Mr. Commish

A few of my KC friends asked how the kickball thing was going. Well, it’s going, that’s for sure! Since this isn’t an entirely private site, I’ll share only some of what has filled the last month or so for me.

As coordinator, my job is to make sure we get everyone registered by the deadline,[1] recruit coaches, put the teams together, order and distribute uniforms and equipment, communicate with the CYO office about when our teams can/can not play games, sort and approve practice time requests, making sure all participants have all their healthcare paperwork submitted, and put out any fires that develop along the way. This fall was a little busier than usual as this is the first year that there is a third grade league in the fall. So two new teams added to my administrative tasks. We ended up with right at 100 girls playing on eight total teams.

Beyond having visitors from out-of-town and back to school prep, a big reason I didn’t post much here for awhile was everything listed above. For roughly three weeks I was spending pretty much all day each weekday working through all those tasks.

The only real wrinkle in the process came when almost an entire grade of girls decided to focus on other sports this fall. We went from 19 in that grade playing a year ago, to just three this year. That meant I had to combine them with another grade and then come up with the best way to build a team or teams from that group. Ideally a kickball team has 11–15 players on it. Twelve is the perfect number.[2] I had 18 girls for this team, which was too much for one roster, not enough for two. For about 10 days I went back-and-forth with parents from the two grades trying to figure out the best solution. Not everyone was thrilled with the process. One parent and student quit when I announced we were going with a single team. I was told that at one point in the middle of all this, pretty much the entire team quit, but a few level-headed parents talked the other families back onto the team.

There was a little more drama in that process than I’m sharing here. I think a few parents aren’t pleased with me personally more than the process. Fortunately none of them have let me know about it, so I don’t have to take it personally! The important thing is most of the girls got through it, are playing, and hopefully having fun.

Beyond that there was only one other small issue that involved a parental complaint, and that one was as much a request that I do things differently in the future than a threat to yank a girl off a team.

Lots and lots of emails. Many calls and texts. Running around to buy kickballs[3] at the only place in the area that carries them, which is about 30 minutes away. Buying scorebooks at another location where St. P’s gets a discount. Picking up new uniforms from the supplier. Arranging to meet coaches to hand over their gear. There have been at least 100 small logistical tasks that I’ve checked off over the past month. I have a folder where I stash all my kickball-related emails. A month ago there were a couple dozen emails in there, mostly forwards from my predecessor in the role. Today I have over 700 emails in there.

I got to wield one other power yesterday. Indiana got pummeled by heavy storms that included tornadoes yesterday afternoon. Fortunately the worst of the weather hit about an hour north of here, but most of the Indy metro area was in one tornado warning or another for about 90 minutes. When we got home after school, our sirens were going off. I took a look at the radar, saw the storms were going to stick around awhile, and I made the call to postpone all the games we were hosting. I sent a text to S telling her that M’s game was off, adding that I was “very powerful!” since I called everything off. She wasn’t as impressed as I was. And given that the area around St. P’s suffered serious flooding in the storms, it’s not like it took a genius to cancel outside activities for the evening.

The season started last week, so things are beginning to slow down a little bit. There are still a lot of questions from our first-time coaches, which is good because it means I have to investigate things and learn the rules or develop policies quickly. But I’m already thinking ahead. There are some aspects of how we evaluate players and pick teams that need to be overhauled. I have just a few months to figure that out, since kickball is a twice-a-year sport and we’ll be doing all this again next spring.