Thursday, July 1, 2010

Fellowship of Christian Athletes hurdle clinic...taught by me!

So I have been working with my friend Brad Stanfield for some time now down in Orange County where he manages several high school chapters of Fellowship of Christian Athletes. I have been traveling down to Orange County for about two years now every so often to give motivational speeches to the high school chapters.

I have enjoyed it immensely and have gotten the chance to connect with a lot of kids over the years and talk about their relationship with God. Brad cracks me up because I never know quite what to expect when I come into a volunteer situation with him:) He has the biggest, most generous heart and gives so much to those kids every day of his life, but never seems too good with communicating details.

So he calls me up yesterday and tells me about this really great FCA summer camp that they have going on right now over at UCLA. There are head clinicians for nearly every sport and they have almost 700 athletes total participating in the week-long program!!!  He says, "yeah if you want to come and hang out, maybe help out the coaches a bit or whatever just let me know!" So of course, I love working with the kids, I love coaching so I say yes. Little did I know that I would get a grand introduction when I arrived as a "hurdle specialist" that would be working a clinic for the kids that day haha! They didn't even know that I had coaching experience they just knew that I hurdled in college.

So thank goodness for my coaching experience from this past year, it really came in handy and saved me!! Imagine if I had just come over to "hang out and help a bit" with no coaching experience, holy moly I would have been way out of my league. But I snapped into gear and pulled together a little training program based on some of my past workouts from this last track season with my kids at Burbank High.

It turned out to be a great day and everyone had a fun time. I had everything from the guy who has never set blocks in his life or even looked at a hurdle, to a girl who is heading off to college at the end of the summer on a hurdling scholarship. With that diverse of a group it was interesting to say the least but at the end of the day all the kids said that they learned a lot and had fun so it was a really rewarding experience. The girl who is heading off to college even said that she got some great new drills out of the clinic and my feedback was very helpful. Her high school coach was actually there and said to me, "wow,  her form looks so much better after working with you!"....woo hooo!

You stress me out Brad but you never cease to present me with opportunities to fulfill my spirit :)

1 comment:

  1. Hilarious! Are Brad and Bryce cut out of the same cloth? I wonder...

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