Sports for Life...Dan's Rant

I love sports and spent a lot of time in my youth playing hockey, baseball, football, basketball, and just about anything else my friends and I could think up. I believe there are many life lessons that can be learned from sports, playing sports is a good way to get good exercise, and doggone it...it's just downright fun.

People can get pretty fired about sports. For example, my BYU Cougars lost to their in-state rival (I can't even say their name! Pu! ;) ) on Saturday. Well, with a score of 54-10, it was more than a loss...it was an old fashion butt-whoopin! The other team played well but the 7 turnovers by BYU had a lot to do with it. The sign on the Arby's restaurant in Provo right next to the BYU campus said it all:



I thought it was a pretty clever and humorous marketing ploy but some people didn't appreciate it. In fact, some people were downright mad! When the local radio station interviewed the store manager, the manager said that she gives out either a free fry, a free soft drink, or a free turnover after every BYU game and this was just a unlucky coincidence. She said she didn't even watch the game, didn't know the score, and didn't know anything about all of the turnovers.

I think it's silly to get so upset over something like this. On the other hand, I did get my feathers ruffled this past week and ended up writing the letter below to the President of the local soccer league. At the end of his Sophomore year last year, my son Danny was the 4th leading scorer on the Varsity soccer team and, as a Freshman, my daughter Brennah is currently a starter on the Varsity soccer team. I'm pleased that they're doing so well and having so much fun but it hasn't always been this way.

Perhaps because they grow up to be so big and tall (I'm 6'5" tall and 240 pounds), my kids seem to be late bloomers. It seems to take a while before their coordination catches up with their bodies. As a result, they're typically not as fast or quick as the other kids their age when they're young.

As a result, they tend to spend a lot of time on the sidelines at an early age. For 14 years now, Kathy and I have observed this tendancy and I guess you could say that it all came to a head this last Saturday. I was so upset by what had happened that I wrote the following letter to the President of the league. Rather than just complaining, I tried to suggest a course of action that might eliminate the problem I've observed.

I'm publishing it here and sharing it with my Cook'n Family because I'm curious to know what you think about it and if you've had a similar experience. Who knows...perhaps you will conclude that I really am one of those parents who has taken the issue too far...and you might be right about that. But, maybe not. I look forward to reading your comments!


Dear President,

I am writing to notify you of a serious problem in the NUCS (North Utah County Soccer) organization that has the effect of lowering self-esteem in children, infuriating parents, and discouraging kids from playing soccer. I am hoping that after you read this message you will take action to correct this problem.

With 5 kids and 14 years of experience in NUCS, my wife and I have observed that almost every coach desires to do a good job, to make the season fun for the boys, and to please the parents. However, helping the coaches determine what it really means to "be a good coach" and to "do a good job" is a responsibility the league has abdicated. As a result, the coaches are left to figure that out on their own. And, most of them conclude that the boys will have most fun if they win and the coaches measure their own performance, to some degree or another, on the win/loss record of the team.

As a result, each season and on every team, the more athletic players end up getting more playing time than the less athletic players. They play key positions and get more touches on the ball. The less athletic players get less playing time and when they get in, they wilt in a defensive or less significant position and get fewer touches.

Because of the increased playing time and more frequent touches, the good players get better and better over time! They get more experience and improve at a faster rate thus increasing the performance gap! And, they have more fun too because they’re the ones in position to score goals. The more fun they have the more likely they are to practice at home. As time goes by, the contrast between the good players and the bad players becomes more and more apparent. The good players get even better and the bad players seem to get worse.

Since soccer is a team sport and the team is only as good as the weakest link, the teams suffer because of the bad players. This obvious disparity between the good players and the bad creates anxiety among the parents, frustrates the good players, and hurts the self-esteem of the less experienced boys. It also puts even more pressure on the coach to skew the playing time so the team will do well. In the end, many of the good players go into a competitive league and the bad players eventually quit because they're not having fun and they're tired of sitting on the sidelines.

For example, two years ago, my boy Jackson was getting very little playing time and when he did finally get into the game, he was placed in a defensive position and seemed to get very few touches on the ball. I volunteered to coach last season and I made a couple key changes. I simply asked a parent to keep time and notify me every time 4 minutes elapsed so I would know when to do substitutions. And, I also rotated the kids in all the positions instead of defining a player as strictly offense or strictly defense and boxing a boy in some lonely defensive position.

After coaching this team for two years, the results for Jackson have been amazing! He's having a great time and he has become one of the best players on the team now! And, the experience for all the boys on the team has improved dramatically. The more athletic boys have improved because playing a variety of different positions gives them a new perspective and a real advantage. Coincidentally, my daughter, a Freshman who plays a starting defensive position on the Varsity team in High School, just mentioned last week that she can always tell when an opponent in the Forward position has experience playing Defense. I give the boys on my team the opportunity to play a variety of positions regularly. For example, in last Saturday's game, I encouraged my forwards to drive the ball deep into the corner and then minus it to a mid-fielder or defenseman. Then, I put my star player in a defensive position and told him that I’ve never seen a defender score but I believed he had a strong enough leg to do it. I’ve never seen more amazing and aggressive play from a defender before! It opened the eyes of the other defenders on our team to new possibilities that they’ve never considered before!

If you are skeptical about what I'm saying, I encourage you to contact some of the parents of the boys on my team. Many have said that playing on my team has been the best experience they've had in soccer. After last season, several boys moved to a competitive league but those who remained asked me to coach again this season and all of them signed up on my team. And, I’m pleased to say that it's going better than ever right now.

Over the last 14 years, my wife, Kathy, and I have observed the playing time and position discrepancy with coaches time and time again. That’s one of the reasons we volunteered to coach! The only problem is that we have three boys in the program and there are only two of us. Unfortunately, my son, Carson, age 7 years old, who belongs to the team that we are not coaching is not having a very good experience due to the league problem I mentioned in the beginning.

Because of game schedules related to my volunteer coaching commitment, the game Carson played in Saturday was the first one I was able to attend. I was anxious to see Carson play and he was excited to get onto the field. Sadly, he sat on the side of the field for most of the first half. When he finally got into the game, he was pulled after only a couple minutes! The second half was different only in that he sat on the sidelines the entire second half and played just the last 3 minutes of the game.

Well, I guess I was wrong about that. I said that he "sat" on the sidelines but the truth is, he didn't sit on the sidelines, this 7 year old hopped up and down and bounced around on the sideline anxiously waiting for his chance to get into the game while several other boys on his team played the entire game. My wife and I anxiously awaited his turn to get in and play too. We were so surprised when the coach pulled him after only a couple minutes in the first half. And, the three minutes of playing time that he got in the 2nd half seemed to go by so quickly! Carson only touched the ball three times the whole game long! It was so very disappointing.

I spoke with the coach after the game but to say that it didn't go well would be an understatement. He handled it poorly and, in the end, he threatened to throw Carson off the team if I ever "attacked him after the game like this again." Knowing the competitive nature of this coach, I was concerned that things might go poorly like this from the beginning so I recorded the conversation. In fact, knowing that I was recording the conversation, I was especially cautious about how I approached this, what I said, and how I said it. In summary, it went like this:

• I waited until everything had calmed down and everybody else had left.
• I introduced myself to the coach, complimented him on a good game, chatted a bit, and then expressed my concern.
• I gave him the benefit of the doubt and assumed that it was just an oversight or that perhaps he simply didn’t know that in this league at this age the kids are supposed to play a minimum of half the game.
• Since we can't change the past, I suggested that perhaps he try to make it up to Carson in the next game.
• Coach indicated that it was simply an oversight.
• Then, he wanted me to understand and accept the reality of the situation which is that some boys on this team of 7 year olds are going to play more than others because they’re better.
• He frankly apologized but he didn't seem to feel bad that poor little Carson sat out most of the game. He didn't seem to have any empathy for him. He feigned regret that Carson didn’t get much playing time but pointed out the importance of winning.
• He asked me to see it from his perspective which is that if he plays all the boys equally and the team loses that other parents will approach him after the game to complain.
• I told him that the win/loss record is important in a competitive league but not in this one and the directive this league has given is that all the boys should get playing time. I told him that if parents complain to him when the team loses he should direct those parents to the league.
• He apologized again for what happened to Carson saying that he didn’t have an assistant coach to help with substitutions
• I told him it was no problem...I just wanted to make sure he understood the guidelines of the league when it comes to playing time.
• When I said “No problem, I just want to make sure we have an understanding” he seemed to get very defensive and said he "didn’t appreciate being attacked after the game and that if this ever happened again he was going to throw Carson off the team!" I couldn't believe it!

The coach was walking away when he threatened to throw Carson off the team and, under ordinary circumstances, my only recourse would have been an appeal to the league. However, at that point, it would become a "he said/she said" matter and, most likely, you would probably conclude that this was just another example of an overzealous parent who wanted his kid to get more playing time. After all, there are some parents who will never be satisfied and I'm sure you run into this sort of thing all the time. I'm guessing that it was an experience like this that lead you to require the parents to sign a Parents Code of Conduct agreement when registering their child for soccer.

The difference, in this case, is that the coach was wrong. He was wrong to play Carson so few minutes. The boy is only 7 years old. He was wrong to ask me to accept the reality that some players are just going to get more playing time than others. He was insincere when he said that this was simply an oversight and he was wrong to try to blame it on the lack of an assistant coach when it was obvious that winning the game was his top priority and playing the better players more is his philosophy. He was wrong to characterize the way that I approached him as an attack on him. And, he was wrong to threaten to throw Carson off the team.

The "game changer," to use a coaching vernacular, is that I recorded this conversation and when he threatened me I told him I was recording it. He seemed to change his tune real quick. He called me 20 minutes later and left an apologetic message on my voice mail and two days later, he sent an e-mail to all the parents on the team apologizing for the playing time discrepancies letting them know that, from now on, he is going to "get all of the boys more equal playing time."

Although I'm still upset by what happened, I decided not to attach the recording nor mention the coach's name because he's not a bad person. He's just competitive and he wants to do a good job and he thinks that winning games is how he does that. I share this experience as an example only. The problem is not with this particular coach. This sort of thing happens time and time again among many coaches every season. This is a league leadership problem. We've observed this for 14 years now and the league does nothing about it. In fact, I had to scour the http://www.nucsonline.com/ website for a long time before I could finally find a statement regarding play time and finally found this statement in the deep recesses of the site: "Rules that apply to all groups: -Each player plays a minimum of half the game."

When my wife and I volunteered to coach, we were invited to attend an optional orientation meeting but we were never given a directive or anything in the way of a handout that emphasized this key league rule regarding playing time. It seems to me that the league should communicate this rule to the coaches. E-mail a survey to the parents and coaches and get feedback. If you're going to run the program, do it well! It only takes 30 minutes to set up an online survey and send a broadcast e-mail to all the parents encouraging them to participate. Getting invaluable feedback like this could help you shape the program and really make it great! And improving it will help the good players get better by playing a variety of positions, help the teams to play better because of closer parity in abilities, increase self-esteem in children, make parents happier, and, ultimately, encourage kids to play soccer and grow your program.

Don't get me wrong, I love Dodge Ball. I say hit'em and hit'em hard and if you don't learn to dodge the ball than learn to catch the ball or prepare to get hit! And, I'm all for keeping score. The reality in life is that sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. It's not always fair and we don't always get equal playing time. Sometimes we need to make opportunities for ourselves! Soccer and other sports can be a great vehicle to teach us important life lessons. We need to learn how to be gracious winners and good losers. We need to learn to do our best and give it our all. That's life and we can help the kids learn this through soccer.

But, at 7 years old, the discrepancy in athletic ability and player performance is not so great that one boy deserves to play the entire game and another deserves to sit all but 6 minutes of the game. That is just wrong. It happens time and time again and it needs to be addressed by the league. I hope you will take steps to correct this problem.

I look forward to your reply.

Sincerely,

Dan Oaks