We are not taping today, so we will speak on the subject of adapting to circumstance.
The reason we are not taping is we don't have enough of a team to do it today. Two of the three people who would be on the lineup for the show are unavailable. One person who I was going to have on the team may have transferred out of Seton, or may just have been sick for two weeks. The first alternate is not going to be at practice for a while because they are getting tutoring four days a week for the next couple weeks for test prep. Second alternate has swimming until April.
One thing I really miss about having Catie on the team is her recruiting skills. Most of these people Catie recruited or encouraged to join the team, or kept in touch with on a daily basis in the hallway. And that's something that even having a teacher or principal checking in on the students can't do. I can't get the information I need about who's sick, and who's traveling, who can't make this week because they're getting their permit or touring a college, because they're not in Mrs. Parker's classes. But Catie knew everything I needed to know about that and let me know as soon as she came in the room.
I recognize this as a limitation of my situation. Someone on staff will have ways of getting the available information and acting upon it. Since I've gone from parent volunteer to just volunteer this year, it's difficult to enter the building missing an up to date situation report. So I'm going into tomorrow's practice with some level of adaptability required. I need to prepare for three separate situations. Let's walk you through them, so you can see how I'm going to handle these situations.
Known Knowns: If we have the full complement back.
If we have everyone back, and it was just illness, and we're not expected to lose anyone again, we continue down the path we've got. I update the team on when we are likely to tape again, since we're now at the back of the line and there's only nine more taping dates. I ask everyone to check their schedule for MTW afternoons for the next six weeks, and figure out if there's anything you know is going to keep them from playing. I let the producer know that we're good to go, and give the schedule of bad days. Simple and easy.
I feel like if everyone is back together, we're fine. More repetitions in practice won't hurt, and I've got all the pieces in place that we need to do that sort of practice.
What do we have to prepare for this: Precisely what we've already prepared. We've got sample games to run in practice, that I've written to have all the training I think we can consume before the match.
And this we know will never happen, because we told God our plans.
Known Unknowns: If we're only missing the one player.
If we're just missing a sick player, we know what to do. Our alternate moves up. We have seen enough of our alternate in practice to know what they can do, and what they can't. And we know the strengths and weaknesses of the player they would replace. So the question is: Can we adapt and cover up the negative difference between the two players in the time we have left? And if not, how badly will that affect our results?
What do we have to prepare for this: If we have to promote up, we're losing our best player for the math round and our best science player, and getting more strength in history. That's not good, but it's only lethal to us in that the math round, which nearly got us last time, is back to where we were last year. Still we have the pocketmod given to the team, the practice material I've given all year, and the stuff from last year which will be new to the promoted alternate. And this means that the math round is now everyone's responsibility. You can't replace someone you're relying upon to cover a specific category with a single person.
(If you detect in this a slight bit of my detesting of specialization, you are correct, especially for the case of televised competition. The idea of specialization is problematic because you have so little chance to specialize in a field and requiring the other players to pick up the rest of the slack. That's built-in chosen fragility in the system when you choose to specialize.)
This isn't a great scenario, but it's one we can still work in.
Unknown unknown: Every other scenario for tomorrow.
Under this umbrella are the following scenarios: we don't have a full complement of a team at practice tomorrow, and practice is cancelled. We know people are "around" but not at practice. We don't have practice because there's a snowstorm that's going to hit at 10am tomorrow, and people want to get home. Or we don't even have school, so there's no after school practice. All of these are in play for tomorrow, and this list is not completely enumerating the problems.
Until we get to a point where we have a full team at practice, we're stuck here. What groups these problems in common is the fact that I can't force progress out of these problems, without having enough people to practice. We can't say with certainty that we'll be ready to tape on a date certain. We can't say with certainty we'll travel to a tournament. We can't say that we're getting better in certain areas, or identified a weakness to work on for next week. And if we can't practice, we're not guaranteed to retain the development we've had from the beginning of the year. This is the miserable part of coaching. And if I hadn't had multiple weeks, months of practices like this when I was helping college teams, I'd be melting down right now.
What do we have to prepare for this: We have to prepare like this scenario isn't going to happen. We have to do the prep, exactly as we did for both those two other situations. You don't know which scenario you're facing, so you have to prepare for them all. Specifically to tomorrow, I have to complete the simulated game I've got on another tab, finish putting my sets of flash cards in quizlet, and put the practice rounds of chronology questions I wanted to finish before last week's practice into a format they can use. And I have to find a way to communicate to the team, even if they're not at practice tomorrow, that those things are available to them. Have the PocketMods printed, have the tab to your other practice rounds open.
But more than the prep of practice materials, I have to be mentally prepared for things to be just as unstable and impossible as they were before, and I have to press forward with optimism and purpose so that whatever is possible to do can get done. Whatever progress is possible must be achieved.
Every coach, no matter the sport, has the long drive home where they're feeling like nothing was achieved in the practice. There are practices where you don't have enough people to feel like your message was broadcast to the entire team. And there will even be practices when you're the only one who shows up. Those are the low end of the spectrum, and only your effort can keep that from becoming the pattern. You have to take control of the things you have control over, and have your preparation ready. Because when the situation changes and you have the team in front of you, you need to create the momentum so you never go back to that situation.