Quote:
Originally Posted by AgustusM
So I just retired after 40 years as a football, basketball and baseball coach. Mostly at the high school level but also some college and a lot of youth (when my four kids were young - they are all graduated now) I played in college as did my oldest son.
I have literally seen it all and I can say the years I spent on the board of the local PONY (baseball) league I witnessed some of the most obnoxious behavior of parent\board members who went to extremes to make sure their 7-8 year old teams “won” It wasn’t everybody, but it was a surprisingly high number.
I am not the old get off my lawn guy, but youth sports really were better when I was a kid and we played sports everyday at the park with little to no adult supervision. With each passing year as a high school coach I saw first hand how players started to come into high school with less and less fundamental skill in their sport, next to no real understanding of the game and more and more selfish attitudes. I don’t blame the kids, it is the parents who micromanaged this nonsense and created this problem. We were able to “fix” it on the majority of my high school teams. But we have really lost sight of what youth high school sports is supposed to be which is (IMO)
1. Learn to be a part of a team and contribute to something bigger then themselves (I was always a team sport guy, so can’t really speak on more individual sports like tennis or golf) this to me is #1 and crucial. Learning to achieve a common goal with others some who look and think you and some who look and think completely different than you do.
2. Learn to be accountable
3. Learn resilience and the next play attitude (single best helps your whole life out of sports skills)
4. Build friendships, many of which will last a lifetime (everyone of my 40+ year old friendships started as teammates)
5. Learn discipline and the value of hard work
6. Learn to win AND lose with class, dignity and sportsmanship.
I could probably go on to list 100s of others - but you get the idea.
Bottom line and my meandering point to the topic - as a parent seek out the coaches and organizations who do it the right way. Avoid those who value winning at any level about high school varsity (we mandated our freshman and JV squads job was not to win, it was to prepare their players fort varsity)
And please do NOT do it because your kid is going to get a scholarship (I have coached dozens of those) but the reality is MOST wont - the numbers don’t lie. but they can learn a whole bunch of life lessons and have fun along the way. If you really want to play for college deposit all the money you would into all the travel expenses from 5-18 and you can pay for any college in the world.
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Great post.
I think that so many resources go into individual training, a lot of the teamwork and accountability have gone away.