12/21/24
May 01, 2003
"They aren't soft-headed wusses at all.": The Positive Coaching Alliance is on a mission to "to transform the culture of youth sports to give all young athletes the opportunity for a positive, character-building experience."
posted by kirkaracha to culture at 08:56 AM - 6 comments
I suppose the question is, do we want to build a nation of winners, which is impossible because not everyone can win, or do we want a nation of cool, fit dudes who enjoy sport, participate in sport and recognise the aesthetic pleasures that sport provides? I refer to any nation, not yours, or mine. I am not against winners, clearly not everyone can win the 100 metres, but not everyone is going to be as good at 16 as they were at 10, and not everybody is going to be as bad at 16 as they were at ten. If potential stars are lost because they become disillusioned at a young age, it's a shame. My eldest nipper, who is 8 started football training with a local team at the start of last season, when he was 7. He soon gave up because the "coaches", frankly were clueless, even though they all attended coaching courses. In truth the kid wasn't very good, but was mad keen. In two hours of training he would be lucky to touch the ball half a dozen times. Most of the time was spent just hanging around, which is no chuffing fun on a Welsh mountain top in November I can tell you. The problem was a winning mentality and an obsession with sytems. They would explain a technique or a theory (badly) then let everyone have a chance. There were usually about 60-70 nippers there so you can imagine how long that took. Then there would be a general free for all of about 20 a side (2 games) for 10 minutes at the end. Fucking hopeless and another keen young kid with loads of potential to improve lost to the game, probably for ever. And it's all counterproductive. For years the Dutch have emphasised that youngsters should not play competitively, and they don't. The emphasis is on learning to love the ball, be comfortable on the ball and learn each position, so you feel comfortable wherever you find yourself on the pitch. And that small nation turns out world class player after world class player, year in, year out. Once a generation England turns out a Wayne Rooney or Gascoigne; laughable. Meanwhile the general populations of Britain and the US become fatter and fatter, because at a young age they learnt to hate sport. There's more to life than winning, comrades.
posted by Fat Buddha at 01:31 PM on May 01, 2003
Hear hear, FB! In high school I played three sports - Wrestling (I was quite good), Soccer (I was average), and Track & Field (I was somewhere between so-so and god-awful depending on the event). Track I only did because I wanted to keep fit for the other two. As it turns out, track was the one I had the most fun at during the meets, because our team was so bad that we took pride in individuals achieving new bests rather than winning an event. An extreme example: We all had to do three events because our team was so small. Since I was already running the 400 and 800, I wasn't excited about the prospect of more running. Instead, I did shot put (and I wrestled at 112 and 119 lbs. that year). Only twice did I ever manage to not come in dead last, but those were great meets, and I still remember both of them and how pleased I was with myself, and how psyched my teammates were for me. It was supposed to be a joke, sure, but I can't tell you how hard I tried to throw as far as some of the giant lard-asses on the other teams, and how gratifying it was to have managed it those two times. Good times, good times. Fuck the standings - I would gladly have traded any of my wrestling medals to have done that a third time.
posted by Samsonov14 at 04:01 PM on May 01, 2003
What FB described didn’t sound like an overemphasis on winning, it just sounded like poor coaching and poor organization. While I don’t disagree that a bad experience in athletics (or anything) at a young age can discourage someone from ever participating again, I just don’t see the issue being as simple as win or lose. Kids need proper encouragement (which seems to be the manifesto of the PCA) and they need to understand ‘losing’ does not equal ‘loser’. Some of the worst incidents of overzealous parenting and coaching I’ve seen have come in leagues where there was no scoring, where everybody ‘wins’. I can’t help but feel that the bottom line is good parenting and can only hope that as my three rugrats progress I don’t forget my own words.
posted by kloeprich at 07:34 PM on May 01, 2003
I take your point kloeprich. When my nipper wins the punching competition at karate or finishes miles ahead of the opposition at swimming I cannot describe the profundity of the pride I feel, so I recognise the complexity of it. I hate the everyone is a winner mentality as much as the win at all costs one. I love sports, all sports and love competing, but being a bit of a woman (as it transpires) the very act of competing well in a fair fight is good enough for me. While I enjoy winning, so long as it has been a good contest I don't mind losing. When I was a nipper we didn't really have organised sports and coaches; everyone just tipped up at the local park and found their own level. They were happier, more innocent times all round I think.
posted by Fat Buddha at 04:10 PM on May 02, 2003
vito90: Sorry if I worded the post in a way that made it confusing. I think the PCA is generally on the right track (finding a balance between win-at-all-costs and not keeping score), but they're a little too formulaic (5:1 ratio of praise to blame) for my taste. So I guess what I'm saying is I agree with their philosophy, but maybe not the specifics of their approach. I don't remember a lot of extreme parenting as a young athlete, but when I was about 16, I was a last minute replacement for an second base umpire who didn't show up for one of my kid brother's baseball games. I'd never been a baseball umpire, and didn't know much about the game.* There was a close play at second, I made a call, and the parents on the team of the boy I called out stormed onto the field and screamed obscenities at me. (In retrospect, I think I probably blew the call, but what about the lesson of learning to live with the ref's mistakes?) Now, I play recreational soccer a couple of times a week, and through a combination of factors I usually end up on teams that don't win many games. I still love to play even if we lose, as long as we play well. Last week one of my teams lost 3-0; the other team had more skill and we were one player down the whole game and didn't have subs. Their last two goals came on fast breaks at the end of the game when we were playing aggressive to try and catch up. So we gave them a tough game and I was proud, even though we lost. * I was in the mooning-about-girls phase**, and I've got the scar on my lip from being hit by a line drive when I should've been paying attention to prove it. Not in the same game, though. ** It might be more accurate to say the mooning-about-girls phase had just begun.
posted by kirkaracha at 12:50 AM on May 03, 2003
Well, good for me. I read the first few paragraphs and came in here to rant about soft parenting driving the competitive nature right out of children. But then I thought I might be missing the point, read it in its entirety, and realized that yes, I was missing the point. Kirkaracha's quote above does NOT describe the children at issue, but the organization that espouses fair play and good sportsmanship in addition to "be[ing] fierce and friendly on the field". So the pendulum on sports parenting, long leaning towards the overzealous, then overcompensated to the point where some leagues don't keep score so nobody loses, begins to trickle to the middle. A good thing. If a kid can't learn how to lose at a sports game then he's going to have to learn when there might be more at stake. I believe this is the SpoFi thread and NY Magazine article referenced in Kirkaracha's link, and here is the infamous Rick Reilly Dodgeball piece.