Controling The Coaching Ego

I went to a Rugby game last night. One coach substituted all his players and got smoked. What struck me about this game is that Rugby was kind of easy to watch and enjoy since many people in the stands did not know the rules, kind of like volleyball. But that changed this year. Parents were yelling at the referee. One coach said openly that he could not believe how much the ref was getting paid for this game.

            After the game I heard one coach talking about how upset he was that the other team had run up the score. Now, this guy I like. He’s class. He plays a lot of kids and doesn’t yell much. A lot of positive reinforcement to his players makes it fun for them.

            What he said struck me. He was upset with the other coach running up the score against his second stringers. It was mentioned to him that that was part of life and he did the right thing. You can’t control what the other team or coach does. Yelling and complaining about the referee or what the other coach does just strengthens the message that it is outside forces that control you, not intrinsic ones. The coach needed to take a step back and realize that this was just another game in the season.

            By complaining openly about what the other coach did he actually starts to let the other coach influence his behavior, which in turn makes it ok for his players and coaches to act poorly.

            Here’s my story. A long time ago when I was coaching college hockey, we got our clocks cleaned in a 19-2 loss. After the first period the score was 7-0. Their best player already had 3 goals and 2 assists. The coach continued to play his best players.

            It got to be pretty bad and lopsided. I kept telling my guys to keep their cool and don’t retaliate. If a player did retaliate, I benched him, immediately.

            After the game was over I went to the line and shook hands. When one of our players complained about running up the score I told him we should have played better, and that we put ourselves into this position.

            They beat us, and by how much and how they did it, was not of our concern.

            They were coming to our rink next season, and I began to plan. I noticed that the top four scorers from his team that game had either graduated or where ineligible for our rematch. The whole week before we played them again I told my players we would be concentrating on taking the body in practice every day, multiple times a day, and in different drills. I explained that even though we practiced this, it was the mindset that we were trying to teach. It was a commitment to play the game at its most basic fundamental level as well as its highest, all at the same time.

            Before the game I gave a brief speech to the teams that was one minute long. At the end of the speech I told them, body, body, body. Don’t worry or even think about the score. We won 4-0. During the game, the coach was complaining constantly to the referees about our hitting. His team got 17 minor penalties, 2 misconducts, and one ejection. In the hand shake line after the game he told me that his team got hosed by the refs, that they were my refs, and that he had gotten “homered”.

            Again, I said nothing. Back in the lockeroom after the game, the only thing I said to my players is, “That’s how you do it.”

            Interesting note: the other coach and I had a mutual friend we were both very close to. This friend was another coach in the league. He called me and asked about our game. I asked why he hadn’t called me after the 19-2 shellacking. He did not have an answer.

            Payback was delivered so as not to alert anyone as to what I had done. It was better for this coach to wonder what had happened, and to blame the officials, instead of worrying about what we did. I let sleeping dogs lie.

THE FROZEN SHORTS TRAINING METHOD

The Frozen Shorts Training Method (FSTM) was in full swing last night. A Town’s Youth Soccer “Board” has hired Frozen Shorts to mentor one of their five and six year old combined boys and girls House soccer team. What a wonderful fun filled night it was! But let me explain how we implement this paradigm from the beginning.

             The first thing we do is make a presentation to the entire “Board” at one of their regularly scheduled meetings. This presentation of our paradigm took approximately one hour. The indoctrination explains to them the problems with the current structure of youth sports practices and games, and ways to implement the Frozen Shorts Training Method (When we present this to coaches it normally takes about three hours).

            We emphasize having fun as the top priority for the children. The idea is to take what the children enjoy doing as children, which is to have fun playing, to their enjoyment, so they can learn to love being active. This leads to their physical and mental wellness being nurtured.  Youth Sports are not for the adults to control, and in some cases live vicariously through their children, and vent their own life’s frustrations, all in the supposed name of the children’s best interest.

            This is the beginning of the children’s journey through youth sports and we want to ensure it starts with as much fun as possible (and last night it did). Various examples and comparisons are made to adults’ work places, and the children’s own learning curve in school and play to help them understand what it is that we are trying to teach the children. PLAY FOR FUN.

            Structure is kept at a minimum and games are introduced to keep the children’s interest. Simon Says, Tag, and One Potato, are just a few of the games the children can play to help develop skills and have fun.  The practice scrimmage is explained as to how we let the kids play for fun in small sided groups. The coaches merely keep putting the ball back in play and cheer positively when the children make good plays.

            In this particular case the “Board” had questions as to the structure of exactly how the kids would be taught certain skills. I explained to them that if you watched most high school and “Club” games you would see the results of all this structured training. The skill level was not very impressive and the children did not seem to be having much fun. We are going to change that.

            Back to the field of play and where I am most excited to be. I got there early without the Director present and went from field to field and watched the coaches’ practices. The age groups ranged from five and six year olds all the way up to eleven and twelve year olds.

             The standard drills were being modeled and “executed.” There was a lot of standing around by the children and a lot of “coaching” being done. I can tell you this: after watching this go on for about fifteen minutes I got bored. I was probably the oldest and biggest kid on the field last night and I wasn’t getting excited to participate on any of these teams. Where was the fun?

            At one point there were approximately seventy percent of the kids standing around and only about thirty percent of the kids actually going through drills and playing soccer. Isn’t it ironic that that is about the same percentage of children who quit playing youth sports by the age of thirteen?

             Let me explain here that I am not criticizing  these coaches and what they were doing in any way shape or form. This is all they know and have seen as they and their kids have participated in youth sports. This is the paradigm they have been “trained’ to implement.

             (Our paradigm involves very little use of “cones” for the children.) I have yet to see “cones” on any playing field during a game and it baffles me as to why they hold such prominence in practice. Cones should be used primarily for boundaries and goals, that’s it.

            I am BIG time in favor of using “cones” in one particular part of youth sports--when the children are done with practice and go for ice cream cones. I am all for it! But I digress.

            Shouldn’t practice model, as much as possible, game situations? You do not get better standing around watching a game take place, so why should you stand around in practice?

            When the team’s practices were in full swing, I was led over to the first team we were going to mentor by the director. Standard drills were in full bloom. One parent was on the field “helping” the coaches with the drills. They were using the whole length of a shortened field which was still too much for the kids to handle.  So what happens next?  The coaches and one of the siblings’ older sisters start dribbling the ball down the field while the kids on the team watched and ran after them. We have all been there at some time. We have chased someone with no possible hope of catching them, and the person we are chasing knows it! It is very frustrating. Kids don’t need to practice that, do they?

            Coincidentally two college players were in attendance for this practice, and one was related to the coach. They soon asked if they could switch things up and they moved the nets to the sides, removed the coaches and parents from the drill, and let the kids play for fun.

            To be honest, one of the players was quite familiar with our paradigm as he and my son were very close friends growing up and were present when his dad and I had many conversations about youth sports. His brother coached the school districts Junior Varsity program the year before and had great success implementing the Frozen Shorts Coaching paradigm.

            Now the director was watching all of this and he wanted to know when the structure was going to be introduced. He wanted to know when the kids were going to learn soccer skills. He also commented that the kids just couldn’t run around  all “helter skelter” without any rules. How would they learn? Just then, as if on cue, but without any prompting from the coaches, one little girl said to her teammates, “Pass the ball.”

            You see, we say how smart the kids are now a days but when we get them on the playing field, we treat them like they are our personal remote controlled robots with joy sticks. The kids were figuring it out how to play with each other on their own.  In my experience that is a much longer lasting way to have kids learn than it is to just keep telling them what to do. They were using their own cognitive skills to help themselves enjoy the scrimmage.

            At the end of one scrimmage, when it was time for a water break, one young child told the coach she wanted to keep playing! GREAT!  We moved on to Simon Says and had one of the college kids be Simon, but at the end of Simon Says we had Simon say, “Chase the coach!” We instruct the coach to run around, not too far from the kids and in a zig zag motion. We instruct the coach to let the children tackle the coach at the end. Why, you ask? The chase lets the children learn stops and starts. It teaches them, without knowing, to work on their balance, get in shape, and be aware of the other children around them. In the end, catching the coach and pulling the coach down to the ground involves upper body strength, all in the name of fun.

            In the end, there was more laughter, smiles, and good times at this practice than there were in all the other practices combined for the six teams practicing on the huge field last night. But did we pass the ultimate test? As pleased, and I should say thrilled, as I was with what we accomplished with the children in the one hour practice, I knew if the parents watching weren’t happy and they complained, I’d have to fight the uphill battle of giving our paradigm more time to take hold. But I didn’t. One parent commented that this was the first time that they had actually seen their children play and all the parents were pleased with the outcome.

             I spoke with the assistant coach, who had never played sports before, and was a little hesitant to become an assistant, and she was thrilled. I instructed her to go to our website and watch the “POP WARNER” video we had done. I explained to her the “Frozen Shorts” paradigm and why we named our company Frozen Shorts (after all the kids who sit on the bench needlessly).  She walked away talking to people about Frozen Shorts, not me personally, but the (FSTM) paradigm was the hot topic.  

             As I was heading back to the car, I happened to walk up to the director and his wife, and they asked me if I would be willing to speak with another coach, and they reiterated to me how the parents, the children, and they had such a great time tonight. YEAH!!

            I want to thank the director and his wife for having the faith to believe in our program. Without their backing and willingness to try something new and different, last night, and future nights, would not have happened, or at least would have been much more difficult to implement.

            What most people do not understand, and we really don’t need them to understand at this level, is I am only taking the children’s natural propensity for play and having fun and enhancing it with activities that allow the kids to be kids. We blend in and mix together the skills it takes to play a certain sport with fun to create an atmosphere where a child can learn to fall in love with a sport, and by that I mean any sport, but learning the fundamentals of mental and physical health  through exercise in a fun way.

             By doing the FSTM this way, we are going for the long term health and wellness of the children. Not for some short sighted idea of winning and losing as being the priority in youth sports, and then somehow justifying it by saying we are teaching children life skills.

             Like in life, cooperation amongst people and a sense of community is way more important than winning and losing. Who is to say we can’t have both? If we have Balanced Excellence as the goal of our children’s youth sport’s experience, can’t we teach them to have fun, get along together, and enjoy the journey without all the unneeded stress present in today’s youth sports paradigm?

AVOIDABLE INJURIES

This is a story about an injury to a pretty good lacrosse player. This young man is a multiple sport athlete and looks to be going to play lacrosse in college, and maybe getting some athletic financial aid for playing at the division I level. He now has had an injury that keeps him out of competition in both sports that he plays.

                 Let’s look at the extenuating circumstances during this journey that led to this injury, and many other injuries like it.  A similar event could be happening over and over again in many sports or activities at many levels in our children’s lives.

                With all the money spent on this boy’s athletic journey, how much more financial aid could he have gotten academically? How much will that shape his future after college? How much of the money his family spent on his athletic pursuit could be thought of as an investment in his future that needs a tangible reward? You see, putting that much more emphasis on athletics versus academics does have a long term consequence. The lack of balance can and most times can be quite costly, both physically and mentally in the future. You see, being built up by coaches, friends, and family does have a long lasting effect on the aspiring D I athlete when it doesn’t work out, and it doesn’t most of the time. Only 1% of all students who attend a four year college play DI athletics, and even less play for free. What happens when the athlete has to cope with reality after the playing days are over?

                When the athlete does not get the financial reward he or she thinks they have earned, rightfully or not, this disconnect does have long term ramifications. In some cases, athletes leave college without getting their degree. They come home, and all the attention and adulation is gone. They sometimes don’t even go to college.

                When they go back to their home town they are just another athlete who didn’t make it. They feel resentment. “Hey, I was told I was great. I got treated like a king when I was playing at the elite level.” But all those people are gone. Those people are only a stark reminder of what was just an illusion of greatness, or just a short term rise to the top. They are looking for the next great player. The possibility of another player who has little or no balance in their life to help them cope with the harsh reality that is the real world coming through the pipeline  does not faze them. Why should it? They are swept up into the tsunami just like the athlete.

                These athletes keep going to these “elite” teams and playing at “elite” showcases all the while foregoing the most important part of their development: Balance. The athletes need to learn about relationships, getting along with people, not being above them. Academics need to be stressed, and how their importance helps shape an athlete’s life after their playing days are over, need to be at the forefront of development, not an afterthought. These are the life skills in youth sports that are the most important to develop. It’s not the three point shot, the slap shot, or the big tennis serve. Players are trained to think specialization makes them special, it does not. We are seeing more and more of this disconnect as this generation finishes their playing careers with disillusionment, injuries, and mental angst.

                 An athlete’s family thinks he is entitled to a large financial return for his “elite” status and they feed the beast, which is “more is better” through specialization. They may push the athlete to “go for the gold” all the while dreaming of their own status and financial security from the athlete’s supposed future mega contract. The college scholarship arrives, and fuels the belief that fame is possible, and maybe probable. But do most of us really know if he is or isn’t getting the full dollar amount his friends and families are bragging about? Do we know the exact dollar amount?  The average scholarship is about $8,700 a year. Why is it so hard to find out the truth about the dollar amount of these scholarships?

                 Isn’t it interesting that most of the time the people bragging about the scholarship athlete are trying to be connected to that athlete for status and ego? I heard of one family making a big financial donation to a college just so that they could say their son was going to the DI school on an athletic scholarship. Parents and athletes bragging about using a recruiting service are ending up at DIII colleges that have no athletic scholarships. Most are going tom colleges within a three to four hour drive from their hometown.

                Why do some parents exaggerate their claims of scholarship for their child without realizing that it can make other children jealous or try to emulate the player? They think they are as talented as the player getting the “scholarship.” If he or she feels they are as good as the player getting the scholarship, they will try and play harder; not knowing that the player they look up to is not really getting the money to play in college that everyone is told they are getting.

                 In most cases the player is not that good, and tries to play above their comfort level or ability. An unrealistic vision appears of what a DI athlete is fantasizes in their minds and it shapes how they think, feel, and act. Players start doing reckless, self centered plays, regardless of the consequences to their teammates and opponents. A lot of times the player who delivers the cheap shot is not the one who gets the payback. Another injury happens and no one relates it to anything other than the play in which it happens. Well, now you know different. Back to the story.

                 What make this youth sports injury so intriguing to me are the circumstances before the injury that may have lead to the injury. But let’s get what we know to be the facts out first before I look at the cause and effect paradigm.

                During a faceoff at mid-field this young man won the ball and headed down the field towards the opposing goal. While approaching the defenders’ goal, he was checked by an opposing player, face to face. This player was given a one minute penalty for cross checking and the young man who was hit got hurt. He suffered a concussion.

                I have seen numerous replays of the hit, and although it was a crosscheck, it did not seem to be of the vicious nature, but I wasn’t there to see it in person in front of 2,000 people. And I wasn’t trying to win a championship. What I want to discuss in this week’s blog is the many different circumstances going on before the hit, way before, and the ensuing reaction to the hit.

                As you may or may not know, I suffered eight concussions during my athletic career, and I am very sensitive to this issue. The first thing I want to discuss is the injured boy’s background. Being a multiple sport athlete, this young man, who by all accounts is a very good person, plays a lot of sports, and plays them at a pretty high level for the area he is from. I do not have the exact data on how often he plays or even if he plays two sports at once. I do not know if he attends showcases or not.

                What I do know is that while playing hockey he received a concussion, and that his future is certainly going to be watched much more carefully for health reasons than it would have been before  we gained the important knowledge we have today on concussions.

                 What I know is that he was considered or is considered a star athlete at his high school. But understand this could be any boy, in any sport. That is what I am trying to teach. It is applicable to the entire youth sport’s paradigm.

                Let’s say that this boy was continually being told that he was a star. He got more playing time and was doing great things on the playing field and rink. Maybe he got to believe he was very good and started taking chances, relying on his athletic ability to get him in and out of situations that other players could not. Maybe the more playing time he got made him more susceptible to injuries because instead of using his teammates more, which is what college coaches want, he tried more individual tactics putting himself in harm’s way more often. By having the player more tired than he actually thought he was, his reaction time was just a bit off, and the next hit he got was one that, if not so tired, he could have gotten out of the way or at least deflected it.

                What if he had the very best equipment? What if that equipment helped feed the belief that he was invincible, once again upping the possibility of injury? What if he felt having the very best equipment on his body, feet, and head made him believe he was the very best; capable of doing the best things out on the field or rink, and that he pushed himself outside his abilities and paid a price with an avoidable injury?

                The coaches run out on the field attending to their star player, bend over him like a wounded warrior in battle without realizing their culpability in the injury. The one coach yells at the other coach for his player’s cheap hit not understanding that by playing that player so much and relying on him so much other players on the team felt subconsciously that they had to do less. They watched while the star player did his “thing.”

                 The opposing coach, not realizing what his player was going to do, because he had not benched him for similar plays in the past, allowed his players a feeling of recklessness. They did not respect their opponent. This star player wasn’t so hot. Why was he getting all the adulation?  ”I’m as good as he is.” Then whamo , the hit is made, and the excuses start, but it is too late. A needless injury has occurred and many of the people who were responsible for it will never know their role in the  avoidable tragedy and its long term consequences.

                You see most catastrophic injuries have their root way before the actual injury takes place. Even the so called “freak” accident or injury, when analyzed in its entire journey or time line leading up to the injury, could have very possibly been avoided. Sometimes, a player receives an “off season” injury and does not put two and two together to see the entire time line and journey that led to the ultimate catastrophic injury.

                I really truly hope this blog helps save children from an avoidable. injury

               

Recruting/Candy

                 This is a story about recruiting athletes to play college sports. We are going to talk about a girl who is going to college to play softball at a DIII college. But please understand this story could apply to any  athlete going to any DIII college. Only about 3% of all students attending a four year college play intercollegiate sports at the Division III level, and about 1% play at the Division I level.

                This young lady or her family employed the service of a company to help her find a college to play softball. Now I am not judging these services, but I am asking these questions. If you are paying someone to pay attention to you, and of course other athletes at the same time, and you end up going to a college just a couple hundred miles away that you could have assuredly found on your own, what are you paying for? The attention? Did you want to tell people you were using a recruiting service for status purposes?  Did using the recruiting service give you an unrealistic view of your talent and therefore cause you angst when the D I scholarship never materialized? Couldn’t you have saved all that money and gone on a family vacation or put the money in a 529 college savings account to lessen your total room and board expense during and after college? A DIII college coach works with Admissions and the Financial Aid department all the time. Who better to help you get all the scholarship money than someone inside the college who wants you to go there? Remember a DIII college coach cannot get you anymore financial aid for academics than an equivalent non athletic student. They cannot get you any more financial aid based on your parents’ ability to pay than a non athletic student. That’s an NCAA rule.

                                She ended up going to a college 2 ½ hours away from her home.

                A friend of mine’s son played on a National Championship “elite” pay for play U16 travel soccer team and every one of the players went to a DIII college within three hours travel distance from their home. Colleges can and do recruit from all over the world. DIII colleges are not allowed to give athletic scholarships. Let’s analyze the whole recruiting and going to college to play athletics, process.

                A college coach spends approximately 80% of their time recruiting. Most college coaches recruit every day. Are we to believe that a college coach would not be aware of an athlete just a couple hundred miles away from their school? Are we to believe that a coach from that college would not have found out, or already  known about the  girls  softball  ability in what amounts to be the college’s own back yard.

                A quick check of this college’s softball  team roster showed that most girls who went to that college were within a couple hundred miles of the college, and at least one other girl was from the same “Section” as this girl who was attending that particular college and playing on the team. ALL of the girls were from the same state, well within the coaches’ recruiting area and she could easily schedule recruiting visits. It’s safe to say the coach knows the area well. It is also safe to say  she wants to keep her job. What other job could she get, or any college coach get, outside college athletics that would include all the perks of this job? Think of their job description. They get to live and work in a college atmosphere. Most people say that college was the best four years of their lives, or in my case, seven. They get paid to coach a sport they love. People cheer for them and tell them when they do a good job. If they choose, they can get paid to work out and stay in shape. They get to travel for free, all expenses paid. When they do a great job, they receive an award, and when their team does a great job, they win a trophy and receive national recognition. Also, my favorite part of coaching in college is that you get paid to be around, and hopefully help, develop young people’s bodies and minds for their future, long after they have graduated. And you get to have fun and laugh just about every day. I did it for twenty one years.

                 It’s true, while you are in school every day coaches are working to recruit athletes for their next season, and even beyond. When you commit to that school remember that the coach is recruiting someone, often several someones, to come in and compete for sports on the team EVERY year. Inter team competition, that’s how they get better. Next time you talk to a college coach ask them how many athletes they watched play this year. Ask them how many athletes they recruited and brought in to play on the team the last four years. Ask them how many of the athletes on the team have graduated with degrees in the last four years. Ask them what the team’s Grade Point Average is (GPA). Finally, ask them how important it is to them that their payers have a lot of fun playing their sport. How important is it to you?

                Now this girl joined a pay for play travel team to enhance her visibility and to give her greater options. Maybe, maybe not. Are you trying to tell me that just because you have money to play a sport on an “elite” travel team it makes you one of the best at playing that sport for your age group in your area? Does it say just because an athlete is poor and can’t afford to pay for play that you can’t develop your abilities and  become really good at your sport or even great? I think not.

                 Are we to believe that if she got a bunch of girls together and contacted her high school’s athletic director that she couldn’t have scheduled many pickup games? Or possibly found some bases, gone to a park, set up a field and just played for a couple of hours? When word got out, she may find that she can get a regular game going once a week. It is here I caution to anyone following this paradigm to include one adult to watch over but NOT coach the kids playing the game for safety reasons.

                The girls playing in the pickup games should include ALL girls who want to play, not just the most talented ones. Because as sure as the sun comes up every morning there is going to be a time when you are not the most talented player on the field and you would not want to be excluded from playing the sport you love. ALL girls who come get equal playing time, play different positions, AND HAVE FUN. PLAY FOR FUN!

                She could have used the internet, facebook, texting, and any technological tool that I am completely clueless about to get other girls interested in playing. She could even use the old fashioned “word of mouth” (which would help her develop her communications skills) to spread the word that she wanted to get a game together. You spend a lot more time in life getting along with people in various forms of relationships than you ever do in competition. Besides, if we want true competition to find out who is the best, don’t we have to play for free? Otherwise aren’t we just finding out who is the best that can afford to pay? Is that really true competition? I ask all of you who say you are competitive!

                         I want to know who the best out there is and I want to play against them.                                                  And I want to keep playing against them. That’s the most fun and it’s how I get better.

                I also ask that you keep the teams fairly close and equal in talent. You improve a lot more, and have a lot more fun when the games are close and exciting and not blow outs. Plus, without a coach and spectators you can try new and creative plays without getting yelled at or having a fear of getting benched. Stop the game if it gets lopsided and readjust the teams. This is the way we use to play pickup games. There is a disturbing trend now a days to have teams that are not equal so a few can revel in the false glory of a blowout, which helps neither team get better, and certainly is not fun to me. I have watched children purposely stack the deck and rig the game so that they will be assured a win. That’s not competition, that’s a bizarre form of entitlement. I have seen it done by players who have been excluded from playing on their high school teams as well as players who have spent a lot of money on pay for play teams and are venting their frustrations for their lack of playing time, or lack of enjoyment on those teams.

                 Is it possible by paying a recruiting service and playing on a travel team that the girl I mentioned earlier and her family were putting more value on her talent than was really there? Could they not have saved thousands of dollars and got a more balanced view of athletics and life by doing their own homework? Is it possible that talking about what someone else is doing for you when you could be doing it yourself is really that helpful? I keep hearing how this young generation wants to be independent and sell sufficient. I can’t think of a better way to do that than to take responsibility for your own future. You know what is best for you more than anyone else does! Remember, if you are that good, college coaches will find you. You don’t need a showcase to show your talent. Also, if you are not that good you can expose your weaknesses in a showcase. Obviously, I am not a fan of showcases. Watch my interview on my website, frozenshorts.com, with Dr. Mike Maloney who is the Director of University of Rochester Sports Medical Center.

                Let’s break this down even farther. Since DIII colleges do not  offer athletic scholarships, and MOST of the colleges, if not ALL of them offer academic scholarships, wouldn’t it be more prudent to spend a lot more time in the library getting your grades up than on the playing field? If you are going to pay someone to help you find a college doesn’t it make more sense to hire an academic tutor?

                 It is in the coaches’ best interests, and hopefully the athletes’, to complete four years of study at their college and graduate. The coaches can even use their graduation rate to entice future athletes to come to their school.  An athletic student is going to spend WAY more time in class and studying, than they will ever spend on the practice or playing field (you would hope)!  Any athlete who does not have to worry about their grades because they are putting in the proper amount of needed time in the classroom and library doing their academic work is going to be much more prepared, not less so, to compete on the playing field. The discipline it takes to balance an academic schedule is a life skill that can be transferred to the classroom, the playing field, the after-college work environment, and even to relationships later on in life. But I digress.

                Coaches want to win. They coach to win.  The coaches enjoy competition. They want competition to be fair and equal within their team and against an opponent. If they don’t, do you really want to play for that kind of coach on that kind of team, one that believes in entitlement? Do YOU want to play for coach who picks his or her team based on what they see recruiting, as you are playing against other high school girls, or do you want to be judged on how well you play against college girls playing on that team. Do you want to play for a coach who says you have to play softball year round and on particular teams and in particular showcases if you want to play for him or her? I wouldn’t and I didn’t. Remember, specialization does not make you special. It just makes you less balanced, and in some cases more susceptible to injuries. Hopefully they coach to develop the mind AND the body in balance, and help the athlete achieve balanced excellence. So as they coach to win, doesn’t it make sense they would want the best players they can get to play for them? And in the spirit of competition doesn’t it make sense that they would then play the players who are playing the best, not simply the best or most talented players? Then it seems that any athlete could show up at the coach’s door and get a tryout. College coaches refer to this kind of athlete as a “walk-on.” And, since softball is a spring sport, an athlete can go to that college for an academic fit, and then work out with the girls on the team and see where her talents lie facing the competition she will most likely be up against while attending that particular college.

                Let’s use the candy comparison/analogy. Let’s say you go to the store and you want a candy bar. If you are my wife and daughter that is ALWAYS going to include chocolate as the main ingredient. So they immediately eliminate the candy bars that do not have a lot of chocolate. Regular candy simply won’t do, they want something that tastes great and is going to make them feel good. You look at all the candy bars lined up in their fancy packaging. This packaging is put on there to entice you into buying that candy bar, and it has nothing to do with how good that candy bar is going to be for you to eat and or how much you will enjoy it. In some cases the company who manufactures the candy bar spends way more time on marketing and packaging that product than they do on its contents. They also want you to enjoy that candy bar and tell your friends how good the candy bar is so that maybe they will buy one. They know that they are competing with all the other candy bar manufacturers for your business (and make no mistake about it, there is definitely a business side to colleges). Come on, honestly, did you really think I was just talking about candy, or was I trying to get you to think at the synthesis level by comparing to seemingly unrelated paradigms? Besides, if I was going to talk to you just about treats, it would be ice cream. Oh how I love ice cream! But again, I digress.

                If my paradigm is correct, and I assure you it is.  I have spent thousands of hours and well over twenty years researching this topic, and I continue to put my paradigm into practice at all levels of youth sports. I have  interviewed other experts in the field (those videos will be coming out soon), and I have also coached and played at just about every level up through college. I love coaching and mostly playing with the really young kids, and it is 95% playing and having FUN when they are as  young as five, six, seven, eight, nine and ten  year olds. I am trying every day  to learn everything I can about youth sports. It led me to write a book about this subject, called Stop the Tsunami in Youth Sports: Achieving Balanced Excellence and Heath While Embracing the Value of Play for Fun. It will be out in e-book form in July of 2012.