My niece was telling me about her son’s middle school flag football coach. He makes the team run sprints so much in practice that some of the get physically ill. Again, this is middle school. It’s important to be in shape and indeed good for you, but at the same time you’re working with twelve and thirteen year-olds who are playing goddamned flag football, not running ultra marathons.
That’s not the worst part. If they lose a game this same coach makes them run extra. That’s right, he punishes children for the sin of losing a game. As a youth coach you know what I did when my team lost a game? I told them not to feel bad about it, learn your lessons and move on. I also told them that I was proud of their effort and that they should be too. By the way, I coached several teams to championships and had a perennial winner and it never occurred to me — not once — to punish players because the other team outscored them.
All my life I’ve seen evidence of youth coaches who get it all wrong and frankly I’ve been appalled. It hasn’t gotten any better since I was a kid. Actually, youth sports in general is in worse shape than it was fifty years ago. There’s a tremendous emphasis on winning, far out of proportion to what it should be. There’s also a proliferation of pay-to-play teams. Economically disadvantaged children (that’s a euphemism for poor kids) miss out. Baseball in particular has become a sport dominated at the youth level by privileged white kids. But that’s a topic for another time.
One of the worst things I’ve seen in the new uber competitive world of youth sports is that in this overwhelming desire to win teams are limiting playing time to their starters while other kids are spending entire games on the bench. Kids — whose parents are often shelling out money for the privilege — busting their little asses to play, going to every practice are sitting on the bench for all or most of games. Kids! Again when I was a coach everybody played in every game — period. Like I said, my teams won championships. Many coaches, and this goes up through college all the way to the pro level, are afraid to use their back ups because they lack confidence. Not in the players but in themselves.
Another thing is that here we are in the 21st century and we still have youth coaches who chew out their players. I’m not talking about yelling at players to “hustle” or barking instructions, I’m talking about using demeaning language, using profanity, insulting kids. That’s not even acceptable at the professional level let alone with ten-year-olds. What does it say about a forty-five year old man that he screams at a teenager for a mistake made on the playing field?
It’s not just that. My older daughter was on her high school volleyball team. I attended home games. Once after a game the coach wasn’t happy with the way the team had played, despite the fact that they won. She kept the team on the court after the match and chewed them out in front of us remaining spectators. Seriously. After a match I would send my teams home with a hearty congratulations. If there were problems in their performance I would address it at the next practice with zero people watching. Even after a loss I wanted my players to feel good about themselves and I sure as hell didn’t want to air problems in front of other people.
Even if there were issues to be addressed I would always start practice on an upbeat note and then end it that way. These are young people. They have fragile egos. Many are sensitive. I wanted the experience of being on a team to be a positive force in their lives. I wanted to build their self-esteem while guiding them in being part of a team. My motto: play hard, have fun. If a player was late or someone interrupted me while I was talking the whole team ran to the fence and back (just once, enough to get a message across but not make them throw up). I was teaching them that they were all in it together. No one ever complained.
I was never perfect as a coach, far from it. But I also was not — not even close — a goddamned jerk who thought “punishment” was part of my job. I suppose I had an advantage as a coach because I was also a teacher and thus recognized that coaching and teaching are similar. (When a kid got the year the Civil War started wrong I never made them run until they vomited. Basic principle.)
Youth coaches need to relax, get over themselves and be there for the kids. Support them, nurture them and yes, push them, try to get the maximum out of them. But you don’t need to yell, cuss or name call. A pat on the back is more effective than a kick in the ass.
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