Thursday, November 20, 2008

Youth Soccer in America - How do we measure success?

From the US Youth Soccer Technical Department – For weekly content from the US Youth Soccer Technical Department, check out their blog at www.USYouthSoccer.com/Blog

"There are already a multitude of articles saying that winning and losing are not the correct measures of success in youth soccer, instead we should measure the development of the players. OK, perfect. The next obvious follow-up question then is, 'How do we measure the development of a single player?' If US Youth Soccer can answer this question in a way that is helpful to committed coaches and understandable to parents with limited playing experience (and paying the money to have their kids involved), they may be able to turn this overly organized youth soccer system of ours into a much more effective development program."
- Cary McCormick, Arlington, Va.

Indeed how do we measure player development?

Too often in America, a professional sport model is used in measuring youth sports success. Youth soccer is not immune to this misapplied standard. For soccer the situation is made worse by a desire of many adults to use measuring tools from other sports. In fact, it is maddening to many adults that soccer is not as black and white as with some sports in judging successful play. Many team sports played in our nation are statistically driven and coach centered.

Soccer is neither of those!

Indeed just like the Laws of the Game our sport has many shades of grey within it. As a player centered sport some coaches become disillusioned as they learn that they are the 'guide on the side' and not the 'sage on the stage'. Too many soccer coaches bring a military focused attitude to the youth sport environment. This coach-centered perspective has been handed down to us from other sports and coaching styles of past generations.

In many sports the coach makes crucial decisions during the competition. In soccer players make the primary decisions during the match; the coach's decisions are of secondary importance. Ego-centric personalities will find coaching soccer troublesome. The other significant group of adults at a youth soccer match is parents. They too often have their view of the match colored by the professional model and by a view of "coaching" that is portrayed in the media. Although it is changing, the majority of parents watching their kids play soccer have never played the game. In fact the statistics show that most of today's parents never played any team sport. So their only exposure on how to measure sporting success is gleaned from the sports media. The sports media predominately report on adult teams at the college and professional levels. These adult measurements of team performance should not and cannot be applied to youth sports.

The analogy can be made to a youngster's academic development in preparation for work in the adult business world. While the child is in primary and secondary school, the corporate world measurements of success are not applied. Those business assessments are not yet appropriate because the school-aged student does not yet have the tools to compete in the adult business environment. The knowledge and skills to be a competitor in business are still being taught and learned. This holds true in soccer as well!

Soccer is an adult game designed by adults for adults to play. Adults enjoy the game so much that they have shared it with their children. Yet adults make errors when we bring our adult performance and outcome based thinking into the developing player's world.

Alright fine you say. So how do we measure success? How do parents know if the team coach is doing a good job of teaching soccer to the players? How does the novice coach know if the kids are growing within the game?

As a way to measure success, let's look at the facts provided a by a study by the Youth Sports Institute, on what players want from their sports experience.

TRUTHS about children and sports

* Fun is pivotal - if it's not fun, young people won't play a sport
* Skill development is a crucial aspect of fun - it is more important than winning even among the best athletes
* The most rewarding challenges of sports are those that lead to self-knowledge
* Intrinsic rewards (self-knowledge that grows out of self-competition) are more important in creating lifetime athletes than extrinsic rewards are (victory or attention from others)1

During childhood allow the kids to have a good time playing the game while instilling the passion to love playing soccer on their own. Only a passion for the game can lead to success.

"Success is something players take ownership of and in time it becomes personally meaningful. Success is a process, not a product. The process of doing one's best is the key to success. The determining criterion of success is whether a player gave his or her best that day. Doing one's best is the most important statement a player can make about the importance of an activity and the meaning it has. With years of experience comes self-knowledge and self-awareness. So players learn over time what it means to do your best, to give 100%."2

"Winning isn't everything, but trying to is!" – Rainer Martens, sports psychologist

Motives for Participation in Youth Sport
Reasons for Participating in Non-school Sports (study of 3,900 7 to 12 graders)

Boys Girls
1. To have fun 1. To have fun
2. To do something I'm good at 2. To stay in shape
3. To improve my skills 3. To get exercise
4. For the excitement of competition 4. To improve my skills
5. To stay in shape 5. To do something I am good at
6. For the challenge of competition 6. To learn new skills
7. To get exercise 7. For the excitement of competition
8. To learn new skills 8. To play as part of a team
9. To play as part of a team 9. To make new friends
10. To go to a higher level of competition 10. For the challenge of competition3

Truths & Motives for Participation
1. Have fun and to enjoy participating in sport.
2. Learn new skills and to improve on existing sports skills.
3. Become physically fit and to enjoy good health
4. Enjoy the challenge and excitement of sports participation and competition.
5. Enjoy a team atmosphere and to be with friends.4

Suggestions for Parents

* Remember the truths and talk to your children with them in mind. After a game, ask questions about fun, skill improvement, learning experiences and having a good time with friends.
* See yourself as part of the team and supportive of the coach; avoid setting up a conflict in your child's mind between his or her parents and coaches. If you want to affect the coaching, volunteer to help.
* Develop perspective: remember what you could do at your children's ages; don't judge them by what you can do now. Kids will not become great players overnight.
* Develop an understanding of what your children want from sports—not all children want the same things. Determine if they want to be involved at all.

Basic Urges of Children

* Movement
* Success and Approval
* Peer Acceptance & Social Competence
* Cooperation & Competition
* Physical Fitness & Attractiveness
* Adventure
* Creative Satisfaction
* Rhythmic Expression
* To Know 5

Note: Winning alone is not a motive for participation by boys and girls.

"We are asking our players to compete before they have learned how to play."
-Jay Miller, U.S. U17 Men's National Team coach 2001

In general the benefits of youth sports for children include character building, humility in winning, leadership growth opportunities, cooperative skills, social skills and dealing with obstacles, losing and competition. We employ soccer to develop well adjusted, good citizens.

Measurements of Success in Youth Soccer
Short-Term

* Fun - Do the players smile and laugh? Do the players look forward to playing? The first question from the player's family should be, "Did you have fun today?"
* Fair Play - Does a player demonstrate a sense of sportsmanship through words and actions?
* Laws of the Game - Do the players know and follow the rules of soccer?
* Health and Fitness - Are the players physically fit enough to meet the fitness demands of the game? Are they developing good nutrition and hydration habits befitting an athlete?
* Friendships - Are the players creating new friends within the team and with players from other teams?
* Skills - Are the players demonstrating a growing number of ball skills and are they gradually becoming more proficient in those skills?

Long-Term

* Commitment - How do the players answer when asked at the end of a game, "Did you try your best?"
* Roles in the Team - More important than learning a position, are the players learning about positioning? Knowing where the right back or the center forward spot is on the field is important, yet learning how to move tactically within the game is far more important. Do all of the players get exposed to playing all of the positions?
* Leadership - Are players being given the opportunity to take on leadership roles and responsibilities? Are the coaches and team managers teaching leadership?
* Tactics - Are the players experimenting with new tactics in matches? The coaches must teach new tactics to the players in training sessions and then allow them to try out the tactics in a match, regardless of how that might affect the outcome!
* Retention - Do the players come back year after year?

Retention is recognized as a short term measure of success in youth soccer and developing well adjusted citizens is another long term measure of success in youth sports. In a 2007 US Youth Soccer survey 96 percent of parents responded that one of the benefits they desire for youth soccer to provide to their child is fun. 97 percent of the parents surveyed feel the reason their child participates in youth soccer is fun.

What Parents Can Do

* Talk positively with their children before and after activities
* Supply transportation
* Assist with supervision
* Officiate games
* Help with administration
* Assist with the organization of special events

Statistics, win-loss-tie records, goals for/goals against, saves, number of corner kicks and so on are straight forward ways to measure what happened in a game. Those unfamiliar with soccer find the use of those measurements comforting as they help them define a sport they find confusing. Yet those measurements fail to show the complete picture of a random skill, open-ended, transitional sport with no timeouts. There is an immeasurable organized chaos factor in soccer.

How can one measure or quantify the unexpected 60 yard dribble and goal of Diego Maradona in the 1986 World Cup? What measurement of success can explain how some player, somewhere in the world, decades ago, spontaneously did a bicycle kick in a match making that move a part of soccer from then on?

The bottom line is that statistics in soccer are largely meaningless. From this thought springs the reality that soccer perhaps is the cruelest of team sports. It may be the only team sport where a team could have the majority of ball possession, outshoot the other team and still lose the match. If you have played soccer long enough you have been the team that was much better than the opposition and lost. You have also been the team that was outplayed by the opposition and won. The win-loss record does not accurately show how the game was played, how the players performed or how well the coach prepared the team to play the game.

Scientific research has concluded that it takes eight-to-twelve years of training for a talented player to reach elite levels. This is called the 10-year or 10,000 hour rule, which translates to slightly more than three hours of practice daily for ten years (Ericsson, et al., 1993; Ericsson and Charness, 1994, Bloom, 1985, Salmela et al., 1998). Unfortunately, parents and coaches in many sports still approach training with an attitude best characterized as "peaking by Friday," where a short-term approach is taken to training and performance with an over-emphasis on immediate results. We now know that a long-term commitment to practice and training is required to produce elite players in all sports.

Sports can be classified as early specialization or late specialization sports. Late specialization sports, including athletics, combative sports, cycling, racquet sports, rowing and all team sports require a generalized approach to early training. For these sports, the emphasis during the first two phases of training should be on the development of general motor and technical-tactical skills.

Late Specialization Model
Stage 1 – Fundamental Stage
Age: 6-9 years
Objective: Learn all fundamental movement skills (build overall motor skills)

Stage 2 – Learning to Train Stage
Age: 8-12 years
Objective: Learn all fundamental soccer skills (build overall sports skills)

Stage 3 – Training to Train Stage
Age: 11-16 years
Objectives: Build the aerobic base, build strength towards the end of the phase and further develop sport-specific skills (build the "engine" and consolidate soccer specific skills)

Stage 4 – Training to Compete Stage
Age: 15-18 years
Objectives: Optimize fitness preparation and sport, individual and position-specific skills as well as performance (optimize "engine", skills and performance)

Stage 5 – Training to Win Stage
Age: 17 years and older
Objectives: Maximize fitness preparation and sport, individual and position specific skills as well as performance (maximize "engine", skills and performance)

Stage 6 – Retirement/Retention Stage
Objectives: Retain players for coaching, administration, officials, etc.6
It is certainly the stance of US Youth Soccer to focus more on match performance than outcome; yet this is not to say that players should not strive to win. There's nothing wrong with winning! Trying to win is desirable and praiseworthy. It means trying your best. Indeed trying to play your best (match performance) often leads to winning. But not always! Remember the outcome of the game is not a reason why kids play! Players and coaches should diligently work to improve their performance. This is the drive for excellence as opposed to success.

Success does not breed success; it breeds failure. It is failure, which breeds success. If that advice seems patently absurd, think about the careers of many famous winners:

* Babe Ruth struck out 1,333 times. In between his strikeouts he hit 714 homeruns.
* Martina Navratilova lost 21 of her first 24 matches against archrival Chris Evert. She resolved to hit more freely on the big points and beat Evert thirty-nine out of their next 57 matches. No woman tennis pro has ever won as many matches or as many tournaments, including a record nine Wimbledon singles titles as Navratilova who retired from professional tennis at age 50.
* Abraham Lincoln failed twice in business and was defeated in six state and national elections before being elected president of the United States.
* Michael Jordan was cut from his junior high school basketball team, before becoming a sports icon.
* Theodor S. Geisel wrote a children's book that was rejected by 23 publishers. The 24 publisher sold six million copies of it –the first Dr. Seuss book – and that book and its successors are still staples in every child's library.

Consider the times when you tried to learn a new game or sport. Did you get it perfect the first day? Not likely. A former teammate once told me that he did get one sport right the first time he tried it. We asked what he meant and he said, "It was the first day of snow skiing classes. I skied all day long and I didn't fall down once. I was so elated; I felt so good. So I skied up to the ski instructor, and I told him of my great day. You know what the ski instructor said? He told me, 'Personally I think you had a lousy day.' I was stunned. 'What do you mean lousy day? I thought the objective was to stand up on these boards, not fall down.' The ski instructor looked me straight in the eye and replied, 'Sir, if you're not falling down, you're not learning.'"

The ski instructor understood that if you can stand up on your skis all day long the first time out, you're doing only what you already know how to do, not pushing yourself to try anything new or difficult.

If you always play it safe you aren't going to improve yourself because when you try to do something you don't know how to do, you'll fall down. That's guaranteed! Nothing is ever done perfectly the first time someone tries it – not in business, not in school and most certainly not in soccer. The point isn't to promote failure for failure's sake, of course. We don't advocate for a moment that failure ought to be the objective of any endeavor. Instead, we advocate learning. We want American players to be leaders and not look for someone to blame when mistakes are made while expanding their soccer horizons. Instead ask, "What can be learned from the experience?"

Trying new ball skills or new tactics, a new set play or a new formation will cause errors during matches. Yet if the players do not feel they are allowed to try out these new talents in a match, when will those talents become a part of their game? The sounds coming from the spectators at a youth match should be cheers for when a player tries something new. Parents can measure their child's success in soccer by the improving athletic ability of their child, by the growing confidence and self-reliance of the player, by the emergence of refined ball skills, by the opportunity afforded by the coach to play in different positions on the team, by the taking on of leadership and responsibility, by the demonstration of fair play and by the smiles. The parents will know that there is a chance for success when they see the players and coaches striving for excellence!

"There are many people, particularly in sports who think that success and excellence is the same thing and they are not the same thing. Excellence is something that is lasting and dependable and largely within a person's control. In contrast, success is perishable and is often outside our control… If you strive for excellence, you will probably be successful eventually… people who put excellence in first place have the patience to end up with success… An additional burden for the victim of the success mentality is that he is threatened by the success of others and resents real excellence. In contrast, the person fascinated by quality is excited when he sees it in others."
- Joe Paterno – Penn State football coach – 1990

Striving to improve individual, group and team performance is more important at the youth level than the outcome. Simultaneously players should play to win. Coaches should teach and develop the players as they learn how to win. Parents should support the players and coaches. Intrinsic success is by its nature more difficult to measure than extrinsic success. A trophy is more tangible to an adult than the exhilaration a child feels while playing soccer. The final measure of success for parents of their child's soccer experience will require a good deal of patience from the adults. That measurement is the free choice of the child to stay in the game!

In soccer circles it is agreed that four groups of adults support the youth game. Parents, coaches, administrators and referees have an equal obligation to the players. That obligation is to live by the vision you have just read!

"We must work to create an environment to develop the American player's growth and development! In the past we have tried to train the Dutch way, the Brazilian way, etc. We can and will together create the finest players in the world if we understand the growth, development and specific characteristics of our youth. Distributing the body of information from the "Y" License is the first step."
- Dr. Thomas Fleck

In matters of style, swim with the current. In matters of principle, stand like a rock.

Mission Statement
US Youth Soccer is a non-profit and educational organization whose mission is to foster the physical, mental and emotional growth and development of America's youth through the sport of soccer at all levels of age and competition.

Sources
1 Ewing, M.E., & Seefeldt. V. (1990). American youth sport participation. American Footwear Association, North Palm Beach, FL. Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association (SGMA).

2 Fine, Aubrey H., Ph.D. & Sachs, Michael L., Ph.D. (1997). The Total Sports Experience for Kids. Diamond Communications

3 Ewing, M. & Seefeldt, V., (1989). Participation and attrition patterns in American agency-sponsored and interscholastic sports: An executive summary. Final report Sporting Goods Manufacturer's Association(North Palm Beach, FL: Sporting Goods Manufacturer's Association) as cited from Weinberg & Gould (2007). Foundations of Sport & Exercise Psychology. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.

4 Cox, R., (2002). Sport Psychology: Concepts and Applications 5th Ed. (p.108). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

5 Pangrazi, R. P. (2004). Dynamic Physical Education for Elementary School Children. (pp. 159-160). (14th ed.). San Francisco: Pearson Benjamin Cummings.

6 Long-Term Athlete Development: Trainability in Childhood and Adolescence, Istvan Balyi, Ph.D. and Ann Hamilton, MPE; Olympic Coach, Volume 16, Number 1

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

“Seeing the Big Picture”

By: J.J. Ruane, PSA Director of Coaching

I was in a meeting a couple of weeks ago, sitting with several professional youth soccer coaches from the area. The topic of discussion was the top 100 players in the world. The first 25 players were pretty easy to figure out as we went down the list and most everyone listed the same 25 players. As we went down through the top 100, our players were significantly different, but there was one constant through everyone’s list, there was not one American player. I visited the IYSA Expo this past weekend and was able to watch some different sessions. One of the presenters was from the Everton Youth Academy which has a senior team in the English Premier League. The one thing that really impressed me was his comments about youth soccer and soccer as a whole in this country. “The United States is a sleeping giant in the soccer world; the country has all the tools to win the World Cup. The problem though is that you are using a hammer to unscrew a light bulb.”

I think these two examples show a number of things. The first is that our potential as a country is huge. The problem is we want immediate results. As a director of coaching, it is ironic to hear that a group of youth players are the 3v3 National Champions meaning they are the best 3v3 team in the country. The shocking thing about this entire thing was that the kids were U8. We don’t see past tomorrow. As a director of coaching, my primary job is to make sure that the professional staff is doing their jobs to the best of their ability. Another part of that is to make sure that they are able to move on in their coaching if they so choose, staff development. My other primary job is to do the same thing with the players. My job is not to look at a U10 player and pick him for the national team. My job is to take the appropriate steps to take that gifted U10 player and get him to love the game, so he can play the game for a long time and get to the national team, but only if the player so chooses: player development.

The other problem that the opening story suggests is that there are no American players presently that the world respects. I believe this problem exists as an extension to the above problem. We put too much pressure on our youngest players to produce results at a young age. We don’t allow our players any time to make mistakes. Let players be creative, let them make mistakes, let them solve problems on their own, and let the game teach itself. This is in no way to say that as coaches, we do not give the proper tools to our players to be good technical players. An infant must fall down on its bottom several times before it learns how to walk on its own. A player must take players on hundreds of times until they develop the confidence needed to be successful. Legends coaches preach this in training and also in games.

It is the staff coach’s job to develop players and prepare them for the challenges that lie ahead, hopefully making them better people along the way. These challenges may be making them a confident player, getting them to a top team level, preparing them for the high school level, and obviously the ultimate goal and challenge for us as coaches is the college level. All of us coaches love to win and really take it to heart when we lose. I don’t know how many times I have taken that long road trip wondering what I could have done better to help my team be more successful. The thought I always come back to though is did the players do what I asked them to do, did they get better at things we worked on in training the week before, did they work hard, and most times the answer is yes.

In closing, soccer is a funny game. This is not like basketball or football where the best team wins 90% of the time. Most time in soccer, the best team does not win. I watched Arsenal (England) play PSV Eindhoven (Netherlands) last week. Arsenal was far superior in almost every facet of the game except when it came time to finish. They missed 10-12 chances throughout the match. Arsenal scored one goal. PSV had 3-4 chances and they scored two goals. How many times has this happened to Legends teams that has been far better skill wise, but lose because the team they played did not really play soccer correctly and were just bigger and much faster? The Legends staff will always instruct our players to play the game the best way possible and we ask that our parents do the same and not be blinded by who was the better team because of the score.

Questions or comments can be emailed to J.J. Ruane, jjruane@plainfieldsoccer.org.

Advice to a fellow coach (From the blog archives of Sam Snow)


Hi Sam,
I have a question about formations, especially the back players. I coach recreation Under-12 girls and we play 11 vs. 11. All of the other teams have their four back players stand at the 25 yard line and wait for the ball to come to them. I encourage my back players to get involved and get forward as much as the game will allow. We have lost every game so far and our parents are requesting that we do the same because we're not winning. Is this the way youth recreational soccer is supposed to be? Most of the girls on my team played for a different coach last year and she instructed her backs to stay 25 yards in front of the goal.

What do I do? Please advise.

Thank you,
Jack
---------

Hello Jack,

Please do resist the urgings of the parents and instead educate them on why your approach is the correct one. In the National Coaching Schools, one of the tactical concepts we teach is called compactness. Essentially this means a team should move up field as a unit on the attack and move back into their half of the field to defend. We expect everyone on the team to be involved in the attack and everyone on the team to be involved in defending. Even with the US Youth Soccer Olympic Development Program we look for players who have the versatility to be involved on 'both sides of the ball' as the saying goes. So we look for talented well-rounded players who can both defend and attack.

The approach of telling fullbacks to not move forward beyond a 25 yard mark is inhibiting those players from learning how to play the game.

Coaches take this action for a variety of reasons. Among those reasons are a lack of understanding of the tactics of soccer or a fear of failure. Soccer, like basketball, is a game where the team moves together around the playing area. Imagine a basketball team where some players are told to never cross the halfway line for the fear of the opponents scoring; that indeed would be a poorly played game of basketball.

What's most important in your situation is to teach the players about positioning. The idea here is the distance and angles that teammates take between each other during the match. Those distances and angles constantly change as the ball and players move around the field. It requires anticipation and game sense from the players. When children as young as 12-years-old are learning the sport of soccer they will make mistakes in regard to positioning. This is simply the learning process in action. However those mistakes may mean lost scoring opportunities in front of the opponents' goal and giving away scoring opportunities to the other team in front of your goal. This creates fear among the coaches and supporters who often value the score line more than a well played game. This is the fear of failure component I mentioned earlier. Regularly the adults involved in youth sports fear losing more than the players do. Yet winning, losing and tying are part of learning how to play the game.

So your challenge now is to balance short-term and long-term objectives. For the short-term work on the team learning to respond quickly when the ball is lost to the opponents to sprint back into good defensive positions - and here I mean the entire team. For the long-term objective work on the concept of positioning, which in the end is more important than learning positions.

Do not hesitate to let us know if the US Youth Soccer Technical Department can be of further assistance.

Keep Kicking,
Sam

Monday, November 10, 2008

A Decade of Coaching



About 40 miles away from Jacksonville, North Carolina and about an hour away from Wilmington, North Carolina is a town called Beulaville. In August of 1997 I was assigned to serve in this town with only two stop lights. It is likely one of the favorite and most memorable places I served on my two year LDS mission. After a week of being there I became very acquainted with the Batts family. The father was the 2nd counselor in the branch 20 miles away, his wife over young women's a son that had just moved out, a second son that played soccer on the h.s. team and a daughter that was just about a year away from being in h.s. To make a long story a little shorter, the family found out that I played soccer at UVSC. The same day I got a call from Bro. Batt's and he said, "East Duplin High School just announced that they are going to have a high school soccer team, do you want to coach it?" I didn' think there was anyway it was going to happen, "I would love to, but I will have to get my mission presidents approval." My mission president approved after a phone call to the area authorities and got back to me the next day. President Esplin explained to me the cans and can nots of the new service activity and I was allowed to take my companions to the two hour practices and games, both home and away. Now, there was a true head coach, he was the basketball coach. He was a great guy and gave me a lot of responsibilities.

Meanwhile, back in Utah, my oldest brother got the coaching bug as well. Right before I left on my mission my brother Bobby and I were asked by our Aunt Delanie to coach our cousins recreational teams. Bobby enjoyed it so much he found Celtic Storm Soccer Club, a newly established competitive program in Orem and earned his E and D license and coached a team. While he and I were both getting excited about coaching at the same time, I don't think either of us knew what we were getting in to. Bobby was learning how to deal with teenage girls and I was learning how to deal with teenage boys.


I had written my parents to inform them of the new service activity we were participating in. My loving and oh so wise mom replied to me in a letter, "...you let the head coach do all of the yelling at the refereee's, no yellow cards for my Elder...." Sure enough the first yellow card I ever received as a coach was me defending our goal keeper at East Duplin High School. Just think about this; your on a mission representing the Lord and you get called on to a soccer field and are asked your name so the official can book you. I replied my name is "Elder...Elder Ginn." Later that night I broke the mission rules and called my mom and apologized to her. That was the only time I called home when I wasn't supposed to. East Duplin was very memorable and a great introduction to the coaching side of Soccer



OK, So I returned home from my mission in July of 1998. It had been about 9 months since my time in Beulaville. I was home in California with the family for a few weeks and then headed back to UVSC in Orem, Utah. Bobby had arranged for me to take my E license (Got my D 3 months later) and made sure I had a team to coach when I returned. The team was a U17 girls team. I coached them for a year, a year later I was asked by Robyn Bretzing, the club president and founder to coach a u13 girls team and invited me to take over her position at the new high school in Orem, Utah...Timpanogos H.S.

I coached 4 years at Timpanogos and took that u13 girls team until they were U17. I coached with bobby one fall at William Penn University and then 4years with coach Ammon bennett at Iowa Western C.C. where we started the program and took the women's team to nationals two years in a row and were national runners up both years. While in Council Bluffs, Iowa with the IWCC teams I also founded a soccer club: Council Bluffs Futbol Club. My time in Iowa was amazing, I learned a ton and was prepared for my next step in Logan Utah with Infinity Soccer Club.

Anyway in a decade of coaching, I may not be rich in money or making a name for myself at any prestigious level, but I am happy because I have been paid in so many better ways:

Celtic Storm Girls:
Tamika Wilson: Married, Graduating from University of Wyoming. As a Jr. was named Mountain West Conference co-offensive player of the year
Julie and Kellie Hegerhost, married and have families of their own.
Candice Clark Graduating from Utah State, played starting striker for the Aggies, married, coaches for infinity soccer club
Kira Lazenby: Iowa Western CC graduate and Captain of first team to ever play in a national title game for the Reivers. Continued her career at University of Texas El Paso and Northwestern.
Tara Devenish: Married and played for a national title at Iowa Western CC.
Becky Pulham: Played for a national title at IWCC, continued playing for BYU-Hawaii, on an lds mission
Karly Nelson: Played for two national titles at IWCC, continued to play at grand Canyon University in Arizona.
Sutton Cherrington: married, played Goal Keeper for Southern Utah University
Deborah Benson: married, Plays for Mesa State in Colorado and captained for final two seasons
Kirtley Sorenson: attends BYU, does not play soccer
Jana Davis: married and plays for Idaho State
Megan Richardson: plays for BYU
Lil' Bree Robinson: married, plays for Dixie State
Jessica Nelson: married, plays for Dixie State
Shantae Adams: married, plays for Dixie State.
Hannah Silvey: Played for the national title twice at IWCC, captained IWCC and plays for University of Texas El Paso.
Katie Long: First Ever Captain for IWCC, returned from LDS mission, married.
Kiddist Kennard: Played on the inaugural team for IWCC, went on to play for Hastings college in Nebraska
Shayla Adams: Married, Played for UVSC

Saturday, November 1, 2008

Being a good sports parent Let the kids enjoy the game, experts say

Being a good sports parent
Let the kids enjoy the game, experts say
By Jane Weaver
In March a brawl among parents of 9- and 10-year-old hockey players in upstate
New York resulted in eight people facing misdemeanor charges and a father suffering
a dislocated shoulder after being pushed off the bleachers.
At a Pittsburgh high school basketball game in February, a referee was treated for a
concussion after a parent body-slammed him for ordering the man's wife out of the
gym for allegedly yelling obscenities.
An over-eager New Jersey father created his own soccer league last fall because his
7-year-old son was too young to play in a competitive league.
What's wrong with grown-ups these days?
Are some of them just aging failed athletes trying to live vicariously through their
athletic children? Anxious moms and dads hoping that their kids can snare college
sports scholarships? Or fanatic parents pushing their offspring to become elite
athletes with specialized training, summer camps and personal coaches, whether the
child wants it or not?
All of the above, say youth sports experts.
Barely out of diapers
Almost 30 million boys and girls under 18 play some kind of organized sport like
Little League or soccer, according to the National Council on Youth Sports. For many
of them, it's a way to make new friends and play a game they enjoy.
But over the last decade, more otherwise well-meaning parents have been pushing
their budding stars to excel at almost any cost.
Children as young as 3 can sign up for swimming and gymnastics programs. Soccer
often starts at 4 and baseball at 5. From there it's become increasingly common for
parents to rush the kids into highly competitive situations when they're barely out of
diapers.
"Youth sports has clearly become more professionalized in recent years," says Gregg
Heinzmann, associate director of New Jersey's Rutgers Youth Sports Research
Council. "Many more parents want to see their kids achieve some level of success, be
it athletic scholarship or in certain cases a pro sports contract."
That hyper-competitive atmosphere can translate into overly involved parents ready
to explode at any coach, referee or other parent who interferes with their own
children's performances.
"You'll see lawyers and doctors at little girls' or boys' games and some of these
people, it's like they've taken a pill that turns them into demons," says Steve
Dawson, associate professor of sports sociology at Wittenberg University in
Springfield, Ohio.
Dawson, who is a long-time coach of a high school club soccer team, tells the story
of the mother of a 5th grade girls' basketball team who loudly and publicly cheered
her daughter for making an opponent cry.
"That's just a minor incident, but it's typical of how carried away some parents get,"
says Dawson.
'The Tiger Woods syndrome'
Youth sports activist Bob Bigelow calls it "the Tiger Woods syndrome" where parents
think they have to push their little kids earlier.
It's parents like that who are ruining youth sports by treating their kids like
"miniature adults," says Bigelow, a former first-round NBA draft pick and author of
"Just Let The Kids Play."
Dr. Bruce Svare, professor of psychology at the State University of New York at
Albany and founder of the National Institute for Sports Reform, says there's a danger
to a child's self-esteem when parents send the message to their kids that what
they're doing isn't valuable unless they can turn it into something material like a
scholarship.
"More parents view their kids as an economic investment that has to be translated
into something later on," says Svare.
Dawson agrees. "We've become so competitive, it's out of control."
Parents should take note: A 2001 study by the National Alliance for Youth Sports
found that 70 percent of American kids who sign up for sports quit by the time they
were 13. The reason? They said it wasn't fun anymore.
"It's a downside of 10- to 12-year-olds who sit on benches because adults think it's
more important to win," says Bigelow. "Too may parents are buying into it."
"At one level a lot of parents realize it but they're caught on a treadmill," says Svare.
"No one's pointing out that it's easier to get an academic scholarship than an athletic
one."
To give some perspective, it's widely cited that there is 70 times as much money
available for academic scholarships than for athletic ones. Picking up a paycheck in
the National Basketball Association is a 1 in 10,000 chance. The odds of winning an
Olympic gold medal are 1 in a million.
Then again, few academic scholarship candidates are treated like rock stars in their
home towns or are offered million dollar salaries.
Family time matters
But parents who go to great lengths to help their kids get a sports scholarship or pro
contract may be sacrificing valuable family time, experts say.
"They're living in minivans [driving to and from practice and games] and they don’t
spend time together as a family, and that is every bit as important as kids having
long practices," says Dr. Charles Yesalis, a Penn State professor of health and human
development. "Kids doing sports activities three to five hours a day for five days a
week is almost child abuse." But the kids may not speak up for themselves,
according to Yesalis. "When you talk to kids away from their parents, they feign
injuries because they're burned out," he says. "They don’t want parents to know
because of their financial and time commitment."
Although brawling, abusive parents aren't the norm, at least 15 states have adopted
statutes making it a crime to assault sports officials. Community leagues require
parents to sign codes of conduct, in addition to developing education programs and
forums for parents to address the issues of "sideline rage" and pushing kids too hard.
"Codes and programs are fine, but they’re not going to get the job done," says Frank
Smoll, a University of Washington psychology professor and co-author of "Sports and
Your Child: A 50 Minute Guide for Parents."
"The parents who show up to education programs aren’t the ones who need the
training," he says.
Was it fun?
So how does a mom or dad avoid becoming a crazed, overbearing sports parent with
a stressed-out, unhappy child? Here's some advice:
• Reward your child whether the team wins or loses.
• If you have a complaint or concern, don't raise it in the middle of a game.
• Applaud when either team makes a good play.
• Praise effort.
• Respect the referee’s calls.
• Talk to your neighbor during games (don't get too caught up in scores or
statistics).
• Ask your child, ‘Was it fun?’ before ‘Did you win?’
Heinzmann acknowledges that it's stressful to see your own child play, especially
when you see what you might think is an unfair call. But parents should remember
how children see sports.
"Its just a blip in the lives of these kids," says Heinzmann. "What's more important is
playing on the field under the lights and getting the chance to run the base and meet
new friends."
And whatever you do, he emphasizes, in the ride home after the game "don't say
how [the child] could have done better."