"Look, look, Zenaia is gonna do a death drop". I was standing in the playground at my first Youth Run NOLA practice as coach, and unexpectedly I was watching an elementary schooler attempt a dangerous looking dance move. To her credit, Zenaia pulled off the ominously named death drop flawlessly, but it certainly wasn't what I expected to witness when I first signed up.
Allow me to back up a second. This wasn't a dance practice; it was definitely a running practice, but the funny thing about kids is that when you get a group of them in a playground after a day of school, they sometimes don't rush to follow instructions and instead do whatever they want to do instead. That being said, they had earned a little bit of liberty after completing four laps of the block, a whole mile covered in a pretty decent time for their age group.
Another reason the death drop wasn't such a bad thing is that the kids were still having fun. It's a mental adjustment I've had to make, since the last time I was a part of a running practice, my coach metronomically calling out pace times as we raced around a track. Youth Run NOLA isn't necessarily about grooming kids for the junior Olympics, it's more about introducing them to the sport and encouraging them to push themselves while adhering to a few core values, like teamwork. So, if they're working hard (they were) and being good teammates (they were), it's important that they have fun too. We ended the practice with a game of red light green light. I don't know who won, and it really isn't important; the kids tried hard and were great, and I'm committed to helping them run and push themselves as much as I can.

November service hours: 10
Semester cumulative hours: 27

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