Spring! When we say farewell to barren branches and winter winds, and face the warming sun. But poetic passages aside, it’s also the unfortunate time of the year when parents sign their children up for multiple team sports.
Basketball, baseball, lacrosse and the soccer empire all vie for the attention of youth sports participants and their parents. This bounty of opportunity can cause several problems for the athlete and sports parent. As I described in my last post, one such problem occurs when a parent “over-books” his or her child’s activities. With too many scheduled activities, the child inevitably misses numerous practices and games.
For coaches, it’s often a frustrating time. Many of us who coach do so for the rewards that come from developing young players and a team throughout the course of a season. Developing a child’s understanding of team play, and how to integrate his or her individual abilities together into a larger team experience, is one of the satisfying challenges that draw us to coaching.
But how can a coach develop a team when players regularly miss practice and games due to other commitments? The short answer is one cannot.
If you’re lucky, you coach a team that sits atop others. Possibly you coach a “select” team, one in which parents have invested significant sums of money for their child to participate. You may coach a team that needs to cut players to reach a manageable sized squad. Or maybe your team is simply the only game in town. In other words, you are a coach who has explicit power. You are in the enviable position of dictating to your players that they attend practices—or else.
The quandary youth coaches face
But in the mainstream of youth sports, most coaches don’t enjoy this level of control. At the bottom of the food chain are the coaches in a community’s developmental sports programs. These coaches typically have only one or two practices per week to prepare for their weekly game. The leagues in which they coach emphasize fun, instruction and equal playing time. Establishing an attendance policy and enforcing it is atypical.
A coach in these programs must instead resort to tactics of persuasion, possibly coupled with minor punitive measures such as not starting a player who misses practice or reducing a player’s minutes in a game. This coach must try to convince each child (or parent) that attending practice is important—both in developing the child’s ability to its fullest and to fulfill the inherent responsibility and obligation each player has to his or her team.
Other approaches a coach may use to address attendance issues include talking with individual parents to determine if they can help. Possibly splitting attendance equally between two competing activities may be an acceptable solution. Also, in certain instances a coach may be able to better match practice times to his or her players’ availability. This is more likely at the beginning of a season before the practice schedules are set.
Most importantly, practices must include a large dose of fun, provide players with instruction they find meaningful, and generate a high level of positive energy. Successful coaches in these programs often pull their players toward team goals through their own personal style of leadership. Ideally, players want to come to practice!
Focus on what you control
Sometimes the dice simply land wrong for a volunteer youth coach. Scheduling conflicts exist and key players on your team regularly miss practice and games.
So what do you do then?
I would suggest that you reset your team expectations and focus more on teaching the individuals who do attend practices. Concentrate on improving each child’s individual skills, providing more instruction and practice repetitions. This is also an opportunity for you to dedicate more time to your beginning players. Since there is less likelihood that these children are involved in competing athletic activities, they will more consistently attend practices. Parents of these children may also realize and appreciate that their child is receiving semi-private training at little or no cost.
From a competitive perspective, your beginners are usually your team’s weak link. But these young players may dramatically improve with added instruction and opportunity, leading to more team success as the season progresses. And should your better players begin to show up toward the end of the season (possibly for a season-ending tournament), your team will be stronger for your efforts teaching the younger beginners.
As I’ve written elsewhere, one of the greatest rewards for a youth coach is to witness the development of a young player’s ability and self-esteem under your tutelage. If you walk away from a season knowing you’ve helped even one child on your team, you have succeeded.
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Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Monday, May 3, 2010
Playing on Too Many Teams
Many young athletes enjoy playing different sports and often excel in more than one. Your child may have the opportunity to play in multiple organized youth sport leagues at the same time. This typically occurs when sport seasons overlap or different leagues in the same sport are scheduled to run at the same time. Examples of organizations that may offer sports participation opportunities include your child’s school, volunteer sports organizations such as the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) teams, local clubs, and local community developmental leagues.
As described elsewhere on this blog and in my book The Joy of Youth Sports, playing multiple sports is beneficial to your child’s development and health. But before you commit to more than one organized activity or team per season, also consider the potential negative effect on your child, your family, and the teams for which your child will play.
Participating in too many activities can potentially burn out your child’s desire to play, harm his or her academics, and also add stress to your family life (e.g. transportation, missed dinners, time away from other duties, etc.). Too many organized activities may also consume other opportunities for your child to enjoy sports—specifically the self-directed neighborhood pickup games that offer essential benefits.
Less obvious is the detrimental effect that the inevitable missed practices and games will have on your child’s teammates and coaches. These individuals may depend on your child’s presence for success. Not only do a player’s skills and talent contribute to the success of a team, but the player’s participation in practice also directly impacts the team’s play. This situation commonly occurs with the “star” athlete—the boy or girl who is good in multiple sports or wants to play in multiple leagues in one sport. This player will show up for a practice or two and some games (the ones that don’t conflict with their more important league’s games). Despite their individual ability, most coaches inevitably wish the boy or girl was on another team.
Good coaches grow their program throughout the year, building upon each prior practice and game. In each practice, they both address mistakes in the prior game and teach new sets, plays, and other more advanced team tactics. They want to work with players to overcome their individual weaknesses. They seek to establish greater team chemistry and bonding. Without your child’s presence at practices, a coach cannot accomplish these tasks and achieve the program’s desired goals.
Although you want to provide your child with the best opportunities, balance your personal interests against those of other parents, players and coaches. Two core values in sports, both at the individual and team level, are respect and responsibility. In team sports, players are responsible to their teammates and must respect their teammate’s needs as well as their own. As a parent, demonstrate and convey these values to your child by realistically committing your child only to teams on which he or she can fully participate.
Read more...
As described elsewhere on this blog and in my book The Joy of Youth Sports, playing multiple sports is beneficial to your child’s development and health. But before you commit to more than one organized activity or team per season, also consider the potential negative effect on your child, your family, and the teams for which your child will play.
Participating in too many activities can potentially burn out your child’s desire to play, harm his or her academics, and also add stress to your family life (e.g. transportation, missed dinners, time away from other duties, etc.). Too many organized activities may also consume other opportunities for your child to enjoy sports—specifically the self-directed neighborhood pickup games that offer essential benefits.
Less obvious is the detrimental effect that the inevitable missed practices and games will have on your child’s teammates and coaches. These individuals may depend on your child’s presence for success. Not only do a player’s skills and talent contribute to the success of a team, but the player’s participation in practice also directly impacts the team’s play. This situation commonly occurs with the “star” athlete—the boy or girl who is good in multiple sports or wants to play in multiple leagues in one sport. This player will show up for a practice or two and some games (the ones that don’t conflict with their more important league’s games). Despite their individual ability, most coaches inevitably wish the boy or girl was on another team.
Good coaches grow their program throughout the year, building upon each prior practice and game. In each practice, they both address mistakes in the prior game and teach new sets, plays, and other more advanced team tactics. They want to work with players to overcome their individual weaknesses. They seek to establish greater team chemistry and bonding. Without your child’s presence at practices, a coach cannot accomplish these tasks and achieve the program’s desired goals.
Although you want to provide your child with the best opportunities, balance your personal interests against those of other parents, players and coaches. Two core values in sports, both at the individual and team level, are respect and responsibility. In team sports, players are responsible to their teammates and must respect their teammate’s needs as well as their own. As a parent, demonstrate and convey these values to your child by realistically committing your child only to teams on which he or she can fully participate.
Read more...
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