Our youngest daughter wanted to play competitive soccer this year after playing a shortened version of the game at school. Like any good parents, we encouraged her to give it a go. This all sounded fine and i left for a business trip to Singapore where i was volunteered to be the next coach.

I have not coached before but did play soccer for many years at a reasonable level. After one training session our first opponent was an A grade team that had been together for three years. As you can imagine this is a daunting assignment at the best of times but as a coach i faced a number of other small mountains:

- One of the kids dropped out an hour before the game leaving us with the basic 11 players

- Our new goal keeper after letting in a few goals burst into tears and was last seen out of her goal heading off with her mum never to be seen again.

- Our star striker had a tennis grand final to go to which left us with nine players.

At half-time we were down six nil. As a coach you have five minutes to try and rally the girls, parents and yourself that all is not lost and develop plan ‘C’ (plan B had gone out the window with the disappearing goal keeper). After a moment of panic i totally rearranged the team, strengthened our defense, found a new keeper and with nine players we lost the second half three nil.

To their great credit our girls never stopped trying and ten minutes after the game had already moved on (parents and coaches it seems take a little longer). 

This experience no doubt, is repeated in thousands of sporting fields around the country. Decisions need to be made instantly, the environment changes rapidly, the competition reacts and all this happens in a blink of an eye. Yet coaches and managers of all shapes and sizes can make literally hundreds of decisions throughout a game without resorting to decision trees, cost benefit analysis or forming a committee. Can we learn something from being a soccer coach that we use in the rest of our lives?

Being a coach is one of the best things you can do as a parent and it might just teach us all how to be more confident, decisive decision-makers and it can be incredibly rewarding. 

Ken Hudson

The Speed Thinking Zone