Truck Incident

A note to all you future coaches, if you want your athletes to respect you, don't disrespect them. Here is the inciting incident description:

My coach is always running around and really never sits and is able to talk for more than a matter of 2 or 3 mins. The only real way to get him to talk to you is if you ride in his truck on the way to a regatta, because that way you have him cornered...unless he jumps from a moving truck that he himself is driving...I am not that scary.
Anyways so I send him an e-mail two days before our regatta, requesting that if he is going to have a student riding in the truck with him that it be me so we can talk about some issues I have been having with my stroke. So he ends up driving by himself on the way up because there are some issues with our trailer that is carrying the boats. After the regatta during the team debrief he mentions how he would like to have a student volunteer for the ride back. I walk up to him after the meeting and mention how I would like to ride with him. He says he is going to try and get an assistant coach to do it so he can go over unloading procedures with them but that I can sit there if thats doesn't work out.

We all load our stuff in the vans and I assume that coach got one of the assistances to ride with him because I haven't seen him around. I hop into the van that drove me up in the first place. Then I see coach with another rower named John. Coach catches my eye in the van and yells back that John and I will have to fight it out for however gets to sit with him. I jump out of the van and tell John how I asked first and how I sent an e-mail to coach two days before. John just looks at me and says something like "I am riding with coach, too bad" he of course is carrying all of the equipment that goes in the truck, and I end up whining and sounding like a child while trying to explain to him while he is walking to the truck that I deserve to sit there more than he does. I lose, but all the while coach is just ignoring the conversation and walking ahead. I understand that the other rower really should have just stepped down and not been such a jackass, but you would also think that a coach would have the respect to his athletes to just make a call. I was sorta pissed to say the least.

Lesson learned for the day: be a good coach if you are going to coach at all.

~The Singing Ginger