My wife shared with me a co-workers speech he recently gave about his Lilly Endowment Scholarship. In the speech, he talked about his role as a soccer coach to a girls team. He said the coaching was easy. The hardest part of the job was managing the parents. If you talk to any coach in the game, they all say the same thing. My best friend coached a team that did very well. He said the same thing. He loved his players, he hated the parents.
There have been numerous discussions about this topic over the years. Mainstream television and news shows have dedicated segments. We have had parents getting in fights at football games, baseball games and soccer games. There is a website devoted to tracking some of it: http://shatteredpeace.com/violence_in_youth_sports.htm
So what is happening here?
Well, speaking for myself, I do understand parents. I am one and find that I am battling my feelings as it relates to my son's participation in soccer. I can get frustrated on the sideline because I am both a player and a coach. There needs to be a parental handbook for all parents who are putting their kids into organized sports. I mean, we can predict the range of feelings a competitive parent will go through over the life of their kid's participation in sport.
It is harder said and done, but it comes down to being self-aware. I have had to go through the process of understanding my feelings of frustration. It comes down to control. As a parent, we really have no control of our kid's experience. We have no control over the coach, the referee or how our kid play. When things don't go the way I think they should, my control shadow is going nuts.
So, let's take a look at the control shadow most parents experience:
1. Referee
Well, here I know better. After a game, I tell my kids that the referee does not decide a game. The reality is, the referee is an uncontrollable part of the game. Yes, a bad call can change the game, but taking care of what can be controlled - our play- is another matter. So, the reality is that referees become whipping boys for some underlying frustration that is under the surface. Maybe your boss did something you did not like. Or, your wife yelled at you. Something that had nothing to do with what was happening on the field. It simply became an outlet for something else going on your life. A control shadow not being fulfilled in another part of your life.
2. How our kid plays
The hardest part of being a parent is watching our kids not do what we think they should do. "Damn it, if they were like me, they would have made a better decision." In my case, "When I played, I had heart. I put my chances away. I was perfect." The other aspect of the how are kids play is the other kids are not working hard. If every kid worked as hard as my kid, we would be winning. We get into our cars and start complaining about their team and the coach. We start projecting onto others. The simple truth may be, they are not that good.
As parents, we think our snowflake is the best player, yet maybe they are not.
Now granted, not every parent is like this, but I have found that parents whose child has a little bit of natural talent, feed the ego of their child rather than really helping them maximize their talent. Recently, I read an article about the retirement of a promising hockey player who played for the Philly Flyers - Eric Lindros. After his retirement, his former coach talked about the influence his parents had on him. Whenever his parents were in town, he would complain to the coach and try to tell him what he should do. The Philadelphia coach was conveying the influence his parents had on his career. Lindros never fulfilled his potential as a professional hockey player.
As parents, we should encourage our children to worry about their play.
There is the 10,000 hour rule. The 10,000 rule applies to anything we do. Whether we are playing an instrument, playing a sport or learning how to write. If we want to be a master of something, it takes about 10,000 hours of work to become a master. Neil Peart, who is the drummer of Rush talked about the 10,000 rule on his blog. He suggested to a mother that if her son is really a talent at drums, he needs to take lessons and be given a pad and sticks. If you recall an episode of the Cosby show, the same recommendation was made to Theo who was going to be a drummer.
If parents think their kids have an incredible talent. It is going to take the kids at least 10,000 hours to become really good at soccer. Professional soccer players generally do not peak until their early to mid-20s. So parents that want their kids to be great athletes need to understand that it takes a lot of work to be really good. In soccer, like drums, the basics need to be refined always. Passing, shooting, trapping, dribbling, defending are all the basics a player needs to master over the 10,000 hours of their player development. If their kid only plays 3x a week at practice, they will never be great, they will only be good. Great players are always working on improving their game, developing skill, intelligence and mental strength to compete.
As parents, we need to encourage our kids to put the effort into what they love. If they are not starting, they need to learn how to fight for their spot. If they are not making 80% of their passes and 100% of their shots, they need to work at it. If they are not playing, they are not getting the job done. It is about their performance. Not about making them feel good. It does not make them a bad kid. They just need to understand that it takes some work to play regularly. Competition is good because it challenges them to step out of themselves.
3. The Coach
There are all kinds of coaches. There are the yelling coaches. There are the quiet coaches. There are prescriptive coaches. There are empowering coaches.
Soccer is a sport that really requires coaches to be more empowering than prescriptive. A soccer coach really is ineffective on the sideline yelling at players what to do. Players ultimately have to learn how to play on their own. It is a sport that requires 6 or 8 or 11 individuals to make decisions in a dynamic game. Most other sports have plans and instruction from the coach. Teams that are prescriptive tend not to perform well under pressure. Soccer is a dynamic game.
Young players need to have the freedom to make decisions and follow their instincts. A coach or parent yelling at their kids, does not help their confidence in making decisions. If a player leaves the prescriptive environment and goes into an environment where they are held accountable for their decisions and play, they will fail miserably. After all, they are waiting for someone to tell them what to do. Good soccer players follow their instincts on the field and adjust their decision making based on the outcome. It is trial and error.
The biggest issue for most parents as it relates to the coach is one simple thing - playing time in games. Most parents want their kid to start. This is natural of course. Again, parents need to ask themselves, are they motivated by what is best for their kid, or how it makes them feel to see their kid on the sideline? If my kid is not playing, does that make the parent feel not good enough? It is a really hard truth to realize your kid may not be good enough.
Here is where parents need to understand. it is not their responsibility to make sure their kid gets playing time. It is really the responsibility of their kid. If their kid is not up to the challenge of playing in a competitive environment and putting forth the effort, take it away from them, or put them in the environment where they will thrive.
it is up to your kid to get playing time through their effort and impact in a game.
There are parents living fantasies through their kids. They are driven by their own emotions and can be illogical when it comes to what is really happening to their kids. This is what is so difficult for coaches. Back in the day, we all had to work for our place on a team. Be it baseball, football, basketball, or soccer, players and kids need to learn how to earn their place. It is the American Way after all - hard work.
