Girls Day Out!

August 24th, 2008 | Articles

I had the pleasure of instructing and helping to organize one of the most upbeat and energetic all girls’ wakeboard clinics I have ever been to. Started by Julia Staffen and Lauren Pollard in the summer of 2005, the event has grown and has become better and better every year. I have been coaching at this event since the very first year and I can honestly say it is always one of my favorite and most memorable weekends of the summer. This year was off to a rocky start, after some sponsors backed out on us last minute and it was questionable if we would be able to organize a new group of sponsors in time. All the girls from previous events were so disappointed, so with a little hard work, a lot of emails and a lot phone calls, Girls Day Out was back on for another year.

I love coaching this clinic, it is so fun and rewarding. All the girls are always super stoked and very appreciative. I think it is really important for girls to see other girls who shred hard, go big and push themselves. I have been coaching wakeboarding every summer, all summer for seven years now and I have definitely found differences between coaching boys and girls. In general I find that girls are more hesitant but better listeners. They want to understand what they are getting themselves into and be able to wrap their head around it. Whether that means practicing things again and again on land with them, doing flips off the boat and into the water or explaining things different ways and from different perspectives. Having coached for so long and learning new tricks all the time for different ways to teach people, it is so great when a girl is like “wow no one has explained it to me like that before” or seeing it finally click in their brain and then their movements all come together. We had a girl this year with a popped ear drum, but she didn’t want to miss it, so decked herself out in ear plugs and a pink bathing cap and ended up landing her first ever 360 and winning the advanced category of the competition.

I saw more face plants and hard falls that weekend than I think I saw all summer. It is painful just watching them but awesome to see how tough these girls are and that they just keep at it and keep pushing themselves. Especially with girls, I think it is important as a coach to make sure that a hard fall doesn’t make them shy away from the trick or turn them off wakeboarding. Whether they have to slowly work back up to it or go right back out and conquer it, as a coach you have to be positive, encouraging and push them to succeed. I know that having other people amped and excited when I was learning got me pumped and pushed me so I always try to create that when I am coaching. So if a girl just threw something gnarley, landed and new trick or just went huge, I am going to make sure they know they just did something right. I just hope that all the girls leave with a sense of accomplishment, a positive attitude, a couple new tricks in their bag and totally stoked on wakeboarding. We usually get a lot of the same girls coming back year after year; so we must be doing something right here at Girls Day Out.

Next year, we are hoping to expand by running a couple weekends around Muskoka and the surrounding area. Last year was the first year that Girls Day Out held a snowboarding event for two weekends at Mount St Louis, with weekend clinics and a competition. Definitely keep your eyes out for Girls Day Out in the next couple of years, it seems like we are just getting bigger and better!

Author: kAyLe

Kayle McMillen is the 2009 National Wakeboard Champion and one of our contributing writers. She has a degree in kinesiology and is one of our TID Clinics Coaches!