Part II of the Youth Sports Apocalypse

Division I and professional sports on television have a tremendous influence on youth sports and high school athletes. They also have a remarkable effect on coaches coaching youth and high school sports. This influence can be seen in every game and many practices.

 Now to be fair and clear, this influence has been reflected in youth and high school sports since sports first appeared on television. Heck, you can even go before that when most of a fan’s exposure to pro and Division I sports was from actually going to watch a game in person.

But today’s influence has been ramped up and super sized to the extent to where I have seen performances that make me shake my head in disbelief and wonder if this phenomenon can be slowed down and put back in perspective.

First let me go through an example of two sports:  soccer and basketball. Now I could go through the others but you will see the picture clearly, I hope, from just these two examples.

Soccer:  I went to a varsity soccer game. The winning team was up by 4 goals with ten minutes remaining in the game. There was no way the losing team was going to catch up. So what happened when the winning coach starting to substitute his “bench” players? (I despise that terminology.) The losing coach saw the substitution, how could he miss it, it happened right next to him, and decided NOT to substitute. With THREE minutes left in the game he had five of his subs start to warm up by doing what I believe to be the most ridiculous “preparation” to enter a game in all of youth and high school sports. With one minute left he subbed them in. I asked the coach after the game about this and he said, “They don’t play hard in practice so why should I worry about their playing time in a game.” So, I said, “They won’t practice hard if they don’t think they can get into a game; and I don’t mean a couple of minutes at the end of the game! He said,”They only sub three guys in a game in the pros!”

This coach is limiting competition. This is just another form of entitlement. I went to four of his games and for the 320 minutes of soccer I watched, I saw them complete four passes in a row ONCE! He did not sub more than three kids in a half, and only subbed more than six once. Does he really think that the other guys sitting on the bench needlessly could not do this poorly?  Oh, by the way they scored 6 goals in those four games.

You want to know why  kids are quitting youth and high school sports. Here it is. It is no fun when you don’t get to play. NO ONE gets better sitting on the bench.

If I could I would have “on the fly” substitutions in youth and high school soccer, just like hockey. I would have a 5x10 foot box in front of the bench and have kids hand off a “pinney” to each other as they came in and out of the game.

Basketball: I followed a varsity high school basketball team for four games. I really only needed one game to figure things out, but I wanted to be sure, and I like watching sports. The coach was constantly calling out plays, just like in DI and the pros. (To be clear I have seen this done as low as sixth graders). He would yell Georgetown, Kentucky, and other major Division I colleges as a code for them to run a play. So I started charting these plays to see how often they were successful. I also wondered why each play was called. After all, in DI and the pros there is a reason for who plays with whom and what play is called.

 I started to watch the players on the bench. By the second half they were totally disinterested. Why should they care, they were not going to get to play. The coach told me they were “role” players and they were satisfied with their roles to “help the starters get better.” So I talked to the players and asked them. They were not happy.

As I asked one player, “What do you think of having to know math to participate at the varsity level of high school basketball?” He smiled and nodded. You see he knew exactly what I was talking about. These kids that sit on the bench know that he had subtracted or added the score of the game by either how much they were ahead or behind. Then he had to divide that by the coaches’ ego, the amount of subs sitting next to him, and the time left on the clock to figure out what were his chances of getting into the game.

The solution is simple. It’s just not easy to implement. It takes a true commitment by adults to give youth and high school sports back to the kids.

There is absolutely NO correlation between DI, pro sports, and high school and youth sports for 99% of the children, organizations, schools.

 Make the healthy choice. Equal play pre puberty and play by performance post puberty, Junior Varsity and up.

Sweden which sends more professional athletes per capita than any country in the world does not make cuts until the children are 17

Play a lot of kids, and keep playing a lot of kids. Inter team competition is the best way to coach. Every one runs faster when they are being chased.

There is not that big of difference in the guy who you think is your best player and the last guy on the roster. The more you play one child and the less you play the other child, the less chance you have of your team building the competitive chemistry needed to be a really good team and the removal of entitlement as a coaching tool.