Random Thoughts from a Restless Mind

Do you remember playing sports when you were a kid? If not, if you are old like me, how about do you remember the last time you drove by a bunch of kids playing some sport or other in the absence of any adults? What I remember about both of those experiences is the sound. It’s a beautiful sound, and it cascades over any and all who are within earshot. It’s the sound of children having FUN!

Somewhere, sometime, there was a very significant change in what it meant to play a sport when you were very young. It used to be, at least when I was a kid, that sports were really just games, and the responsibility for playing a game rested with the kids who are doing the playing.  I distinctly remember neighborhood versus neighborhood baseball games, true nine on nine games played with wooden bats and a hardball, not a batting helmet or adult insight. We could play pickup basketball for literally hours any place we could find a hoop. To find this kind of scene nowadays, at least with children over the age of 10, you have to visit the bleached sand fields of South Africa or the barrios of Rio de Janeiro and watch the bearfoot urchins play their games with whatever they can find that will roll.

Here in America, though, it seems you can’t find any kind of game being played by kids of any age without uniforms, lined fields, and of course, adults. Think about it. When is the last time you drove by an open field and saw 10 kids chasing a soccer ball all by themselves? It couple of kids on a local tennis court whacking a ball back and forth? Or how about this one, a bunch of boys all dirty and muddy playing football without pads? Admit it… you can’t remember EVER seeing that, can you?

As long as we adults are going to be present there is one final role that we must play in youth sports: we must ensure that our children are having FUN! The younger the children involved, the higher priority this becomes. As offensive as it is to hear a parent screaming at his or her child during a high school soccer game, it’s borderline repulsive to hear the same kind of language directed at an eight-year-old.  It’s a game for heaven sakes! These kids are playing! Let’s have a little fun.

I know, I know, this is just one more example of some mamby–pamby,  soft in the middle American parent who doesn’t have the guts to push his kids to excel, right? The only problem with this, of course, is that this description couldn’t be further from the truth. I LOVE to win! I LOVED coaching when I had permission to try to win. Loved it. The whole “everyone plays the same number of minutes”, feel good, raise the self–esteem thing was really hard for me. I certainly got it, and certainly was on board when the children were really young, elementary school or junior high school, but I’m also of the mindset that it’s perfectly okay to try to win once you reach a certain age, probably high school.

But even there these are still kids, and they should still be having fun.

Let me indulge myself (as if this whole blog thing wasn’t self–indulgent enough) and share a couple of memories. There are all kinds of basketball games I remember from when I was a kid, but the one memory that came to me first while thinking about this was one of the very first practices after I made the JV basketball team in high school. We played “dribble tag”, with a towel tucked in our shorts and each of us dribbling a basketball. The object of the game was to pull your teammates towell, knocking him out of the game. Man, I just don’t remember laughing so much, or having so much fun on a basketball court before or since.

My sons each have a memory from junior high school football–the same one, actually just separated by three or four years. We live in Cleveland; in the fall it rains in Cleveland. Every year there is an opportunity for a mud practice, a session where pretty much no useful coaching is possible because it’s raining too hard and the field is too muddy. Cancel practice? Heck no! This is when the boys get to perfect their mudslides, mud dives, and mud flops. At the end of this particular session, and it happens just this way every single year, the young defensive coordinator brings the boys over to the garage and literally hoses them down with the church garden hose. He then piles them into the back of his pickup truck, refusing to allow the parents to befoul their cars with these muddy, wet, sloppy boys, and drives the kids home. The fun of this pracitce is what both of my sons remembered first.

Even playing sports in college it can be fun. I was a cornerback at Williams College. I’ve written before that I was good, but probably not nearly as good as I could have been or should have been because I didn’t work hard enough at the game. I was probably a “middle of the bell curve” defensive back for my day. When I was a junior the other starting cornerback was REALLY good. Despite that, the two of us had a rather poor week of practice one time, and the defensive coordinator, Coach Farley, gleefully pointed this out. “Ack… Look at my cornerbacks. One’s bad and the others worse!” Well, the next day every single defensive back rolled into practice with some sort of denigrating label on his helmet. Stu was “Bad”, I was “Worse”, and we were joined by our teammates “Terrible”, “Awful”, “Putrid”, etc. We got ahold of Coach Farley’s coat and taped “Tremendous” on the back. THAT was fun!

These are games, these sports. Always have been, and it’s really our responsibility to make sure that they always will be. We adults who are involved in youth sports need to make sure that our children are safe, and that they ( and we) take advantage of the life lessons that can be learned while playing sports. We must also accept the responsibility to make playing sports  fun. (If you want a great example of how to make fitness fun take a walk over to thebrandXmethod.com sometime. These folks make WORKING OUT again, fun.)

I think there’s a role for adults in youth sports, I really do. I’m convinced that the role has expanded too much, and the fact that most of us have never seen children playing sports without uniforms, or officials, or coaches is the most damning testimony to this fact. If we are going to be involved it is our responsibility to fully accept our three roles. Keep our children safe. Teach them through the vehicle of sports.

Help them have fun!

At the news conference following a heartbreaking overtime loss, the head coach of Boise State had this to say: “one player can’t lose a football game all by himself. A player can WIN the game, but no one can lose it by themselves.” How good is that?! Seriously, after losing the opportunity to represent every underdog in the history of forever, in a football championship game for the ages, what does the coach do? He sees the situation for what it is, what it always is when you are an adult involved in youth sports; he sees this as just another “teachable moment.”

It’s gone so far beyond the cliché that they are life lessons to be learned by children playing sports that many of the adults who are involved in youth sports seem to have taken this for granted and just assumed that it will happen automatically. BZZZZZZT. Sorry. It doesn’t work like that. Never did. The second most important role that adults play in youth sports is to foster and facilitate learning among the children playing sports.

It’s pretty easy in the beginning. Heck, if you are coaching very little kids you actually have to teach them the rules of the game! I once tried to teach a bunch of kids in England to play baseball. Piece of cake, you say. They play a game called “rounders” which is very similar to baseball, with a little bit of  Cricket mixed in.  Rounders doesn’t have foul lines, though, and English kids have no concept of what a foul ball is. I spent pretty much the entire game trying to explain why a perfectly good hit just to the right of first base didn’t count. In the beginning being an adult in youth sports is ALL about learning, ALL about teaching.

There’s a really cool phase in youth sports, whether you are a coach, booster, or simply an interested spectator, when the kids get the rules, they know how to keep score, and you are simultaneously teaching them technique and nuance while at the same time trying to win. Junior high school, Junior varsity in high school, times like this. This can be the most satisfying time to be an adult involved in sports. Somewhere in high school the “win mode” kicks in so strongly that teaching and learning can go by the boards, all teaching and learning geared toward just one measure, the one lighting up the scoreboard.

It’s not just about the game though of course. This would be a pretty trivial post if it was, eh? No, playing sports, especially team sports, leaves open all kinds of possibilities for learning. Even if you are the absolute star of a football team or basketball team or any other type of team, being part of the team means learning how to depend on your teammates. It means learning how to have other people depend on you. You have certain responsibilities, and the success of the team depends on you and everyone else doing exactly what they’ve been taught to do at exactly the right time. I’m going to my office in a very short time where I will be a member of yet another team. All of the lessons I’ve learned from all of my teams over the years come into play every time I go to the office. Same thing in the operating room this morning. Good outcomes depend on impeccable teamwork, with each team member doing exactly what he or she should be doing. Some may get more credit than others, at least publicly, but playing team sports should teach each athlete that he or she succeeds only if the team succeeds. The adults who are involved in youth sports have an obligation to teach this lesson to both the stars and the grunts.

Winning and losing are important measures, but it really DOES matter how you play the game. Did you play within the rules, even when no one could see whether or not you did? Did you cheat, break a rule that gave you or your team and advantage? Some of the individual sports are the best opportunities to learn these lessons. Have you seen those PGA commercials about the First Tee program for youngsters playing golf? Integrity and fidelity to the rules are mentioned by everyone. Adults should not only teach this but should also model these behaviors and attributes. What is your athlete learning if you use the “foot wedge” in the rough?

It’s possible to learn some very valuable lessons about how one might meet adversity in life simply by playing youth sports. How do you handle winning? Success that just can’t be hidden? Conversely, how do you handle it when life throws you an enormous curveball, and you look terrible on a swing and a miss? Humility in victory, and grace in defeat are lessons that are there to be learned by our children playing sports. Sometimes all it takes is a gentle reminder, maybe even just setting a quiet example. There are other times when the designated adult must demonstrate a firm hand in teaching the lesson. I have visions of golf clubs helicoptering across fairways, tennis rackets splintering during fits of rage, trash talking and posturing under the basket or in the end zone. Failing to intervene and teach the PROPER lesson is inexcusable if you are the adult present at those times.

It doesn’t sound easy, does it? I mean, that’s a lot of responsibility. It kind of sounds like… WORK! And it is, if you get right down to it. The adults who are involved in youth sports have great responsibilities, and they really have no right to expect a pass when it comes to fulfilling these responsibilities. This goes for coaches on the sidelines, officials on the field, parents in the stands, and boosters and administrators behind the scene. The opportunity to teach our children about fair play, following the rules, and being a good teammate are there for the taking. Even when it becomes time to win, as we saw in the example above when Boise State was on the verge of making history, there but for a missed 26 yard field goal, the imperative to teach our children, to foster their learning through sports, is one that we simply must seize as the adults involved in youth sports. Just like that head coach at Boise State.

They may not know it now, but every one of those Boise State football players walked off that field with a win because their coach played his role.

Among the many things that I have called over the course of my lifetime, none has been more meaningful than “Coach”. I spent time on the sidelines and on the bench for about 10 years coaching junior high school sports.  When my own children moved on to high school sports I retired to the committee rooms and the grandstands where adults who don’t coach play their role in youth sports.

There are three roles that adults can and should play in youth sports. First and foremost, all adults who are involved in youth sports should have as their primary goal the safety of the children playing the games. Secondly, kids who play sports should be guided by the adults around those games, taught by their elders not only about the games but also taught the life lessons that one can glean from playing sports. Finally, we ARE talking about kids here; the last important role that adults have in youth sports is to make them FUN!

Let’s start by talking about safety.

I suppose we should probably define youth, huh? There’s not much to debate the inclusion of grade school or junior high school kids. Sure, reasonable people can disagree about the importance of playing time and, when to start cutting kids and when to start playing to win, but through eighth grade there is simply no question that these kids would be considered in the “youth” category. In some quarters it might be a little more dicey with high school athletics, but when it comes to safety I don’t see how you can separate high school kids from their younger brothers and sisters. Protecting ALL of these kids is job number one for every adult involved in youth sports.

A quick word about college sports: the brightest, clearest dividing line between youth sports and sports as commerce, or job, is clearly the line that separates college and other athletic programs aimed at very young adults, and professional sports. But even here that line might be a little fuzzy. There are reasonable people who would say that Division I athletes on scholarship are de facto professional athletes. I suppose I’d feel a little more comfortable with this if a larger percentage of these young men and women went on to earn a living from their sport after college. Certainly we can agree that divisions II and III in the NCAA would still constitute youth sports, don’t you think? For my mind only the most cynical among us would draw a line between divisions I and II when thinking about the safety of the athletes.

So, how do we ensure the safety of our children when they are playing sports? It starts at the very top with league commissioners and athletic directors. Every organization that sponsors athletic competition with youth participants, be it a league or a school or some other organization needs to be clear from the outset that job number one is keeping children safe. Commissioners need to set clear guidelines, rules that will be enforced that put safety first. No spearing in football. Elbows in on the basketball court. No head shots–not a SINGLE headshot–in hockey or lacrosse.

Each one of these directives needs to be clearly communicated to the athletic directors or program directors responsible for individual schools or teams. These men and women in turn need to hire or appoint coaches who will make it their primary mission to teach the children in their charge how to play the game safely. Not only must the coaches do this on the practice field, but as they roam the sidelines and pace in front of the bench they must bring this to the games as well. How many times have you been in the stands and cringed when a defensive coordinator screamed at his players, exhorting them to “take someone’s head off?” I can’t count the number of times I’ve been sick to my stomach watching a coach dance with glee as a long pole defenseman stands over the attackman he cross-checked in the back of the head. No amount of teaching in practice can withstand this type of “coaching”.

During games coaches need to look first to the well-being of their players; only after assuring that they are okay can winning and losing enter the equation. I’m certainly not proud to admit this, but I remember one clear instance where I probably should have kept a star athlete on the sidelines during a football game. I actually had my very favorite coaching job–I was the assistant to the assistant to the assistant backfield coach, responsible only for catching the kids doing something right and praising them for when they did. But I was the quasi-team doctor as well, and when our star halfback limped off the field with a sprained ankle, I really probably should have overruled the head coach, the offense coordinator, and the young man’s father and kept him on the sidelines, at least a little bit longer. Coaches need to allow themselves to be trumped by trainers and doctors.

The ultimate arbiters of safety, however, are the officials on the field. Whether it’s grade school, junior high school, high school, or even college sports, the officials who enforce the rules must make the safety of the participants their primary concern. Oh, I know, I know, the officials are supposed to be invisible, doing everything they can possibly do not to impose themselves on the game, not to affect the outcome of the game. The players should win or lose; the officials should not take a role. Blah, blah, balh. All well and good, until the retaliation for the retaliation for the initial hard tackle from behind results in a three ligament knee tear for that girl who was just about to get that shot off in soccer. All well and good, until they’re wheeling the center off on a stretcher, unconscious from the elbow he took to the jaw as he skated through mid-ice. All well and good, because the officials lost control of the game, allowing dangerous plays earlier for fear that they might “affect the outcome.”

Bullshit.

As far as I’m concerned the greatest responsibility for protecting our children on the various courts and fields of play lies with the officials. The referees and umpires who are right there in the middle of the game MUST protect the children playing the games. Dangerous play just cannot be allowed. Officials have lots of latitude, and every sport has rules, penalties for dangerous behavior. Blow the whistle! Throw the flag! Pull out that red card! Set the tone early and let it be known that dangerous play will not be tolerated.

My youngest child, in ways too many to count an athletic clone of his father, finished his high school lacrosse career sitting on a bucket on the sidelines, sobbing as he vomited. He was vomiting because he had just suffered a concussion, his third, this one the result of a vicious crosscheck to the back of his head. The play occurred just feet from the sidelines, yards from the referee looking directly at the play. Unbelievably, he hesitated. He HESITATED! He actually gave thought to not even pulling his flag. Eventually, out came the flag and the verdict was rendered: one minute for unnecessary roughness. Almost the smallest infraction in the game of lacrosse. One minute for a blatant headshot, right in front of the referee, right in front of Randy’s coach.

The trainer on duty, a lovely young woman, very empathetic… very concerned, hovered over him. Was he crying because his head hurt so much, she asked? No, he sobbed, he was crying because he knew he had a concussion, and he knew that that his playing role in youth sports was now over, his days as a lacrosse player now officially done because it was no longer safe for him to play. How many more, I asked.  How many more children would be hurt before that referee said enough? How many more, I asked him out loud in a silent stadium, my voice the only sound, clearly heard by every ear in the stadium. Everyone turned to look at the father escorting his injured child off the field. Everyone, that is, save one, the coward who couldn’t look at the child he had just failed to protect.

Officials, indeed any adult, who will not protect the children who are playing have NO role in youth sports.