Last week, I started pontificating about my coaching philosophy upon a request by a reader. I got so long-winded that I’ll finish up this week!
I recently read an article about youth sports that likened them to meat and potatoes. The basics and love of the game that are instilled at a young age are just like the basics of a meal.
I like gravy on my potatoes; games and competitions are the gravy. Here’s the rub: I love gravy, but I’m not just going to eat it by itself.
When we get to the point where we are asking kids to play too many games, it is like eating gravy by itself. If the focus on fundamentals disappears, the meal is not as satisfying in the long term.
The kids love the games, and so do I. But I also don’t want to get to the point where we’re playing so many games that we don’t have time to practice. Even in a win, there is always something to work on the next day.
I know a coach at the same level as my girls in 5th grade who has his girls playing a 50-game schedule every year; even our varsity doesn’t play that much! I always worry about burnout. It takes a special group of players (and parents) that want to travel all over and give up every weekend to play ball.
Winning is not everything, but there is a fine line to walk there. If a team has an opportunity to win at the end of a game, you need to give them that chance. If everyone has gotten opportunities throughout the game, crunch time can be given over to a group that gives you the best chance to win in the final minutes.
Learning to win and learning to lose are both good skills to have. Understanding that people on a team have different roles is important as well. Still, this has to be done delicately at times. Sometimes it’s easy: you can’t dribble well and thus can’t be a point guard, or you have a hard time throwing the baseball across the diamond and thus can’t be a third baseman. These ideas should be coupled with BUTs. BUT, if you work hard at ballhandling/throwing, maybe it’s something you can do in the future.
And that’s the thing. Sometimes a kid just doesn’t grow as fast as others, but will eventually turn into a good player. We can’t give up on that kid just because he or she doesn’t have the skills now. Kristina Cole is a great example of a basketball player who was average in ability coming into 7th grade. Then she grew and continued to work hard at her game. Before I knew it, I never got a chance to coach her in 8th grade because she got moved up and eventually scored 1000 points on varsity. But she was given chances along the way and encouraged to keep working hard.
Matt Dahle was pretty average at baseball when he played for me in 7th grade. He struggled at catching and hitting, but loved the game. He got opportunities to try some things. He also grew and kept working at his game. Last season he was an integral part of the Panther baseball team that won the Gopher Conference.
There are always exceptions. Some groups of kids can and want to play a lot of games, and it will only help them; the year’s varsity girls basketball team is a good example. Other groups flop from too much pressure or from maybe missing out on players that could have contributed.
Let’s keep these kids around as long as we can and see what happens. Let’s not drive them away through disinterest or burnout. It might lead to great things for Panther athletics in the future.
Word of the Week: This week’s word is pontificate, which means to be pompous or dogmatic, as in, “The columnist pontificated so much that people wondered if there was anything on which he didn’t have an opinion.” Impress your friends and confuse your enemies!