Finding Peace and Joy at Camp
Tales from coaching!
Happy June 30th! I need to get something out today if I’m trying to stick to my posting goals for The Breakside, but I’ve been so busy lately that it’s been hard to find time to write. However, I’ve been busy coaching ultimate and wanted to write about it, so this should all work well.
I’ve coached two weeks of Triangle Ultimate summer camp so far. I was fortunate enough to work with the same group of coaches in both camps I’ve coached. One is the younger brother of a high school teammate, and the other is currently at the high school we both went to. I do love CHUF and a CHUF reunion. One camp was primarily elementary-aged kids as an offering at a local day camp. The other was middle and high-school-aged kids with more experience in the sport. The second situation was my preferred one, but I enjoyed both and positively impacted both camps.
In week one, I was thrown back in time seven years to my first summer as a JCC day camp counselor. During my first week as a counselor then, I was paired with another first-time counselor and a CIT (counselor in training). We were in charge of a group of rising kindergarteners and first-graders. They were absolute menaces. I could not for the life of me handle their energy. They fought each other, they hated doing activities, and I had to call for support from higher-level staff so often that week that I got teased about it for the rest of the summer.
In my first week coaching this summer, I had 40 kids, two coaches helping me, two day camp counselors supporting me, and two CITs. And despite that, it was still super difficult. Across those 40 kids, we had age ranges of six to 13. It was all we could do to keep the kids entertained, having fun, and not fighting each other, let alone learning ultimate.
It’s not often you get a situation that feels like a direct opporunity to show growth from a previous point in your lifetime, but this moment felt like that to me. That week could have gone very differently; I could have gotten tied up in making sure that we were doing only ultimate focused things, gotten combative with kids sitting out activities, and called for support after getting overwhelmed. However, after my experiences as a counselor and as a player, I was able to focus on meeting the kids where they were. That meant simplifying drills, more assertively delegating tasks to the people I was working with, and trying to engage with the kids on their terms instead of my own. And although it didn’t really scratch my itch for coaching, I am still looking forward to my second week at that camp later this summer.
Week two featured an age range that was more my speed but still came with its own challenges. One kid was battling a lot of anxiety around playing and doing drills in front of others and spent most of the camp with us, the coaches. We still had a wide range of skill, and several groups of kids knew each other going into the camp, so they tended to be cliquey. Once again, I challenged myself to meet them where they were at, but since they were predominantly older than the week prior, I felt more comfortable challenging them to leave their comfort zones too. We had a great week. We worked with every camper on their technical abilities, introduced some new strategic elements to them, and facilitated them building new connections. It was a true joy.
I really believe I’ve taken a positive step towards healing part of my relationship with the sport. Much of my time playing ultimate has been defined by bad experiences with my own coaches, mixed with a healthy dose of unfortunate, uncontrollable circumstances. So much so that I have not played ultimate once since leaving Davenport back in November. No pickup, no club tryouts, definitely no college, absolutely nothing. I hadn’t really picked up a disc since then before coaching, either. I’d been content to volunteer and spectate and leave my involvement in ultimate at that.
However, despite watching the team I left play at D3 nationals five weeks ago, the first time I really felt like I missed playing the sport and being part of a team was while coaching at camp. It happened when my kids were doing the four lines drill. I was flooded with memories of warming up before countless tournaments and games with a team I felt a real connection to, and the desire to have that again briefly overwhelmed me. Just hearing the kids enjoy their time together, seeing them improve over the course of the week we had together, and making memories and experiencing joy while learning the sport all took me back to my positive memories of learning and playing ultimate.
Not to mention that being given the opportunity and privilege to teach and coach these kids is a way for me to break the cycles of bad coaching and instruction I’ve been on the wrong end of. Every opportunity I had to compliment my groups on the process they were embarking on, their perseverance, their growth from the previous day, or remind them that learning a sport is hard and takes time, I took it. Everything I wished someone had said to encourage and support me while I struggled with a new concept or skill I got to say to these kids. That alone was incredibly healing.
As one does, while the kids were playing or running drills, my fellow coaches and I would sometimes swap ultimate stories. I earned one of my favorite lines people sometimes say to me after I’ve shared maybe a little too much.
“How are you still involved in the [ultimate] community?”
Ironically, I think these last two weeks are the answer. My love for this sport has never waned. I run a substack dedicated to it, and no offense to the rest of y’all, but there are not too many out there. In all seriousness, what coaching has done for me, even in just the two weeks I’ve had in charge of camps, has reminded me of the good times still waiting for me in this sport and community. It’s reminded me of how much time I still have to find my place as a player, coach, and person. It’s helped me put my failures, missteps, and disappointments of the last year—of the last decade even—into a broader context. It’s helped me make peace with everything that was out of my control, and it’s helped me contextualize what was in my control as learning opportunities. I feel a rejuvenated sense of belief in myself to find belonging in the sport, and I feel a sense of comfort, possibly for the first time, in not knowing what that space will be just yet.
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This newsletter aims to tackle the gap in present coverage of ultimate as a sport. Commentary, analysis, and community are some of the guiding ideals behind the Breakside.
About the Author
My name is Noam Gumerman (he/him). I am from Chapel Hill, NC, and studied Journalism and American Studies at Brandeis University. I am a journalist by trade and have been playing ultimate for over half my life. I love nothing more than combining those two interests. Contact me for discussions, feedback, story suggestions, and more on Twitter (@noamgum) or email (noamgumerman@gmail.com).