My daughter acts the same way regarding clamming up when asked a question. This fall I put her on a team with female HC. It's better, but still an issue. Still has trouble communicating with the two male ACs though.100% on this. Making her do anything is a disaster. But she'll dive in once she decides to do it.
@uncdrew we've had this conversation a number of times. nothing seems to add up to me anyway. I've known Coach since we were kids. His father was my first football coach. I would sometimes show up early at the end of practice trying to get ideas. Coach is a no nonsense guy, but I don't think I've seen him yell. He'd show them what he wants done. then ask them to do it. He'll go over it 3 times. If you don't get it by the third time, he'll ask for push ups or run to the poll and back or some such. but nothing crazy as far as I am concerned.
One story my DD told. We were at Spookynook for the Holloween Tourney. Coach asked her "Do you know what an athletic leader is?". Being as shy as she is, she just started at him. After a few seconds of silence, Coach said "oh forget it." and walked away. She finished the story with, that is when I knew I couldn't play on the spring team.
This spring she even asked me, can you ask coach to come to one of our rec team practices? Coach will whip them into shape, you are too easy on the team.
Mine turned 13 today. She was 5 at her first rec softball practice and started travel in 2nd year 8U. There are absolutely things I would change but they all come down to one thing, really: taking things way, way too seriously. I feel like it's taken me until this past year to really get a good perspective all the way around. If she wants to play rec with her buds, let her do it. She's only 10 once. Have the good conversations about why the challenge of travel might be good for her, including other teams that may be options. Let her set the pace. Most of us have it in us to get carried away when we watch our kids get good at something. I think it's just normal and why there are so many over the top parents in 10U and 12U, yet by 16U there are 3 parents watching the game and the rest of the players just drove themselves. You either balance it out or they quit before they get to that age.
This is probably more serious than you really needed but this has been on my mind a lot lately, with my baby becoming a teenager and seeing all the things I'd like to do over and will never be able to.
Hope to get there soon. Probably won't happen today, though. My DD is making her pitching debut tonight. I'm going to do my best to not yell key phrases that make absolutely no sense to anyone but me and maybe, just maybe they make sense to DD. I think my best case scenario is freaking out on the inside, but quiet on the outside. Probably need to watch her innings from the truck on GC.One of my few, unique talents in life is to quickly learn and apply the advice of people who are further down the path that I'm on.
After about 2 months of taking this 10U softball thing way too seriously, I totally mellowed out. I'm the one zen parent on the team, with the rest freaking out about every little thing.
This site has been very helpful for me in many ways.
Hope to get there soon. Probably won't happen today, though. My DD is making her pitching debut tonight. I'm going to do my best to not yell key phrases that make absolutely no sense to anyone but me and maybe, just maybe they make sense to DD. I think my best case scenario is freaking out on the inside, but quiet on the outside. Probably need to watch her innings from the truck on GC.
Don't get me wrong but at 10U who cares? Seriously, anything at 10U is still too early to stress about. The girls are still little kids, let them have fun and forget about it.