Highlights Competition Without Steven

This weekends competition took an unexpected turn. On Thursday, the head coach of highlights Steven Medley told us he had a family emergency and would not be attending the competition this weekend. At first I was super nervous because I was also going to be managing the show team that I coach that day and did not know whether or not our performance times overlapped. In addition, the other girl who is one of the main assistants was also competing and was not sure how much she could be with the team. Thankfully all of our schedules allowed us to be with Highlights from their arrival time through competing without distractions. The day its was significantly calmer than any of us anticipated. Not having Steven there meant we had to help parents with questions as well as organizing the athletes together through a huge convention center. Neither of us had really taken an assertive role with making sure the kids were exactly where they needed to be and listening because they typically took instructions from Steven better. However, I was able to find a way to make them listen to me and keep everyone focused. We got through warmups fairly smoothly and made sure the kids were confident before going on stage. It wasn't until right before performing the kids starting getting really upset by not having Steven around. Especially for children with special needs it is hard to break their routine and having Steven around was part of that. I had to find another way to ease their minds and assure them that he was rooting for them and would watch the video of them as soon as he could. Learning outcome 2 was definitely applied here because this experience challenged my patience and leadership skills but I learned a lot of new ways to be assertive and manage a lot of responsibilities at once.