Flexibility

 To say I am "Type A" is putting it mildly. Growing up, as an only child, I consistently heard that I had to learn to be more flexible, I had to be aware that things in life could and would change. I think back to my heartbreak time and time again when things didn't go just as planned. I would often hole up in my own world questioning how I could make it work out my way in the end and often I was disappointed. I had high standards, for myself and everything around me.

In 2015, when my daughter was diagnosed with autism, I was still inflexible. I liked things laid out, properly or what was properly in my mind. My expectations for myself and those around me spread out onto the lives of my husband and children. Perfection was the only answer, in the home and in the presence of others.

Slowly, I have learned to let go of what you cannot control. And when I say slowly, it's taken me 8 years to get to this place and sometimes I have to remind myself to be flexible. 

Often, I use the lessons I have learned in life to relate it to coaching. I coach children. Many of them. Currently I am the JV Coach for Women's Lacrosse at a school in North Carolina. I also coach a gaggle of little munchkins on a recreational lacrosse team and try to coach not just a game but life lessons that help to grow individuals on and off the field. 

Coaching in North Carolina is different from where I began my coaching career and coaching women's lacrosse in the south is very different from coaching women's lacrosse in the Northeast where kids picked up sticks at 4 or 5 and played with the same group of girls for years on end. 

This year I have the honor of introducing the game to high schoolers who have never played, to elementary schoolers who have only heard of the game from their parents and to work to support athletes who have been able to learn the game over the past few seasons.

Each season as a coach, I promise to commit myself to my girls. That doesn't mean that it's all rainbows and butterflies. I have the hard conversations when a player isn't placed where they want on a field or a team. I try to listen to their concerns and also guide them with hopes that someday, when they take their last steps on the field to end a career that they look back and learn that they learned more from the game than how to play, how many goals they have scored or what the status is that they held within a team or a school because of the sport that they played. I want them to see who they are and how they have grown as a person.

Yesterday before our Morgan's Message dedication game, I had to ask a hard question. Due to unforeseen circumstances I had to send our goalie to the Varsity team which meant I had to borrow a player from varsity and also ask my players who was willing to step into goal. In that moment I paused.

As we huddled in, I paused. I told them that we were playing the game for something more than ourselves, it was our Morgan's Message Game, and we were playing to erase the stigma of Mental Health. I also told them that yesterday was Autism Acceptance Day. I told them that I wanted them to understand that autism has taught me many things. One of them is flexibility. I told them that we were playing with the absence of players and adding a player that we typically don't play with on our field. I explained I was going to ask them to play their game, go into each draw as if it was 0-0 and do their best to work together and play to their abilities. 

When they stepped out onto the field, with a player who has never played goal in goal, I didn't know what would happen. What I saw over the next 40 minutes of play was exactly what I had asked. While the score was 11-6, I realized in that moment that this game was exactly what I needed and exactly what our girls needed. They were flexible. They worked together. They listened to my cues and supported each other. We had only positivity on the sidelines, and I realized that my goal of teaching the girls that this game is more than a game, it's about learning life lessons.

Every coach wants to win. I'd be lying if I told you I didn't. Not for me but I want my girls to feel the glory of a good game but scores from games fade away. The opportunity to feel good about who you are and how you play does not.

While we wander through Autism Acceptance Month, I am once again reminded how this disability has given me the opportunity to see more abilities not just in my own life but in the lives of others. How grateful I am for that perspective.

Last night my last text to my team was: "Getting into bed thinking of how proud of you all I am" not because of the game but because of who each of these incredible young women are in my life and the lives of those around them.