A quarter of the Time

Youth sports. You would think that the name would bring a smile to your face and thoughts of past fun and friends. But once again I have been involved in a drama that has played out on a field of six-year-old soccer players. The two coaches involved here have good intentions. However, it is the subjectivity involved in their decisions that brings the children’s long-term best interest into question.

          What is it that drives a person to hold onto their position as a coach so tightly? Are they dissatisfied with their life and their work situation? Have they been screwed over in their life and are trying to make sure that the same thing does not happen to their children? Is it the fact that they have seen other kids being screwed, and so they think they can do better than that coach did? Do they watch coaches on T.V. and yearn for the same status that professional and DI coaches have?

          This next scenario played out in a six-year-old house soccer league. We came in and made a presentation to the B.O.D. They liked what we had to say. Their season had already started, just practices, and there was some question as to whether this would disrupt the current staff’s coaching. I was more concerned that someone believed that the coach of a six-year-old house soccer team could be interrupted, but I digress.

          I went to one practice, and to say it went well would be an understatement. The kids loved our play for fun scenario. The coaches enjoyed the way the kids had so much fun. The Director saw what we were doing and was pleased. The parents commented on how much fun the kids had and how much soccer they got to play.

          Essentially, we let the kids play “Simon Says” with the coach and “Hokey Pokey” as a team, until finally they played a short sided game. Great fun was had by all. Well, the coach had to run a lot. I told the kids at the end of the “Simon Says” game, that “Simon Says” chase the coach!! Without knowing, it they learned to stop and start, change directions, balance, and a little upper body strength as the coach let them tackle her. It was wonderful.

           I approached two of the other coaches in the league about what we were doing and to put it lightly, they were not pleased. The first coach told me that his son was going to play in a big hockey tournament in Canada the next weekend, and that he was selected by an ex-DI coach. There were kids from three different organizations going up for this “big” tournament. When I stated there were no big tournaments in July for hockey, the coach became indignant. I then told him that these kids were not the best kids from the area, just the kids whose families could afford to pay to go to Canada. What happened next floored me. The coach said that he could not afford to go to the tournament and had to skip a $500 mortgage payment to make the trip. His son was the goalie, and if he didn’t have this structure, he would be running around on the ice hitting the kids with his stick.

          One side note. This coach’s son played the whole game, every game, and played most of the game at the top striker position. When a water break was called, he was the only player to not join the rest of his teammates in a circle. A coincidence, I think not. The other kids shared the playing time.

          The other coach took great offense to my approach also. She thought she was hired to coach these kids and that was just what she was going to do.  She inquired if my approach allowed them to play a championship game at the end of the season.

          I watched them play a game against each other. There were four quarters of eight minutes played. I kept track of the actual time played on a stopwatch. They averaged less than three minutes a quarter. During the first half they shouted approximately 27 commands to the children, ones that were not cheering and encouragement.

           After the game was over we tried to have the children play a fun game. It seems that the parents had been tipped off and some chose not to have their kids play. Before our game started, the coach said to everyone, “I really don’t know what is going on, and of course you do not have to stay”. The other coach told the kids on multiple occasions not to hurt the parents when they kicked the ball in to the goals. It was an absolute disaster, except for the fact that a couple of kids had a grand old time kicking and running around.

         

           

         

GUEST BLOG WAYNE WILSON

After captaining the Bowling Green Falcons to the NCAA Division I championship in 1984, I decided to forego a professional hockey career so I could begin coaching. And that’s what I’ve done ever since – serving as an assistant at my alma mater for nine years while earning my master’s degree, before becoming head coach at Rochester Institute of Technology a dozen years ago.

                Along the way, I’ve had the privilege of coaching and teaching a lot of hard-working student athletes, not only about hockey, but about life. We attempt to recruit high-character kids who are good teammates and dedicated students. That’s contributed greatly to the success RIT has had while making the transition from Division III to Division I. Two years ago, we wound up stunning the college hockey world by reaching the Frozen Four. That was sweet, but I was just as proud – if not more so – of our team’s 3.2 grade point average, pretty impressive when you consider that RIT is a very demanding academic school.

                About five years ago, I had the privilege of meeting V.J. Stanley, when he began broadcasting our hockey games. The thing I liked right away about him was that he took a different approach to the coverage of our team. It wasn’t just about hockey with him. It also was about academics and life-skill development. He was very thorough in doing his homework about our program and I and my staff enjoyed being interviewed by him as a result. It got to the point where we even invited V.J. to one of our video review sessions.

                V.J. wound up developing, writing and narrating a documentary about our program that included interviews with everyone, including the Zamboni driver. (I wasn’t kidding when I said he was thorough.)

                I believe one of the reasons I hit it off with him was that V.J. had been a successful hockey coach in his own right at the University of Rochester for 21 years. He not only knew the game, but also emphasized academics and balanced excellence. When asked about his coaching record, he didn’t recite how many victories or league championships he had won, but rather how many doctors, lawyers and engineers his team had graduated. I liked that.

                So, when he asked to interview me for this book and other projects involving youth sports, I was more than happy to contribute whatever I could. We both realize that youth sports is broken and needs to be fixed.

                Like me, V.J. believes that the primary goal of youth sports should be kids having fun. The fact that nearly 70 percent of kids quit organized sports by age 13 is alarming to me, a true crisis. Or, as V.J. has eloquently and accurately put it, a tsunami that needs to be stopped.

                We have to get back to the play-for-fun approach. Children, twelve and under, should receive equal playing time so they can develop and enjoy the best that sport has to offer. They can’t develop if they are in constant fear of being benched.

                Somewhere along the way, specialization took over youth sports, and now we have too many kids at a young age being forced to play one sport, year-round. This, too, needs to stop. Growing up in Canada, my parents encouraged me to play several different sports. I believe that this balanced-excellence approach, in which you take breaks from your primary sport, is absolutely necessary and actually aids in a young athlete’s physical, mental and emotional development on and off the rink, field and court. I didn’t focus solely on hockey until I was 16, and even then, there were months at a time, where you took a break and weren’t on the ice.

                During my two decades of coaching and recruiting, I’ve noticed a proliferation in so-called “elite” programs, travel teams and show-case tournaments, while the number of Division I scholarships has pretty much remained stagnant. As V.J. has noted, the carrot of DI scholarships and, even worst, this long-shot dream of playing professionally has created unrealistic expectations and is sucking the joy out of youth sports.

                V.J.’s book and video tapes take a look at this youth sports tsunami from many different angles and shows how this new paradigm simply isn’t working. He has talked to scores of experts in the field – doctors, coaches, athletes and administrators – and offers common-sense solutions to how we can fix these problems, which have reached epidemic proportions.

                He reminds us that we need to get back to the simple mantra that youth sports should be fun, not seen as a path to a Division I scholarship or a pro career. And he reminds us that young people, in particular, need to seek balanced excellence in their lives in order to become well-rounded, fully developed people.

                I think this book is a great starting point and a great how-to-guide. It can help us stop the tsunami in youth sports and make children the focal point of youth sports once more.

                I hope you enjoy the book and learn from it. It definitely will be worth your while.

                Sincerely,

                Wayne Wilson

                2010 N.C.A.A. Division I Hockey Coach of the Year

                2001 N.C.A.A. Division III Hockey Coach of the Year

    

GUEST BLOG Frank Forencich

How Good Can I Be?

I had the good fortune to meet a young lady and her family during my journey through this project.  I had met her brother first and he was quite pleased with his younger sister’s athletic accomplishments.  He really caught my attention when he started talking about scholarships.  It seems his sister had been approached about playing DI tennis by a college coach.  Now let me make this clear:  a student must graduate from their junior year and pass the NCAA clearing house before they can be offered or accept a legitimate DI athletic scholarship. A student or family can say the intend to go to a DI college but the NCAA has very specific rules regarding athletic scholarships.

                I was invited by the parents to come to their house.  We had a very good conversation about athletics, coaches, tournaments, and showcases.  In my consulting business, I call it Mental Health Consulting; I frequently talk to parents, coaches, and athletes in youth sports.  What struck me about this family was the closeness they had sitting around the kitchen table.  You could feel the honest caring for their daughter’s health and well being.

                This spring she is going to play tennis against the boys.  Here is how I know she will be successful.  I watched her play one match.  Even before the match started I could tell by the way she carried herself walking on to the court she had class.  I turned to her mom during warm-ups and said, “She’s going to win.”  Even after she lost the first game, the outcome was obvious.  But then she did something quite memorable.  She bounced the ball on the side edge of the racket not to show off but to help her concentration.  You can see DI athletics pretty clearly pretty quickly.  She had a steel-eyed determination that was a joy to watch.  There wasn’t any show boating or any flare-ups of behavior.  When she missed a shot, the mom and the grandparents sat and watched and cheered nicely.

                 You see, you can’t buy DI talent.  You either have it or you don’t. True athletic talent is evident very quickly after puberty. There are however, many late bloomers out there who need time, encouragement, and repeated opportunities to compete in games to achieve their level of excellence.

                 The parents did not send her to Florida to live and play at an academy.  I am sure there were overtures for her to attend such a place. These academies are prevalent in all sports.  Do players and families have all the facts needed to make a decision on where and what kind of atmosphere is best for their child’s long term health and development?

                They remained grounded and so did this young athlete.

                As she plays against the boys this spring, she is accepting a challenge based on competition, not gender or what is popular.  Instead of fearing competition, or trying to stack the deck to win, she embracing the challenge of finding out how good she really is in this arena. Notice I did not say who is the best.  The truly great athletes play against their sport.  The opponent is merely an obstacle or a measuring stick as to how well they can play and compete.  She has the look and pace of a class human being, and I am sure she will be successful in whatever endeavor she chooses to accept in her journey through life. Not just because of talent. It is way more important for her future success to have an excellent work ethic, a grounded base of integrity and humility, and a passion for life and fun.
                                              Now isn't that what is really important?

THE HIGH COST OF PLAYING AND COACHING TO WIN

                A coach told a freshman player that he would be in his high school team’s top “20” as a freshman soccer player. He even told the player’s father that his son was going to make the team.  The player had a great camp, but was cut. Let me make this clear. If a varsity coach is going to keep a freshman or a sophomore on his team, they must play at least 50% of the time, and should be in the starting lineup every other game. When the father questioned the coach about keeping his word, the coach blamed “administrative reasons” for cutting the player. Asked by the coach if the player was still playing baseball, even though the father was told it was not a problem, the father was stunned. The coach asked where the player had been. Why wasn’t he at the pre-season pay-for-play training camp?

                The player was the best player on the junior varsity team, according to both junior varsity coaches. (Not the most talented) The next year, the boy got sick during tryouts. The excuse given for the player not making the team was that he was three weeks behind. It was only one week. The next excuse was that they hadn’t seen him play a certain position in three years. This was not true, either. The junior varsity coach had seen him that summer in a game at the club team’s state championship. They also said he had not been seen at the position they needed. Also, not true. The junior varsity coach had seen this boy “stuff” the leading scorer on another team in a couple of games. The same scorer crushed the varsity team with three in a scrimmage for three goals.

                This is happening more than you realize. Attitudes developed from ego and self-worth are being enhanced for the coach instead of the player’s development. In the sectional championship game, another player on the varsity team was in that same position this young man played. He gave up another bad goal. Meanwhile, the wronged player led his junior varsity team with three goals and fifteen assists, and was the captain of the undefeated junior varsity team.

                No championships were won that year or in the following four years. Coaches need to realize that the children want to play. Some players follow the “party line” and say they play to win, but after their careers are over most of the ones I talk to regret not getting to play. We polled about a hundred kids from the age of fourteen to eighteen. I was shocked at the amount of kids who said the reason they played sports was to win. I was even more shocked when I was told most would rather sit on the bench and win a championship, than to play on a losing team. This bothered me for quite a while.

                 And then a strange thing happened. I started running into some of the players who I had polled. ALL wanted to change their answer after their season had finished and they did not win a championship. They all said they now realize it would have been more fun to play. In one case we studied, a player who had rarely played refused to go into the game in the final minutes of a blow out in the last game of his high school career. This scenario plays out year after year, season after season, sport after sport.

                Playing ALL the kids on your roster during the season is a HUGE benefit to your team, not a hindrance. Inter team competition helps the WHOLE team get better. It may not seem like playing your most talented players is entitlement, but it is. They have to earn extended playing time, and keep earning it. If not they learn subconsciously that they don’t have to play their best and try their hardest to get playing time.

                Over and over in multiple sports we see coaches keeping their “best” players in games and losing without seeing the long term negative effect it has on their program. Players who do not get playing time start to lose interest and don’t play hard in practice. This falsely justifies the coaches’ thoughts that the player does not deserve playing time. The coach created this scenario by not allowing kids repeated chances to play and get better during games with real playing time, not just a few minutes at the end of a blowout. I have also seen kids get playing time at the end of a blowout and play really well. Then, during the next game, they are back on the bench. Most coaches do not realize the long term harmful effect this has on their program. The kids do not want to be on a team were they are stereo typed as a bench player or substitute. We followed a basketball team from freshmen to senior year. Only three kids who played on the freshmen team were on the varsity squad their senior year.

                 Post puberty it should be play by performance. That means when a player is not playing his best they are replaced by a player who may not be able to contribute as much as the more talented player in the short term. Both kinds of players should get repeated chances during games to play. The more talented player learns that they have to perform at a high level to keep their position and status, it is not a given.  They learn the benefits of getting better and being a good teammate. The benefit to the team, the coach, and the player are long lasting and beneficial, not harmful. The substitutes are rewarded for their efforts and try harder making themselves and all around them better. They also show anyone watching, that they have a chance to succeed.

                Now is the time to stop the tsunami.

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?