I’ve decided I want to be a teenager again. I’m not sure if this mode of thinking is due to having three teenage girls, a summer spent checking out universities, or to the number of young adult books I’ve been reading lately. But, I’d like a do-over.

There are so many things I’d do differently. I don’t mean staying out of trouble or avoiding certain boys that perhaps I should have. Those were all learning experiences, and since I never ended up in jail or pregnant, things were pretty good.

I would, however, try to be move involved in school. Join more clubs. Definitely play sports. I wouldn’t have dropped science so soon, and I would have tried to get better grades in English – or maybe just enjoyed it a little more. Then I would have shaken things up and done university differently instead of picking a nice, safe business degree.

I try to instill these ideas in The Daughter…get involved, try something new…but like me back then, she knows everything she needs to, and I’m just her mom, so far out of school that I can’t possibly remember what it was like.

But I try to offer guidance where I can. I can’t go back and play sports, but I can sit in the stands and cheer on The Daughter at something she loves. I’m not the kind of person to go back to school and change careers at this point in my life, but I can help expose The Daughter to different career choices that are out there, and I can add to my life by writing and taking night classes, while keeping my job. And I can read books. I can immerse myself in places I will never go, worlds that will never exists, or times to which I cannot return.

Ah , to be young again.

As I’ve mentioned before, my daughter plays competitive volleyball. She had a new coach last year who was absolutely awesome with her. As a left-handed player, she plays on the right-side while “the power” players are on the left-side. Previously she was just there as “the other side”, but as an ex-professional himself, Coach M saw the benefit in using her abilities. He also saw potential in the rest of the team, and wanted to take them to a higher level of competitive play.

Coach M wrote an eight page plan that he gave to our club outlining what he wanted to do with the team. A lot of thought, time and effort went into the document, and he pulled it not just from his own experiences but from a number of successful sources, so he wasn’t just spouting garbage. It was rejected.

When the new season tryouts began, not only did we lose one of our key players to normal attrition, but without following his plan (or any plan from our point of view) the club was unable to attract the height and skills our coach and team needed. Coach M, wanting what was best for the players encouraged my daughter to try out for a team that would offer her the challenges she needed, as only through playing better teams would she become a better player. An extremely unselfish move on his behalf.

Unfortunately, no good deed goes unpunished. When the rest of the team found out one player left and that my daughter was looking elsewhere, the dominos began to fall. Coach M was left with only a handful of players – certainly not enough to make a team. Talk about feeling bad, my daughter and I thought he was a great coach and yet here we were contributing to the downfall of the team. But he said “no”, he understood and continued to encourage her.

It’s such a shame, but I blame the Club. Had they followed his plan, we wouldn’t have just kept the team, but we could have made it better. WE would have become “the better team”. His reward for trying to make the girls into the best players they could be resulted in him without a team. I’m hoping that he finds another club. A club that will listen to him, and invest in his plan. I hate to think that the saying is true. Instead I hope that when one door closes, another opens…
a bigger, better door one, and that behind it will stand a club and team that will reward him for his efforts.