My First Time as a CIT
Winnie Einhorn
When you are trying to talk a seven-year-old kid into getting out from behind a big stack of mats so he can continue stretching, it’s okay to ask yourself, “Where did it all go wrong?” In this case, it was completely inevitable.
After weeks of looking forward to it, I was finally starting my first day as a CIT at my gym, Bayshore Elite. There was some uncertainty about what exactly CIT stood for. At many summer camps, CIT stood for “Counselor in Training”. At Bayshore, though, people would wear shirts that said “CIT” year-round. At a gymnastics facility, CIT stood for “Coach in Training.” As a Coach in Training at a summer camp, it was easy to get confused. To this day, I am not sure which it was supposed to stand for.
My brother was also attending the camp, but he was going as a student. As we drove to the gym, I felt I had a heightened sense of maturity about me. This would be my first time helping to teach at a summer camp, instead of attending it, and I was determined to do a good job. When we arrived, my brother and I separated to sign in. I met with one of the coaches. They gave me a nametag to fill out, and told me the name of the coach I would be working with; her name was Lucy.
When we got inside the gym, I was amazed to see how many kids there were. There were several rows of students lined up on the floor, chatting with each other or playing games. The fast, little conversations and hyper kids gave the room a feeling of happy, childlike chaos. I milled around the cluster of coaches towards the front of the gym, trying to find the correct name tag. Eventually, I spotted her. She was talking to another coach who I had never spoken to, but I had seen her around the gym. I didn’t recognize Lucy from anywhere. I was in the gym a lot, so I knew she didn’t normally work there.
“What class are we going to be working with?” I asked her after I introduced myself.
“The red group,” she responded. I looked around at the rows of kids, noticing a rubber dot in front of each line. Finally, my eyes landed on a glossy, red rubber dot.
“No,” I whispered to myself, barely audible. Behind the red rubber dot was the shortest line of kids, only five or six of them. I was not prepared for this. How could any brand-new CIT be prepared for this? I was teaching the only group of boys.
My first instinct was to ask to switch groups. I was about to approach the coach who signed me in before I realized that they were still my coaches, too. I didn’t want to seem like a complainer or get in trouble for not being happy with my grouping. I decided to go along with it. Maybe the boys wouldn’t be as bad as I thought.
One of them, who seemed around seven or eight years old, started rolling and jumping around on the bouncy floor. One of the coaches called him out and made him sit back down. My face soured as I thought about how many more times that would happen once they actually started moving. I might have made a mistake. I glanced back at Lucy, who seemed unfazed. At least it seemed like I was working with someone with a lot of experience.
After the head of the camp introduced herself and the other coaches, the groups split up. As the kids spread out to the different parts of the gym, it was easier to see just how many students there were. Every corner of the building was filled with people, all spaced apart doing different things to warm up. I followed my group to a more secluded part of the gym, out of the way from the other groups. The boys started running around to get warm, and Lucy was talking to another coach about rotations. Every group needed to be able to use the equipment, so they had to plan the rotations carefully.
I watched the semi-wild children circle around the narrow strip of bouncy floor, and the thundering clatter of the metal springs beneath their feet clouded my thoughts. We were on the deck, the elevated part of the gym. It consisted of a vault table, a strip of bouncy floor, a trampoline, and several foam pits. From where I was standing, I could see the other groups below me, running in straight, organized lines around the floor. I sighed as I looked back at my group, with boys jumping and chasing each other in circles. I sighed. What did I do to deserve this?
After their warm-up, Lucy and I helped them through a stretching routine. “Straighten your legs,” I told one kid who was finding shortcuts to touching his toes. I gave him an approving smile as his legs straightened and his fingers drifted away from his feet. Helping them stretch was much less stressful than leading their warm-up. I wished it was longer because before I knew it, we were off to our first rotation.
Our first destination was parallel bars. A difficult thing about coaching the boys was that I didn’t know how to do some of their events; men have parallel bars, and women have uneven bars. I had never tried parallel bars before, and I had no idea how to coach kids on them. Lucy moved through the space, stopping every few feet at a piece of equipment to demonstrate a skill for them to try. The kids broke up and started moving through the stations. I went to the lower set of parallel bars, boosting myself up on a tall block so I could coach at a better angle. Some of the kids put chalk on their hands, which they clearly didn’t know how to use. I watched great plumes of white powder roll around the air and into their faces as they clapped their chalky hands together. “Hey,” I called out to them. “You can’t clap with chalk on your hands.” I mimed a rubbing motion with my hands. “Do this instead.”
I watched the kids hop up on the bars, supporting themselves with their shoulders. Some of them shrugged down so much I couldn’t see their necks. Some of them were afraid to go on the bars, and flailed their unsupported feet underneath them as they tried to go through the movements. The moves they were doing were simple enough for me to give them basic corrections. Every once in a while, a kid would get distracted, or stop following directions, but overall the first rotation went smoothly. Maybe this wasn’t going to be as bad as I thought.
“Everyone, get ready to switch!” said the main coach. I couldn’t help but imagine myself asking to switch groups and discretely escaping the boys’ group forever. I can’t get in trouble with my coaches, I had to remind myself.
We took the group to rings, which was another event that I had never done before. Unlike the parallel bars, where I didn’t know any of the skills but did understand the basic shapes and positions, I was totally clueless with the rings. The entire event was two little rings, less than a foot in diameter, hanging from a giant metal tower. I glanced at Lucy, who seemed just as stuck as I was. To our relief, one of the more experienced coaches was coming our way. She helped walk the boys through different exercises, and showed us how to do some of the ring drills.
The unrest was becoming clear as the boys went through the stations. Our next station was rings, and the kids didn’t seem to have a lot of patience with them. A few kids started to give up after a while. Even my brother, who was one of the older kids in the group, was getting frustrated. They couldn’t keep the rings in one place, and they were falling constantly. The kids at my station would complain and tell me it was impossible. I watched Lucy try to spot them at the real set of rings, but she was struggling to figure out how to do it correctly. She was standing on a block so she could reach the kids, but she was constantly adjusting her position. Neither of us knew what we were doing, and it was just making the kids more nervous. Some of them squirmed and tried to get down, wiggling and kicking while dangling about four feet off the ground. I was surprised that Lucy was able to keep them from falling. We were all relieved when the main coach called lunchtime.
Refreshed after the break, the kids were better behaved. The second part of the day was structured differently. All the groups would play games together, led by a coach volunteer. Then each coach would lead a different activity, and the CITs could help out when needed. The kids would move to each station and stay for about twenty minutes each.
I sat on the edge of a balance beam, my legs swinging beneath me as I watched the group play. There were so many kids on the floor, I could feel their steps rumpling through the beam as they got closer. I was so glad that I didn’t have to work with the boys anymore today. They were only getting wilder. I followed one of them with my eyes as he ran after another, snaking around the crowd of kids and bumping into several of them. He tackled the other boy, and they both started yelling. I was beginning to get used to the coaches calling them out and asking them to settle down.
“Hey Winnie,” one of the coaches said to me as I was watching the kids switch between terrible, loud dancing and freezing in place. It was really quite fun to watch.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“I know the boys’ group is a handful. We’re probably going to need more than one person supervising at each of their activities.”
I was supposed to stay at one activity station for the rest of the day. I was going to get to see other groups, not be the boys chaperone. Oh no, I thought. No, no, no… This couldn’t be happening. “Would you mind tagging along with them?”
While my mind screamed no, I knew I didn’t have a real choice. While I was a CIT today, these people were still my coaches too. “Sure,” I said. I sighed as I watched one of the boys jump off a huge stack of mats and onto the bouncy floor. I had no idea how he even got up there.
As I led the boys to the first station, I knew this would be bad. They were all still bouncy and wild from playing games, and our first rotation was yoga. The coach got them all in a circle, each of them sitting on little decorated rugs. We called them “monkey mats” because they all had little cartoon monkeys on them. Some of them ran for their favorite mats, others wandered a little bit before settling down. I stood at the edge of the circle, following the coach’s instructions as an example.
The squirminess in the kids was harder to notice at first. Some of them would shift around where they were sitting. Some kids would do the wrong stretch. I figured they were simply still a little excited from the games. I followed along with the stretches, for a little while, but soon I had to get up to help some kids stay focused. Only a few of them were actually following directions at this point. I watched one boy in particular, the littlest in the group, as he exaggerated all of the movements until he got bored, at which point he started walking around the circle.
“Hey,” I said to him. “Can you go back to your mat?” I tried my best to sound friendly.
The kid looked at me for a second, paused, then went back to whatever bored nonsense he was doing earlier. “Why don’t you go get some water? You can come back and join the group after.” He looked back at me, then started running towards the water fountain. Thank goodness, I thought to myself. I watched him carefully as he took a drink, looked around, and started running back to the group. What I was not expecting was for him to start climbing on the equipment. “Hey!” I shouted.
Some of the other boys were noticing at this point. The coach tried to keep them in order, but now a few other boys were running off to play on the equipment. Some of them jumped into the foam pit, some climbed onto the beams, some simply flopped down onto the mats. They were all giggling or yelling at each other, with a complete disregard to the coach who was desperately trying to coax them back to their circle. I tried to help as best I could but was mostly powerless against the strong will of the 6 year-old boys. I saw one kid hiding behind a stack of mats that used to be set neatly against a wall, but was now fashioned as something close to a miniature fortress. “Get out of there,” I told him as he peeked his head out of his hiding place. Naturally, my directions made no impact on him. The coach looked at me, and I could tell we were thinking the same thing: we couldn’t stop them.
Not at all soon enough, the day came to an end, and the parents started flooding into the pick-up area. I was exhausted. There was no way I could keep this up for the rest of the week. After much consideration, I decided I had to speak up for myself. I had done what the coaches asked me to do the entire time, but I still couldn’t control the kids. I simply couldn’t handle a group like that. The next day, as I was signing in, I asked if I could switch groups.
“Of course,” said the coach who was signing me in. “After yesterday, I don’t blame you.”
I was given the youngest group of girls, who I had a much better time coaching. I got to help spot them, and was able to give them more helpful corrections. Another more experienced coach was assigned to the boys’ group, so they were better behaved anyway.
I knew from that day forward that I would always remember my first time as a CIT, but more importantly, I would always remember that little boys are, to put it simply, unstoppable forces of pure chaos.
