At any given East Lansing summer soccer camp, the footsteps of a budding first-grader pad over the grass of the soccer complex to their coach, laces dragging across the ground.
Now rooted in front of their teenage coach, the child looks up in awe at the older girl standing in front of them.
A beat passes.
“Can you tie my shoes please?”
Swiftly accepting the request, Audrey Vlahos (12) gets down on one knee and secures the shoes with an effortless knot.
With a quick ‘thank you,’ the child runs off to rejoin the group. A smile forms on Vlahos’s face.
For Vlahos, tying her shoes is an everyday task.
But for the child, it’s something new to be learned.
“I don’t really think about it that way, but they do,” Vlahos said.
Little interactions like these are crucial factors as to why high school athletes like Vlahos appreciate working with kids in sports.
Athletics are a key part of high school life for many teens. From wrestling to lacrosse to tennis, ELHS offers a variety of sports for students to participate in.
But many of these athletes didn’t start from nowhere. They came up through youth programs offered throughout the area.
Programs starting at ages as young as three are important for the continuation of the sports we have at ELHS. Without them, many athletes wouldn’t be where they are today.
As these teens have worked their way onto sports teams within high school, some find themselves becoming involved with the very programs they went through when they were a budding athlete.
This was the case for Audrey Vlahos (12), a soccer player with 13 years of experience and a member of the girl’s varsity lacrosse team.
When she first started playing soccer, Vlahos attended the summer soccer camp East Lansing holds for athletes of all ages. After beginning the summer before first grade and stopping at the end of middle school due to COVID-19, Vlahos had plenty of experience with the camp environment.
So when Vlahos was offered the opportunity to volunteer at the camp the summer after her sophomore year, she gladly accepted.
“It was such a good experience for me [as a kid],” Vlahos said. “It was fun to go back and be able to be in the shoes of the high schoolers and coach the energetic littles.”
As an assistant coach for the camp, Vlahos’s main role was to keep the group of first graders she was assigned entertained and engaged. Making sure each young athlete got a foot on the ball while also learning the fundamentals of the game was a crucial part of Vlahos’s job.
“It was really fun to see these kids get excited when they understood something or when they would do something right. They would just have the biggest smile ever,” Vlahos said.
Staying connected to the sport of soccer is important for Vlahos, so that’s why she finds herself at this camp year in and year out.
“I’m not going to be able to play forever,” Vlahos said. “I’d like to pick up coaching at some point because it’s very fun to give back to and stay involved in a sport I really like.”
For Anna Dean (11), who has been dancing from the age of 2, working with kids in both dance and academics is giving her the experience she needs to work with children somewhere in her future. Dean has been assistant coaching the kids tap-ballet class at Premier Dance Studio for the past two years alongside head coach Bella Guerrazzi.
Dean’s main role as an assistant is to make sure the kids are staying engaged to promote a love for dance.
“At their age, they’re doing dance just for fun,” Dean said. “I try to create a fun and safe environment for them. [I want them] to feel like they have someone that supports them.”
For Dean, coaching these kids is so important to her that even when she’s having a bad day, she finds herself at the studio again and again.
“It’s definitely one of the most rewarding things I do,” Dean said. “They’ll say things that are so pure for [being a] kid. They’re my favorite people.”
From the pride Dean sees on the kids’ faces when they receive their team jackets to smothering group hugs to watching her athletes dance on a competition stage for the first time, she has many moments she cherishes as a coach
“I definitely think [my coaching] leaves an impact on these kids,” Dean said. “Seeing them grow to love dance and choosing to go further to be on a competitive stage is really fun.”
As these teens offer coaching to a variety of young athletes around the area, they’ve seen that their efforts haven’t gone to waste.
Instead, they’ve seen a love develop for the sport from these kids each new session.
And this hasn’t seemed to slow.
“I’ve definitely seen some of these kids come back to the camp year in, year out,” Vlahos said. “That’s been nice to see that they clearly did like it enough to come back.”
If you’d like to help out child athletes throughout the area, talk to your coaches or teammates. They can help you find plenty of opportunities for you to give coaching a go.
It’s important to keep the sports we know and love alive, but it all starts with that first grade camp or club.
