Wednesday, August 5, 2009
The Real Picture
As summer winds down and youth sports leagues close out their seasons, sports pages for the local newspapers will have more than a few “feel-good” stories and pictures of children and their “successful” teams. Coaches will issue the standard quotes of how the “win” wasn’t as important as having fun and how teaching good sportsmanship is the ultimate goal, and all the kids will be huddled together smiling with their trophies. And of course, there are the parents, beaming over their child’s achievement, telling all who will listen how hard work and perseverance paid off.
The Wahey Boys like everyone appreciate the importance of youth sports and all they have to offer, but because we get to look at the real picture we also get to offer up criticism where most are reluctant to. Parents and adult coaches have ruined youth sports to the point where it has become more important to the “smarter” parent to keep their child from participating because it can cause more harm than good. What has become obvious to many is that good sportsmanship is only a shallow reference that has been replaced by an ultimate goal of “win at all cost”. Youth sports, particularly playoffs and tournament leagues where winning is stressed and more recognized community wide, is now made up of a handful of elite athletes that are overplayed by inexperienced parent coaches, at the expense of the lesser talented. These youth “all-star” leagues have also become a showcase where parents get to display their children, sometimes with tragic results, like a circus act.
Before our skeptics accuse us of “sour grapes” let it be known that all the Wahey Boys have played and coached in organized sports leagues, with success, depending on one’s measure of accomplishment; which is really what’s at stake, one’s measure of accomplishment. The philosophy for youth sports, parents and coaches should be based on the ability to “lose with everyone” rather than “winning with a few”.
Our own informal investigation of this recently revealed that one of Weymouth's supposedly successful youth teams won their tournament by playing only a select number of players, while four other children did not play, at all, the entire tournament. Anyone that doesn’t see the problem there alone, are being naïve. Digging a little deeper we also find that those children “riding the bench”, actually are there to satisfy their parents’ lobbying rather than to actually help the team. What we have is a team purposely made up of a few elite players who play every minute of every game, risking injury and a balance of players, on the team because of their parents’ efforts instead of their own, who intentionally and knowingly will not play. Meanwhile, more deserving and talented players have been excluded, not because their parents were silent, but because they would cut into the playing time of the elite. The end result is a learned dissatisfaction with a given sport, where those that are discouraged from participating become forever disillusioned with the sport.
In closing, the true goal of youth sports leagues, during playoff tournaments, should be to assemble a team made up of athletes that are not only talented and qualified but have shown commitment and interest in the sport. Once the team is assembled, ALL team members should play in every game, win or lose. Those teams that win by excluding others do not deserve the accolades they receive.
POSTED BY STAN on August 5, 2009
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Comments
I agree wholeheartedly with Stan and Harry's recent assessments of the parts of the youth sports culture that have gone awry, and I think this is the right time to bring up these points, given the late summer tournament frenzy at hand. But as a life long coach and continued wannabe athlete who has worked hard to continue playing competitive sports into my 50's, I just want to remind everyone that there is great beauty and power in the games themselves, and that we need to work hard to teach this to our kids, so that the beauty of the games as an ongoing part of their lives is not lost to the bruises of the youth sports culture. No organized culture is perfect, but if we apply hyperfocus on the bad parts, we may lose track of all of the good that comes from healthy participation in competitive sports.
Posted by: Paul Niles | August 5, 2009 02:15 PM