Youth Should be Served
December 26, 2013
A half-century ago, youth sports were not well organized. Children directed most of their own games, playing each sport in its season, moving from touch football in the side yard to basketball in the driveway to baseball in the vacant lot where an apartment building now stands. They walked or rode their bikes to the venues, they brought their own equipment, they chose up sides and they agreed upon the playing rules and ground rules.
Even if young people played on a community team, they spent more time in pickup games on makeshift fields, courts and diamonds than they did in uniforms at the groomed settings of the formal youth league games.
Gradually, the leagues multiplied and the ability groupings stratified. Elite teams were created consisting of the more talented kids, who were really just more mature for their age; and they were provided with the most games, the longest trips and the largest trophies. It didn’t take long for the other players to feel second class and to drop out of one sport or all sports. In time, even some of the “good” players succumbed to overuse injuries and emotional burnout.
By the time most students reached the earliest grades for school sports, many had already found different ways to spend their time. It is often cited and well-documented that, today, 80 to 90 percent of all youth who ever started playing organized sports have stopped doing so by age 13. Before high school.
So it occurs to me that school districts should have both altruistic and selfish reasons to rethink their approach to junior high/middle school sports, which is now to engage students too late and offer them too little. Schools might be able to provide a better experience for the youngsters and create an earlier and stronger relationship with the philosophies of educational athletics at the junior high/middle school level, and that ultimately will strengthen high school athletic programs.
This pursuit will take great care in order to assure that schools themselves do not make the same mistakes we have seen in overzealous youth sports programs. We will have to find the balance where multi-sport experiences are encouraged so middle school students can experiment with new sports and discover what they might really like and be good at, while at the same time provide enough additional contests that interscholastic programs are a more attractive option than non-school programs that may always allow more contests than school people will allow within an educational setting.
Reserve Lessons
January 26, 2018
Nothing prepared me for coaching more than the time I spent sitting on the bench. I hated it. And when I started coaching, I couldn’t forget how much I disliked sitting on the bench, and I did everything I could do to get every player in a game every week on some level – 9th grade, JV or varsity.
So I get it. Not starting hurts. Not playing stinks. And while many coaches are brilliant in their tactics to share playing time, some coaches do a miserable job of getting reserves into games.
But having said all that, I must add that too many people undervalue the importance of reserves, of the practice players who work hard to make the regulars better. Many champion wrestlers and tennis players earned their titles because of practice partners who pushed them to be better day-in and day-out. Many championship teams achieved their success through arduous daily competition in practice all season long. Many times it has been a so-called “backup” player, who worked hard in practices and who was often worked into games by caring coaches, who steps in after a starter is injured and saves the season.
There is much to be learned as a reserve, including what it means to be a loyal teammate ... a team player ... and what teamwork and sacrifice and loyalty and dedication really mean.
I have said often in speeches that it’s my wish that every student would have the opportunity to be a starter in one sport and a substitute in another because the lessons to be learned from each are different and so vital to developing the whole person.
It is a shame that students have somehow gotten the message that it’s a waste of their time to be a part of a team where they aren’t a starter or even the star. They get this message from adults ... sometimes it’s coaches, but more often it’s parents who criticize coaches and/or transfer their children to schools where they have a greater chance for athletic success.
As the benches get shorter on our school sports teams, the lessons learned get fewer.