This past year, and primarily these last few months, I have become more and more involved with coaching our team girls at the gym. This summer I’m going to be even more involved and it’s just been interesting to see my own progression over time as a coach.
I’ve been coaching somewhat since I was 10. At that point, I was helping mostly just with camps and birthday parties and I was also still competing myself. Then I’m not really sure of the order of what happened next. At some point, I started choreographing my own floor routines and then was asked to help teach floor routines to younger team kids, then started dreaming up some big group routines that I eventually brought to life. Then I guess I started subbing for people from time to time and then started choreographing floor routines for more team girls, and everything just kept escalating basically to the point where now I actually am being asked to work more with the younger team girls.
I got a thank you note/end of the year gift from the girl I coach/do acro with and it was really sweet (also reminded me she’s only just about 10 years old). It’s one of the few thank you notes I’ve received from a gymnast I’ve coached and it just got me thinking about how sometimes you don’t really realize when you’re slowly becoming more involved with some kind of work. The note was also a great reminder of the best part about coaching: impacting the kids.
The Life of Pinya 