Coaches Adjustment Period

[Starfly]

Any ideas/suggestions on how to help girls adjust to a new coach? I coaches 6s last year and this year I am coaching both 6 and 7 along with another coach. The other coach coaches 5s last year and all of her gymnasts have moved to either 6 or 7. (Now that I think about it, we're kind of like the Brady Bunch in a way) The girls I coached last year really are struggling with this new coach. (For that matter, I am struggling to find balance with the new coach- we have completely different coaching styles. I love drills and a variety of drills- she loves doing the skill over and over again). Normally, I would just let the adjustment slowly occur. This time, however, I see a couple of challenges. 1) My girls are withdrawing. They are pulling back, losing confidence. We worked really hard on this confidence factor all last year - I don't want to see it gone again. 2) Some of these girls had the other coach in the past- with some not so great experiences. Nothing abusive- the other coach just tends to have her favorites and not spend time figuring out how to get the best out of each individual gymnast - which means some girls just keep doing skills (and mistakes) over and over with some verbal corrections that they don't always understand how to translate into physical movement. (And, my annoyance- she complains that they are too big and she doesn't know how she could spot them- she has been told that this is why we do drills, but she is not drinking that Kool aid yet) 3) The girls from her level 5 group (that are now 6s and 7s) are extremely immature. They sometimes have meltdowns- I've redirected when they were sitting in the chalkbucket and running around trying to pinch other girls' cheeks- girls who were obviously not comfortable with that behavior (I put the kabosh on that right away). The other coach laughs or tries to tell me how funny they are when they do those things.
Do I just pull these girls into my group on beam/bars days? They separate into event groups on those days and we are all on floor and vault together, so they would still see the other coach then. Any other suggestions. I've been with these girls for 3 years now and they have come up to me several times to tell me they don't like this situation...I just keep reminding them (and myself) there is a period of adjustment we need to go through...

 

[coachmolly]

Kids need to learn to work with different types of people and personalities, both peers and authority figures, so in that sense it's a good growth experience. However, coaches also need to learn how to work with different types of kids which sounds like perhaps it's a problem here with the coach in question working with those whose styles align with her own and letting the others just sort of hang in there. So that makes it tricky.
Is one of you considered a senior coach? Or are you equal partners? If you have any sort of leadership role, I would suggest to start helping her structure her practices and introducing her to some drills to incorporate. Or even just giving a list of drills/stations to be completed on each event. You could even combine the group on events (maybe do 1 combined event each day) for a few weeks to give her some ideas on what to do. It might also give you an idea of how she works with the girls.
If you are essentially equals, maybe set up a meeting to discuss strengths and challenges within the group and brainstorm some ideas for moving forward. You can give a run down on the girls you have worked with previously and recommend what works well for them and maybe she can offer some insight into her girls.
It's hard when you've had a group for a long time and really created a trusting relationship to let someone else jump in, especially if that person is so radically different. Hopefully you will all figure things out and make it work. If not, I would suggest talking to the HC. It sounds like this other coach might have some maturity issues that need to be ironed out, and that might take an authority figure.

 

[Starfly]

We are both equal coaches (though I did just have to bring in the director to talk to her and remind her of that). I do like the idea of sitting down and talking about all the girls' strengths and challenges--- that might be a good I've breaker into how we want to structure the practice. We've talked about practice structure and created lesson plans, but those weren't followed. Maybe putting the focus on the individual girls will help put the focus back where it should be. Thanks for that suggestion!