by Margaret Sieck

I could feel the anxiety rising in me. A mother, seated in the bleachers over my right shoulder, yelled, "How many outs are there?"

I was coaching third base for my daughter's softball team. Of course I would know how many outs there were. Otherwise, how would I know whether the runner on second should take off on a fly ball or not? (Take off if there are two outs, tag up if there's fewer than two you knew that, right?)

But there was a problem. I am scoreboard- dependent. This is not something I knew about myself when I volunteered to help coach my daughter's team in a girls' softball league for third- , fourth- , and fifth-graders in our town. I knew the league wouldn't have Diamond Vision; I just hadn't realized I would be lost without it. That was one of many things I learned about myself during that first season.

So there I was, with an inexperienced third-grader on second base, waiting for me to tell her whether she should run or hold up. Another parent answered the bleacher mom's question: "Two outs." I was saved.

I live close to the softball field and had been hearing the yells and shouts for years. I volunteered to coach because it sounded exciting, not because I thought it would be some sort of voyage of self-discovery. I'm closer to old age than New Age. But I have to admit that I learned a lot about myself.

For one thing, I discovered that I am not very aggressive. I had a hard time sending kids home from third. After my fellow coaches encouraged me to take a risk, I did and the player was tagged out at home. I was crushed. But I eventually learned that aggression can pay off and, as a result, we started to score more runs.

To be honest, i had always pictured my daughter playing Little League. I was a member of the last generation of girls who had not been allowed to play. When the Little League changed its rule, in 1974, to allow girls to play, I thought, If I have a daughter, she'll play Little League.

I do have a daughter, and she likes sports. She likes playing sports with boys at school, but in her mind, there was no question: She was going to play girls' softball. She didn't want the pressure of being one of the 15 or so girls playing with the 150 boys in our town's junior division Little League.

My daughter wanted to play with girls. I wanted to coach with women. There were eight teams in my daughter's division, and every team had three or four coaches. Only eight of the 30 coaches were women.

I banded together with two women our daughters had played basketball together in the winter and we were the only team whose coaches were all women. We were all novices, too. Our head coach was terrific, confident, encouraging, direct, knowledgeable. She was a great leader for the girls . . . and for her assistant coaches.

I'm not sure the male coaches would agree. When the umpire didn't show up for one game, it was decided that a coach from each team would call respective halves of the game. The other team's coach umpired first. We didn't agree with all his calls but thought, Hey, he's doing the best he can, and besides, you don't argue with the ump, right?

Then it was our head coach's turn to umpire. At one point, she made a call on a very close play. She stayed on top of the action, called it as she saw it, and, as it turned out, our team scored a run. The winning run.

Apparently, the men had had more exposure to the Billy Martin school of managing than we'd had. Or maybe their mothers had never told them not to argue with the umpire. In any event, a lot of arguing ensued. Our coach/umpire stood her ground, but it wasn't pretty.

We're hoping that the hard feelings will be gone by this season.

There certainly was a lot to learn and to teach. Most of the third-graders and even some of the older kids had never played softball. We started the season with two practices and four practice games. Then the real games began. Believe me, if someone has never fielded a ball with a glove, two practices ain't enough.

There were some frustrations that no coach could ever have anticipated. The Tamagotchi phenomenon, for example. My first season as a coach happened to coincide with the start of the virtual pet fad. How could we, as coaches, cope with the behavior of our players every time a sharp beeping noise emanated from one of the benches? Players who had been focused on the game would crane their necks, trying to see if it was their virtual pet. Did it need feeding? Was it sick? This was a whole level of distraction with which I had no previous experience. As our team improved, the virtual pets were easier to ignore.

The rewards of coaching, for me, came from many directions from seeing out-to-lunch, klutzy kids learn to charge the ball to seeing players become confident enough to step in to pitch at the last minute and find their groove.

The most satisfying experience of all was witnessing the development of a fifth-grade girl who was smaller and younger than all the other fifth-graders. Emily V. had attended school in England for three years and was accelerated a grade when she returned to the United States. After our first practices, Emily's mother told me that the girl had said of her own softball skills, "I stink."

Emily didn't stink, of course. She was tentative and hadn't even been around enough softball or baseball to mimic the moves. By the end of the season, however, Emily was a lightning-quick shortstop with a great glove and an accurate arm, and she could hit! It was wonderful to see her skills sharpen and her confidence blossom. She was the coaches' unanimous pick for most-improved player.

Eventually, I got the hang of remembering how many outs there were. I learned to be aggressive enough to wave the runners on around third. We all tuned out the virtual pets and focused on the game. After losing a few games early in the season, we didn't lose again. We were good.

My daughter and I have signed up for another season. Some of the shouts coming from the field will be ours.

The rookie coach faced a moment of truth: "I'm scoreboard-dependent."

from Sports Parents magazine, May 1998