On The Pitch

Toward the end of each soccer season, we get a lot of site hits from people searching for ‘coaches gifts’ or ‘coaching gifts’. It may not seem like a big deal, but I know many team managers and parents who really stress out over what to get a coach at the end of a season. It can be especially tricky when they have coached for a while. You want to try and come up with something unique and special, but just like figuring out what to get people for Christmas or birthdays – gift selection is tough!

So I figured I’d share another ‘Lunachick gift’ story.

We recently had our end of season dinner at a local Mexican restaurant that seems to tolerate the chaos that the Lunachicks bring with them wherever they go. Things got off to a humorous start as our team manager gave our assistant coach this nifty report titled ‘An Unforgettable Season As Seen By The Assistant Coach’. It contained a printout of his ONE email he had sent to the team this past season. Then she handed me a binder with a 1″ thick stack of paper – recording all of my emails from the season for posterity. See – my emails tend to be a bit, well, long. Those of you who read OTP regularly probably know my writings can be, well, in depth. My team emails aren’t much different. So a lot of laughing ensued as I got my ‘An Unforgettable Season As Seen By The Head Coach’ binder. Yes, we used recycled paper!

Next, each coach got a nifty team t-shirt and a Sharpie marker so the girls could sign them. Instead of royal blue shirts like the girls all have, we got yellow shirts – all the better for signing. And that, we thought, was it. I had wanted to get a team shirt for myself anyway, and now I had one signed by each player. Cool. Now it was time for the player gifts.

Well, one of our parents excuses herself from the table and heads outside with her teenage son. They come back in with these HUGE boxes and a bunch of large gift bags. Inside each gift bag was a big fleece pillow with soccer balls and the team colors on it. These are the no-sew pillows you can make with two pieces of fleece that you tie off on the edges. Except she made fourteen of them. Apparently she would bring them inside a big bag to soccer matches and tie off the fringe while watching our matches. They really looked cool, and the girls loved them!

Well remember those huge boxes I mentioned? Each coach and our team manager was given one and inside was a HUGE fleece blanket, made out of the same soccer themed blue and yellow fleece. We each got our very own team blankets! How cool is that?

I’m not sure how this parent managed to tie all those knots, but she did, and her efforts are much appreciated. If you’ve never had a fleece blanket like this before, they are WARM and very comfortable. My kids fight over who gets to sit under it when they’re watching TV, until I explain that it’s big enough to cover all four of them and then some!

So there you have it – a couple more gift ideas for players and coaches. I really should start a page with a list of gift ideas.