How Coaching 6 Year Old Rec. Soccer Made Me a Better Product Manager
The summer/fall season of our local recreation soccer league has to a close, and I'm pretty thrilled with how well we did this season. We're not supposed to keep score, but the team of 5 & 6-year-olds I coached was nearly undefeated, with just one game slipping away from us. I've been doing this for 6 years now, and each season has been a blast, but something was different about this season. 5 & 6-year-olds are still learning the basic rules of the game. They're still adjusting to the shock that, after a "lifetime" of being taught to share their toys, they will be given a ball and told to keep it from others. They're also easily distracted - by planes, migrating geese, dandelions, dogs. They're also, depending on any number of factors, reluctant to play. Yet, somehow, by the time we took the field to play our first game, my team looked like veteran pros. So much so, I grew self-conscious about just how good they had become. There was such