Lacrosse

Today was a good day for lacrosse. It was beautiful out and I met a lot of my CAS goals.

During the school day, I really didn't want to go to practice. I had a really busy weekend, I was really tired, and I had a lot of homework. I had plenty of excuses for skipping it and my friend told me she was thinking about skipping it, but I decided to go anyway. I'm really glad I did. I stay committed to lacrosse even though I wasn't too excited about going, which I think will help me learn perseverance. An even better reward than perseverance though was the way I felt after practice. It was a really warm and sunny day and it felt good to get the exercise. Sometimes, its really hard for me to do what is good for me, but it definitely pays off!

I also worked collaboratively with a senior on my team to run practice today. I think it went well. Because the season hasn't officially started yet, we aren't allowed to have the coach practice with us yet. Therefore, team members have to lead the practices. Today, we ran a couple laps and then went over the basics of lacrosse for the newer members of the team.

I was able to help teach them to cradle, throw, catch and scoop the ball off the ground. I think I met my goal today to help others, or at least came really close to meeting it. I discovered that a good way to teach is to ask the "students" what they have questions about and move on from there. If I talked about, maybe, running for a half hour it would be pointless because they all know how to run already. It worked better when I asked them what they wanted to know and then taught them. This helped the freshmen to pay better attention and, I hope, helped everyone learn more about lacrosse. On the other hand, though, at the end when I was asking if anyone had questions about the rules, no one really said anything. They didn't have questions about the rules because they didn't know about the rules. So sometimes you just have to start talking and then let the questions come. I think its a give and take thing. You have to know what you're talking about, but also be willing to let the learners ask questions.

I also worked with some sophomores on the team. They knew how to play lacrosse, so I had them help me teach the beginners. They were good at this and also helped me remember things I forgot to say.