While I have only coached youth sports the past 2 years as a 5th grade and 8th grade basketball coach, I have been around youth sports my whole life and think it is an epidemic across our county, state and country right now.
When I first think about this topic, I think about what is the point of youth sports? I think if you ask myself, most High School coaches and even most parents they will say it is to develop the children's ability and also for them to have an enjoyable childhood while playing sports.
Sports teach us so much and I think I am as much a product of that than anyone. I was fortunate enough to grow up with parents (especially a father) who valued youth sports possibly more than anything else. One of the lifelong lessons I will take from my dad during his days of running Grafton Little League, being a board member of the Grafton Basketball Club, Grafton Booster Club and organizations at church is to put others before yourself and family. While that may sound bad at first, he showed me that while providing for my family, he had a greater responsibility than to just coach a team that his son was on. He gave that up to help 300+ kids in Grafton Little League. When being involved in youth sports is it more valuable to help 10-12 kids who your child is friends with or be someone who everyone in the organization knows and create positive relationships with countless children and adults. I think the ability to create positive relationships with more than just his kid and his kid's team showed me that my dad valued everyone else as much as he did me. And isn't that what kids and people want? To be valued and to have someone who cares for them. While I always knew my dad cared for me, I also knew that he put plenty of others before me and would always do what is best for the organization and not his kid!
One of the reasons for me wanting to write this post was a recent experience I had at a youth event I was coaching in. While I know coaching 8th graders is close to High School and what everyone wants athletes to be ready for, I was shocked and taken back at some actions I see out of youth coaches. While I hate throwing opposing coaches under a bus I have seen more than once during this past season where all coaches care about is winning in 8th grade. Whether it is a coach playing 7-8 players in order to win instead of the 12-14 on their team or if it is a coach putting his starters in to press a team when their bench is in and they are winning. After seeing this happen multiple times this season, I explained to my 8th grade team that my job is to develop all 12 players, not 5 after a heartbreaking loss where I let our "bench" players stay in the game and experience late game pressure, that they otherwise would have never experienced before High School. Yes the emotion of losing the game hurt but it was a learning experience for all of my players on what they can do to get better to prepare themselves for high school. Isn't that what the point of youth sports is? To get better and get ready to High School. I also told my team one of my favorite quotes from a couple of my other high school coaches, "Our games are not in the paper". Meaning who cares if we win or lose, my job is to get everyone ready for high school athletics. While it may have been a disappointing season for some of the players as we may have lost more games than we thought we would before the season, I would not change a thing as I know I did my job to develop not just 3-4-5 or 6 players on the team, I did my best to develop all 12 and give them experiences that will help them in the future. Who cares about winning in youth sports! Anytime I ask youth sports coaches "how is it going" and they immediately respond with some type of win loss record or if they won or loss the most recent game, that is always alarming to me. I don't care if 9-10-11 years old won a game or lost a game against there so called rivals, I care about are the kids learning the game and are they all developing and experiencing difficult situations within the game.
While this thought and ideas may be common, I have noticed it is a lot harder to act on then what I originally thought. Growing up around my dad and Tony Lukas, Mike Donahue, Corey Esselman, Tim Chopp and others who always put Grafton Little League before whatever team they were coaching, I just always thought that's how it was, but I am sadly mistaken. Youth sports is in a trying time in our country and I hope more and more people realize that winning doesn't matter at the youth level, while I know keeping score and such is good as it builds competitiveness in kids, teaching them how to win and lose is also just as important. For anyone who has not read Mike Matheny's book The Matheny Manifesto I would highly suggest it as it starts out with a letter he wrote to parents as he was beginning to coach his son's youth baseball team. To say it lightly, Mike Matheny gets it!
I will leave you with some of my favorite excerpts from Matheny's letter to the parents:
"I'm asking you to grab the concept that this going to be ALL about the boys. if anything in this is about you, we need a change of plans. My main goals are to:
- Teach these boys how to play baseball the right way.
- Make a positive impact on them as young men
- Do all this with class"
"We may not win every game game, but we will be the classiest coaches, players, and parents at every game we play. The boys are going to show respect for their teammates, the opposition, and for the umpires-- no matter what."
"I believe the biggest role a parent can play is to be a silent source of encouragement. If you ask most boys what they want their parents to do during a game, they'll say "nothing." Again this is ALL about the boys. I know youth league parents fell they must cheer and shout, "Come on, let's go, you can do it!" but even that just adds more pressure."
"Let me go on record right now that we will not have good umpiring. The sooner we all understand and accept that, the better off we will be... But at no time will our boys be allowed to show any emotion whatsoever toward the umpire."
"Along with where he hits in the lineup and his amount of playing time, which position a kid plays is one of the most complained about issues. I need you to know that I am trying to develop each boy individually."
"One of the greatest lessons my father taught me was that my coach was always right--even when he was wrong. That principle is a great life lesson about how things really work. Our culture has lost respect for authority, because kids hear their parents complain about teachers and coaches."
These are just some of the key points hit on throughout Matheny's book that I feel very fortunate that my parents instilled in me as well.
So as I conclude this post, just remember youth sports is about developing and having fun for all kids involved, not winning!
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