to anyone who intends to coach Make sure you have an amazing assistant coach and a "super" team mom. * Since obviously I was not of the female gender it was imperative that I had the perfect team mom, thank God I did. Not only did she handle the girls when it was out of my jurisdiction but she organized things, gave the girls stamps and stickers, and kept their interest during the games. Coaching a girl's soccer team requires these two people and could not be done without them.

When it came time to go to our first game I was nervous. Thoughts of us getting destroyed filled my head. I thought about what it would do to our girls and how awful of a coach I would look like. The first game set the tone and we scored double digit goals and went on to win big. Sure, I was excited and had a bit of a big head, especially when we continued going undefeated. It was when I ran into those few coaches who just pinched a nerve that bugged me the most. The type of coaches who yelled at the girls, or watched one of their girls loose a shoe and not call time out, or putting a girl in front of the goal trying to score on a corner kick. In the league we played in there is no keeping score at this age and no matter who scores everyone celebrates and let's the girls know how good they have done. The problem was being a die hard fan and coach of the Princess Power trying not to keep score was simply impossible.

There were times when I lost my head. I yelled at the other coaches paced up and down the sideline, strategically tried to match up which girls to put in at what time, and even tried to draw up plays for the girls to run. None of this mattered to the girls. While some parents were interested in getting the girls ready to play professional soccer at the age of 5 it honestly didn't matter. What really mattered was that the girls had fun. This was something that I was unaware of until I was done coaching. So if you are ever coaching a sports team at such a young age remember that it's about the kids having fun and wanting to come back and play again.

Learn more about this author, Gb Bongiovanni.

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