Why there was a frisbee at a sports clinic

Halfway through a recent session in Chino, the discs came out. It is not a frisbee program and we are not planning one. Lily brought them out because the afternoon needed a change of gear, and because a child learning to lead a moving target with a flat throw is learning the same thing a volleyball player learns — where the object is going to be, rather than where it is.

This is deliberate. There is a way of coaching children that consists of drill, drill, drill, and it does produce technique. It also produces a lot of eleven-year-olds who quit. We would rather teach the skill and keep the afternoon fun, and if that means the session breaks for twenty minutes of throwing and catching on the grass, it breaks.

Lily brings something like this to most clinics — a game, a relay, something unannounced. The children think it is the fun bit. It is also the coordination bit, and the paying-attention bit, and the taking-turns bit.

You can see it in the photographs. Nobody in them is standing in a line waiting.