Equal play and fun

Equal play and fun

There is no medical or psychological data that says equal play impedes child’s athletic development up to an including U10. Just the adults’ egos are bruised. We have done pilot programs up to U13 with complete success and others have sent me data that they have done it all the way up to U18 with great success. If you leave kids alone, they will play for hours on end. It’s called free play. The score doesn’t change the way they play if left alone unless there is outside adult interference. The score changes the way adults think. I was told by an adult after a talk that the kids want  know what the score is. Yes, some do, BUT most know the score an hour after the game is over and talk about it ONLY when pressured by adults. These same adults pound into the kids the importance of keeping score.

The kids just want snack.

 They want to be with their friends and play for fun. The true test of a child’s involvement in sports is that they want to keep playing another day after a game is over and the TEAM leaves the field happy. Another parent told me they have to learn to win and lose. How are you qualified to teach that? Remember, no one knows how to win. Survival of the fittest, in its original definition was about the WHOLE community surviving not one individual. Yet they have no science, psychology, or data to support their irrational feelings.

 In high school and college you take multiple subjects yet we force children to specialize at an early age and then are shocked by rebellion. More and more colleges are recruiting multi sport athletes because they seem to be easier to coach and have better coping skills mentally and physically than one sport athletes. They also don’t break down as much. Kids on the playground don’t need adults telling them what to do. They can figure out the rules and roles for themselves, and they want to! Ever heard your child "I can do it myself" I did. My daughter said it.  Children want and need the desire to learn. Teach them the "yearn to learn”. It’s all about the journey. When you go on a trip and have a guide, the guide leads but do not dominate. They let you experience life now you know what the kids want. When is the last time you made a mistake at work and the boss had you stay after and run laps? Does the boss stand over you constantly? PLAY FOR FUN!

The Intern

The Intern

One of the coaches that I am mentoring was having a hard time understanding playing time for those on the team who didn’t have the physical abilities of the more talented players. I explained to him that no one really knows when “suck” is going to happen. Players need playing time to be able to foster inter team competition for the betterment of the team and individual. Look, most teams of 20 have this kind of breakdown. They have a top 2 or 3 and then 12-15 who are all about the same, and then 2 at the end that are not very good. But that last guy could be your diamond in the rough, that late bloomer, that as coaches and players, we all pull for, and we will never know because a coach wouldn’t find some meaningful minutes for him to play during a long season.

 And some of that mindset is directly related to the parents’ pressure on their child, the coach, and the organization.

Now it’s important to understand that the talent difference between these kids is way more determined by playing time, or lack thereof, than it is on talent. Remember human beings do not physically develop fully until they are 23, 24 or 25. So to say that this kid or that kid is a bench player in their teens is not supported by scientific fact.

 I asked him if he had an intern where he worked. He explained to me that he had recently had an intern who he worked with directly.

I wondered out loud did he put the intern in a room and give him meaningless jobs to do. If he did, how did he think the intern would react? Did he stand over the intern and repeatedly bark instructions to him?  Would his intern harbor mistrust and resentment towards his company and adults in general when he wasn’t given a chance for meaningful work experience? Would he feel that the “internship” was devoid of any real hands on learning experience? How would that paint the picture of your company going forward for other interns? What would he tell his parents, his teachers, and his friends about the poor experience he had when he left your business and returned to college? We keep saying how smart kids are these days, but then we don’t put them in situations where they can fail safely, the key to long term growth and development.

 In this case, I asked him if pointing out the interns mistakes in front of other people was the way he would want to be treated? Did he really think that the intern did not see the mistakes he and others made in the office? Did the intern wonder why he was being singled out? Did you make a sincere effort to make him feel part of the business when he was there?

Now you know what the kids think and feel who don’t get to play on teams in youth and high school sports.

Friday thoughts

If you think your Childs athletic performance is the key to your financial future, you should play the lottery. Same odds. Go to http://frozenshorts.com  and download free our weekend youth sport cost calculator. Go to media, scroll down to bottom. And plug in #s. See what it costs per hour for your child to play travel youth sports. Children learn from internal realization. Not external force. So stop yelling at them while the play. It just another form of entitlement. Kids should be allowed and encouraged to stay in the moment and have fun. Let them dream later with their friends with no adult pressure.

Only 1% of all kids going to college will play at the DI level. So don’t talk to them like they are. That is your dream not there’s.Telling kids to play one sport is like telling them they have to eat Broccoli when they dont want to. There are other sports. On the way home from the game do not critique their performance. You are not a TV analyst and they are not pro athletes. Watch your kids playing youth sports this weekend? Look like fun to you? If not, time for a change. Recess, when kids should have free play. As important as any subject in the classroom. It helps them learn better

Others

Playing and coaching with someone who has less ability has as much to do with you and the team getting better as it does them improving. At some point you won’t be the best player on a team. How do you reconcile your exclusion of others when you start to get excluded? What if a coach purposefully showed up late for practice just to learn what the kids would want to do without the coach? One period or one quarter for one game we ask for no yelling instructions at the kids by coaches and parents. Tell us what happens! You can still be competitive and relaxed. You can still be pumped up and calm and you get to slow down the game in your brain. Spoke at a yearend sports banquet. Asked kids in the audience how many felt pressured to play injured? How many had played pickup games? More kids felt pressured to play than had played pickup games. Shouldn’t that statistic be reversed? What if we asked the kids what they wanted to do, without them having to fear retribution? You lead by example and modeling class behavior. That means you don’t always have to be at the front of the line. You say swag I say humility. You show me an athlete who has overcome struggles in sports and in life, and I’ll show you a person I can trust to be a team player. You say winning I say competition. You don’t know how to win, no one does. But I do know how to compete.

Sectional Avoidance

Sectional Avoidance

Over the last decade I have heard this expression repeated by coaches, players, parents, and administrators. “If things work out we can avoid playing “X” in the Sectionals until we or they get to the finals. This is modeling behavior that is simply another form of entitlement that puts winning at all cots above  the journey.

Now I freely admit that I am old school. I’d rather play the best team we could play 10 times in a season, than the worse team once. You don’t learn anything beating up on teams and you certainly don’t get pressure, stressed filled situations to learn from.

 I believe in life skills, humility, sacrifice, and teamwork as in integral part of a team, and a player’s journey through youth and high school sports. As a coach and a player I always tried to make sure that everyone on my team was included in everything that we did. I played wherever the coach needed me and I offered to play with anyone on our team.

I was very fortunate to receive the very first sportsmanship award at my high school.  I volunteered to play defense the year after I won the league scoring title. We only had two returning defensemen, and our team was in a bind. I ended up playing the whole game, every game, while the other 2 defensemen rotated.

 My late great father and wonderful mother had instilled in me the philosophy of caring for others, sacrifice, leadership, and sharing. They also encouraged me to play with older children and better competition. Those older children in our neighborhood mentored me, pushed me, but not once ever excluded me form the countless pickup games we played in multiple sports. I never forgot those lessons learned.

 V.J. Sr. said to me on many occasions: “If you want to be the best, you have to play the best.”

Now, with winning, no matter what level, what time of year, and always with background noise of “I’m a winner”, so I must play and coach to win, no matter what the cost” reverberates throughout youth and high school sports. Schools will drop down a division, avoid certain teams, play a lighter schedule all the while never understanding the incredibly poor modeling example they are presenting to our children. Then they are surprised when the kids act up. I say I’m surprised that you’re surprised.

It’s ironic to me when I hear adults talk about DI athletic scholarships and teaching kids how to win and lose. (Something they don’t know how to do) But in college, for the most part, we try to play the very best competition we can find. Oh sure there are some games played at the very elite DI level for $$, but most college coaches want the best competition they can play. It’s how you find out who can play, and it’s also the best way for your team to improve.

So when I hear coaches, parents, players, and administrators talking about missing a team in sectionals, I just can’t figure out how they can justify setting that example to the children. Winning over competition without understanding the long term ramifications is so foreign to me it sure sounds a lot like another form of entitlement to me.