Pay To Pay To Play

Youth Sports. It’s come a long way since the days I started in the late 1970s. Dirt fields behind the cement-block elementary school (Camelot Elementary in Federal Way). Path-worn baseball diamonds at Steel Lake. Basketball rims. Cul-de-sacs that doubled as Fenway Park or Yankee Stadium in the minds of youngsters trying to crush vented plastic balls or tennis balls in to the Kepkie’s yard (automatic homer), but usually fouled it off into the Ray’s garage (horrible people with an aggressive Doberman and body odor). Recreational, city-sponsored leagues handing out hats and t-shirts that I would cling to as if they were the road unis for game 3 of World Series.

That stuff is GONE. O. VER. If you want your kid to get on the field and build a highlight reel, there’s an entirely different, over-the-top path to stardom now. You could still sign McKinsley up for tee-ball through the parks center. If you want to sign Rykkor onto a local soccer club via the Y, now’s the time; registration fees go up in 2 days for the Spring 2025 season! Don’t forget to put some money aside from every paycheck to cover these fees, usually in excess of $100 for a boxy t-shirt and a foam-front trucker cap. You CAN do those things… if you don’t care about your kid’s future in athletics.

OR… or you can look at local clubs, privately owned and operated away from the prying audits of city and state officials. Whatever sport you want your kid to dedicate their time and your money to, it’s available. You can also pay around $750 for 3 months of 1 practice & 1 game/week against a handful of kids who are pretty good, and a handful of kids who are scared of the ball. Yes, you can do this even if your child is in a school that offers multiple interscholatic sports. Yes, your child can play multiple sports at one time. Yes, there is no discount for being in multiple sports. No, there are no college scholarships for kids in these programs, no matter how good they are at tying their shoes in the middle of a game with the offense bearing down. You, as a parent or guardian, should have direct control over your kid’s involvement in sports, and the more you pay the BETTER the kid will be, right?

Oh… oh dear friend. No. That’s not true. This is not a business anymore. This is an industry. By 2026, one study projected that Youth Sports will be at $77.6 billion. By comparison, the juggernaut NFL is $15 billion. Feel it yet? Are you clocking the gravity of Youth Sports? Because it’s no longer mainly for kids to participate just for the FUN of it. It’s for kids to develop more quickly with sport-specific training at young ages (yes, I have known a 10 year old who left kid parties to work their PITCHING COACH), and if not sports, then it’s specialized Physical Conditioning.

“Worldwide $24.9 billion youth sports markets are poised to achieve significant growth as travel teams become more popular and families learn to enjoy time together during a weekend sporting event. Enormous market efficiency is being achieved as youth and recreational teams move to automated process. Apps can be used to book hotels and make travel arrangements.” – Youth Sports Market Projected to Reach $77.6 Billion by 2026

BILLIONS of dollars being spent for kids to be on teams that travel out of state to compete in tournaments in order to say they, uh, played in that tournament or maybe even won it? Great. It’s going to take up a lot of family time. Multiple games during tournament weekends. Road trips. Hotels, airfare, meals – none of which are are paid for by the team, usually – to watch kids whose voices have yet to change play other teams from around the nation. To what end?

Having seen just a small piece of what a “pay to play” league looks like in the past 8 months I have some deep, and possibly mis-targeted, feelings about what families are really signing up for. I might be totally off base and out of line in my observations. I could be expressing some sort of PTSD or unresolved anger at what I witnessed in the recent past.

But the goal of writing about this is to inform people of the changes in sports that the professionals of tomorrow are involved in today. We might not see the best players of the crop. Instead, we might see the kids whose families had the best credit scores to help their kids learn to throw an off-speed pitch in lieu of celebrating their friend’s birthday.

For the record, when that kid was told he had to leave the party for pitching practice, he showed off some incredible arm strength by whipping his left shoe directly at his father’s crotch. What fun.

May 28, 2023 0

Restart My Blart

There are so many things going on that I want to write about, things I can’t quite get all aligned and assigned in my head to get out through my hands. The past 6 months have been intense, busy, good, and fun, for the most part. Youth sports, work, product development, family, stress, illnesses, deaths… so, Life, basically.

We’re here in February (Feb-ya-wair-ee) already and sooner or later I should post something or get rid of this site. So I’ll get into the flow again soon and write. My attitude towards all of this has changed a lot because of social media and how I (mis)perceive other people’s perceptions of me. I have some outrage because I have been paying attention, to reword that bumper sticker I haven’t seen in a while. The other bumper sticker that makes me angry is the “STUDENT DRIVER – PLEASE BE PATIENT.” Oh gawd, come on. Student Driver in TESLA, eat farts. I had to learn in a 5-speed Datsun KingCab pickup truck, NO STICKER. Coddling the youth, yes, let’s continue… I think some people are just bad drivers and pasted a sticker on to throw people off the trail of their inability to navigate the roads.

ANYway, I have a lot more to get off my hands in the near future, but I’ll leave with this; if you have any sort of feelings about Education, Youth Sports, or Wanting To Throw Hatchets Into The Halls of Congress, stay tuned! Should be a good year!

Stay weird.

February 7, 2023 0

Stage Coaching

I got into coaching for the same reason a lot of parents do; because no one else would. I like sports, grew up playing them, did multiples (soccer, baseball, basketball, football, track & field) and even competed in college. I had great coaches, and I had some who were great examples of how not to coach. Now, as I volunteer as a coach on my kid’s teams I am always looking for ways to simplify a sport’s tasks for the kids so that they understand, improve, gain confidence, and most importantly, don’t embarrass their parents when they get in the game.

I had to learn how to coach, and that’s where I harkened back to the days of old and found some incredible stuff on YouTube. Right now I’m coaching 2 sports and one of them is soccer for a boys team, ages 10-12. Some kids are taking it as an opportunity to compete and improve. Some are outside and active and that’s enough for their parents to have paid >$150 to get on a team. And some have almost no idea why they’re out there. So I’m using a lot of various tactics to keep these kids interested and wanting to play. I’m not a great soccer coach, but with a bit more lead-up time this season might be going a bit more smoothly. The league I’m coaching in does the bare minimum for their coaches. I’m not alluding to a need for any sort of payment, but any organization should make it as easy as possible for their volunteers to want to coach and do so sober.

As can happen at any level and in any sport there was a near meltdown of all fundamentals in last night’s match. Even as we walked off with a 7-0 loss, I know it could have been worse. 5 games into the season the team looked like it was their first day on the pitch together as they played way out of position, crowded the ball, stole from each other, dribbled ahead of their speed, and had some of the worst attitudes they had displayed all season. Some of the most vocal griping about their positions or their teammates came from kids who performed the worst. This is an opportunity for me as their coach to address and correct it by reminding them of all the things they’ve done wrong for the past 8 weeks. Or ask them how they would correct it and guide from there. We have 2 games and no practices remaining so I guess we’ll see…

There’s a fine line in coaching kids that must be walked – on one side is “What the kid thinks they can do” and the other side is “Where their skills fit best.” Sometimes it’s a thin line, sometimes it’s a gaping, impassable maw of genetic reality. Coaching happens where you create scenarios for the kid to bridge or narrow that gap and gain confidence. As seen above, a lot of kids, in their minds, are ready for a shoe endorsement and developmental contract with their favorite team. In actuality…

As a parent with a kid on the team I want my kid to be having fun out there, but also competing. Not just “getting a win,” but learning that Intentional Effort leads to good outcomes. I can always tell a player what they need to work on to get better, but it’s up to their parents to remind them to go work on it 5 times before the kid decides they want to. YouTube is an under-utilized coaching tool, frankly. A simple search for “Basic Soccer Dribbling Skills” will get your kid, or you, a very solid foundation of the most basic skill in soccer. So I often send out links to kids and parents for them to check out. Then when they show up on the field I can ask “What did you get from the videos I sent your parents?” and they can say “You did?” and I can say “Ah, okay, I see now. Why are you wearing sandals to soccer?”

So it all goes in phases, sometimes every time out, to see who is ready to play, and who is just killing time before dinner. There will come a time in a sport where the kids get cut or don’t play enough or it’s far more serious and has a lot more implications than where these guys are at. The best you can do as a parent is to support your kid’s efforts, encourage goal setting, and remind them that good things come to those who work. Doing 5 minutes of focused skill work every day – since most leagues limit practice to 2 sessions or 2 hours a week – will help their coach not start replies to requests for playing time with “Seriously?”

May 14, 2021 0

Summer Camp: Money, Well… Spent

As a parent, I’m far beyond ready for the kids to go back to school. This is ridiculous. The only people happy about these extended breaks are teachers (whom I respect and support) and Summer Camp Counselors (who usually are teens just killing time for $12/hr and it shows). Everyone else who loves it are either over-joyed, under-lied Youth Pastors or childless couples with tons of vacation time to burn.

This Summer has been the campiest, busiest one we’ve had in a while, for unconventional reasons. My wife has gone back in school to finish a degree in Interior Design, and she’s getting A’s! The earlier classes she’s been in are hands-on art-heavy classes, and as the self-labeled “creative one” in the family, I’m waaaay behind her and my older son’s art work this Summer. I think I might have come up with a new joke about my car looking like a crime scene, but overall it’s been a fallow Summer for me.

Busy-ness-wise, we’ve played more mini-golf than usual, which I love. I love putt-putt! GUILTY QUEEEEEEN! Or whatever people say to be “whatever” about stuff. My kids are about to wrap up their 3rd Summer camp of the season, and then we’re done. Over $2K spent for 3 weeks of the following experiences:

Mini-golf – playing on 3 courses in 4 days, so they doubled-up, half-day camp
Soccer – skills were at the lowest skill-level of campers, so we didn’t really get better, half-day camp
Piano – they learned a few scales and such but overall didn’t learn much, half-day camp
Flag football – both kids played on championship-level teams in the Spring so this was NOT a camp of “betterment” and some other issues I’ll address in a sec, half-day camp
Flag football/Soccer/Baseball camp – This is the final week happening right now. So far I’ve heard they have to hit off a tee, haven’t run any particular plays, and haven’t worked on any soccer skills. All day in the heat and they’re looking rough.

So what’s the gripe? I’d like to know that when they go to camps that they come home with some skills other than “finding which kids have untethered ADHD” and “not being that impressed with the camp.” I can’t blame them; these are all run through local churchy organizations or sporty spots, but nothing super-focused on THE ELITE LEVEL OF CONDITIONING YOUR ELEMENTARY AGE CHILDREN! But for the love of laziness, some of these camps aren’t even trying.

I know this is a very “white” complaint, believe me. I try to not throw the “guilt-quilt” over any of the kids’ experiences – “Well, I never got to do cool Learn To Cast Spells camps when I was a kid because my parents were lazy asses” – because it’s not their fault if the camp isn’t killing it. If nothing else, they’re getting a lot of exercise, plenty of bath time at night, and they’ve been crashing hard at night. But I get that they don’t love Summer Camp. There are others we tried to get into, turns out those suck, too.

Our friends sent their kids to a week-long NERF Battle Camp, with blasters and swords and such. I hosted a birthday party like this once and it was a shitfire. Everyone getting shot in the face or up-close, darts to the junk, total chaos. And that camp report was “Lame. There was only one day of Capture The Flag.” I hear ya. Every day of life is capturing flags, young ‘in.

When I was 10, I went to this ridiculous horse riding/pool/craft camp for 3 of the 5 days I was supposed to. On day 3, one of the counselors – a guy in his mid-30’s with a cigarette behind his ear and severely receding hairline – called me “fatso” on front of the whole camp, and I was like “F*ck this guy.” If you’re trashing the kids of the parents who pay for what’s probably your work-release program, there’s not a lot else I can do at 10 to thrash your day-to-day. Not sure what happened to that guy. I’m sure the police were involved.

But sending kids to camp puts them in somewhat unfamiliar situations, which you can help them grow in to working at. Learning to adapt and go with the flow in a different place is about 50% of life’s requirement of success. The others include being attractive and having some sort of water craft. When I hear parents say they have “nothing” planned for their kid’s Summer, I’m astounded, if they aren’t traveling a lot. Or if the kid’s secretly a SuperHero. But I doubt the kid’s saving lives and stopping MegaVillains when they keep putting their shoes on the wrong feet and pinching their ween instead of just going to the restroom. Leaving a kid to do “nothing” during the Summer is just lazy. I understand there are financial barriers for some families. If there aren’t, a kid at home all Summer is basically just a dormant seed waiting to bloom into the same flower that left school in June.

At least put a golf club in their cheese-powdered hands for a week, get some putting work in.

August 15, 2019 0

The Value of Volume

Having finished another season of coaching flag football – 2 teams this time – I find it’s always good/self-indulgent to reflect on the season(s). There are so many lessons to learn from coaching that I hope I coach long enough to compile a long enough list to make a ton of money off a book that people download, something with a title like “The Basics of Success: 2287 Tips to Get to The Top From Your Personal Rock-Bottom,” or “Win Today: Turning The ShitShow You Call Your Life Into a Success Orgy.” But I probably won’t do that too soon.

This entry is more about some people I encounter regularly who believe that making noise – literally and figuratively – somehow equates to “get shit done,” or GSD. This happens at work, on the field, in the 7-11 parking lot, church choir planning retreats, we could go on and on… In coaching sometimes I have to yell. I mean BELLOW to get a kid’s attention. A lot of kids seem to go by a nickname, so I yell their name and they don’t respond. Instead, they’re just NOT dropping back to cover the flat and just gonna stand there having a go at their, apparently very itchy bum while having a good look at the opposing player running past them. You can’t coach instinct, but you can yell about the lack of effort.

A co-worker of mine is like a human whistle. Noise. Just noise noise noise. Dropping f-bombs in a way that most people use a comma. Got it. You’re fired up. You’re a rebel, a breaker of convention, a THOUGHT LEADER. From 70 feet away, over the tops of cubicles, WE HEAR THAT YOU ARE CONCERNED AND YOU’RE GONNA BE OK. Good job. Now please, shut up so we can GSD. This person, I swear, equates being loud to Leading. That’s “Loudership” (just invented that, trademark 2018), and it’s annoying.

My wife tells me I “really need to yell louder” on the sidelines. I always do. About as loud as I can yell, I let it rip. She’s also usually on the same side as I am, 3 feet behind me, and 30 feet to my left or right. So she can’t hear me trying to get Kayd’n’s attention so he’ll TAKE 5 BIG STEPS FORWARD. Again in the past 3 minutes. And I’m shouting for him to move up, and waving my hand to move up, while yelling “KAAAYD”””N! TAKE 5 BIG STEPS FORWARD.” He looks at me, palms up, as if to say “I am holding an invisible sandwich that is at least 3 feet long. It will drop if move!”

Later, when I ask “Hey, were you able to hear me out there?”

“Yeah, I heard you.”

“Why didn’t you move up?”

“I didn’t know why I should.”

“OK… We don’t have time in the game to explain every little move. We coach that in practice so that, when we tell you where to move, you’re in the best position to make a play for the team. The basic spot you start from is on that corner of the penalty box. You’re not in the wrong place, but if you move there’s a better chance good things will happen. You moved up and the other player had to try and come back inside, and lost the ball. Good job out there!”

(Blank stare)

“Good talk, get some PowerJuice.”

And this seems to be the way right now, in America. Being loud gets attention. It diverts us away from the constant thrum of whatever else is being hammered on. I’m not saying Kayd’n is trying to divert attention way from his meddling with his sister’s sleepover, or accuse his brother of eating all the Nutella with a spoon. I’m just saying that being loud has its place in the world. But not in the workplace, unless you REALLY need to be LOUD, or just like to yell at kids.

June 21, 2018 0

Kids Can Be Jerks

Some kids are just dickheads. It’s amazing to see kids at 10 already being dickheads, but it’s there. When redirecting or reprimanding a kid, the last thing I used to expect was some sort of reply starting with “But we were just…” or “We don’t have to…”

I don’t care what you were “just,” that’s my couch and get your disgusting feet the fuck off of it. You just earned a 6 month ban from my house. Go wait outside for your parents, with your weird eyes.

You do have to, if you don’t want me to tell your parents, and then launch a thinly-veiled campaign against your availability for playdates. I’ll bury your social calendar in the stories of your bullshit backtalk. I’ll propaganda your ass right into a Summer of staring at the walls, you red-headed, sucker-punching, hat-stealing pre-prison ass clown. See you 8 months if you haven’t been transferred to a state-run juggling camp.

Quit being scared of kids. Start slapping consequences on them. Tell them loudly they aren’t being spanked, they’re being excluded from fun. Kill their video games. Win.

May 22, 2018 0

The Value of a Village

It’s been said and published and possibly pushed off to the side, but “it takes a village to raise a child.” If you’re not sure what that entails, the basics are as follows:
1. You and your child(ren) are part of a community, like it or not.
2. You and your child(ren) will interact on a nearly daily basis with that community.
3. The community will influence, and possibly instruct you and your child(ren) on how to live in that community, like it or not.
4. If all goes well, the influence and instruction are beneficial to the mental and physiological well-being and safety of all members of the community.

This doesn’t presume that the Village is always correct in all facets of thinking, nor steered by a reasonably-moral compass. Inversely, if all (or enough) goes badly, you find yourself in a barter community ruled by vigilant, self-absorbed despots who value strict order over neighborliness.

But enough about your local HOA…

As this article is titled, yes, I am parenting your kid. “I” is me, in this case, but “I” could be any parent, or adult of influence. A teacher, perhaps. A coach, for sure. A neighbor who hires local kids to yank weeds and rake leaves for a couple sawbucks an hour, absolutely. Kevin’s mom. Shalea’s dads. Derek’s step-parents. All of us, influencing kids. We’re all in a position to be influencing the development of kids if we’re around them on a semi-regular basis. And we should be.

I’ve been around enough kids to know when they crave attention, and how they can seek it. I sit here writing this after a double playdate, siblings hosting siblings here, and half of the visiting team is a boundary pusher. Within 15 minutes of arrival, I was told by an 8 year old that my video games suck. Not long after, after educating him on a safety issue regarding the use of NERF blasters (Rule 1, No close shots), was told that I was “being a hater.” I stared at him in the face. His challenge back to me was a stare. Here’s a kid waiting to see what that will get him. Well, he gets my attention.

I took the blaster away, and reminded him that it’s okay to play a bit rough but we have to take care of each other. And that nobody hates anybody who plays by the rules. And that the next time he does it he can’t come back to the house without his parents, who will be told of his behavior afterwards. Wow. His eyes got big. Then I took out my notepad and jotted something in it. He asked what I wrote… sI truly don’t care if your kid is in my house, a playground, my yard, a flag fooball squad I’m coaching, or a touring theatrical troupe’s presentation of “Hamilton, Jr.”, disrespect is bullshit, and will be met as such.

So yes, I step in and correct what I see when I see it. If I know the kid’s name(s) I’ll address them directly. I’m not trying to overstep any other parenting; it starts inside-out and as a coach I know that external yelling can hurt the process (your kid is playing over there because they LIKE to play there, not to embarrass you, which you’re doing fine at yourself). To use a nearly tired-out phrase, I “adult” when they “kid” so everyone stays within the rules of safe play. Rough-housing is fine if all the kids are into it. But sometimes a kid is swinging a stick that is dangerously too dangerous for this particular session of Flyer’s Up, and somebody really ought to put that stick where it belongs.

For the record, Capt. Talkback has been demoted to PFC Bigmouth and is barred from the grounds until further notice. His parents were notified. And each time he asks, or is brought up as a possible invitee, I’ll remind whomever is within earshot that manners maketh playdates. Likewise, I tell other parents and adults to correct my kid’s behavior that might hurt somebody else, break rules, or worst of all, embarrass me or my wife. Kids are Kids, and I’m not trying to mitigate their natural playful (sometimes criminal) instincts, but they need to have reinforced boundaries, too. Nobody’s perfect, but a village only needs so many idiots.

April 1, 2018 0

Coaching The Little Things – Soccer Edition

I co-coached my older son’s soccer team this past few months, boys aged 7 to 8, the U9 level. Last year I coached his team, also, in a less-competitive league with 4v4 play. This year we had the step-up, 7v7 with a goalie, and 11 kids instead of 8. It was much different in terms of energy from the number of players, plus welcoming new players into a squad that played together last season. Pretty early on I talked with my co-coach about how we’re going to have to Manage more than Coach. He runs a large furniture manufacturing company, and his insight saved me I don’t know how many shots of Jameson at practices and games.

I observed early on in my sports “career” (I threw shot put and discus in college) that successful teams put players where they are most naturally suited. If a talent shows up, how can a coach ensure the success and interest of the player AND the success of the team? Do what’s right for the player and the team, it’s easy to find that balance. We got a returning kid who was so fast and athletic and had such a motor that we created the Ranger position. He could play anywhere on the field, F-MF-D, because he was going to run the field anyway. It wasn’t in his nature to stay in an area, so we didn’t force him to. Put ’em where they fit. My co-coach was able to see how kids had a certain skill that would translate to a position, and he’d get them to really shine. And we wanted them to have fun. There’s no pay, no public glory, no shoe contracts. In fact, with the amount of driving, emailing, snacks, and gear, it’s wise to put a line-item in the family budget for “Soccer, Misc.”

And there were kids who were first-timing it. Rookies in the world of organized sports, or just soccer. And every dude comes out with his own experiences and ideas of how it’s going to go for them. But hey, as a coach, you have to help the players understand the boundaries and intention of the relationship. We’re here to get better via practice, so we’re the best in the game. Sportsmanship can be tough to teach, the idea and practice of being respectful of the game and players by playing fair, playing hard, and encouraging your teammates at all times. We called that last one “Teamsmanship”.

This was a tough one, because we had kids from 4 different schools. Last year we had 8 kids from 2 schools. So this year we had 11 kids: 6 from 1 school, 3 from another school, and 2 from different schools. I think I researched “youth sports team dynamics” as much as “drills for youth soccer that aren’t monumentally boring”. We weren’t as cohesive as I’d hoped, but that fell on my shoulders as the coach, in that we could have done some more team-building stuff. Some kids were like cousins, some like brothers, and some like professional wrestling rivals getting ready for the Bunkhouse Brawl at the KeyStone Fieldhouse this Saturday.

We had Alpha performers, Alpha personalities with Beta skills, Beta performers with Alpha drive, and everyone had their own Omega (not interested, gonna quit) moments. All of these have to be identified, welcomed, and addressed. As each kid had his own way of expressing happiness, effort, and disappointment, we were learning quickly how to help them embrace it and turn it into positive energy.

The league’s pre-season meetings and seminars rarely give you the heads-up about the dynamics of personalized coaching styles. I’m far from a guru, but I’m thankful I had experience with some of the players from last year, as well as the works I’ve read about working with boys, their energy, and especially with the Positive Coaching Alliance.

We’d get 2 hours a week with the kids before the game. I’d like to get more, but instead we’d encourage them to play soccer at recess, practice those passing drills, and ask parents to remind their guys about Sportsmanship and Respect. We had a great group of parents, too. It was so loud at a couple games that I had to give kids hand-signals instead of shouting directions. Preparation was a huge lesson! By the time we started the game, we didn’t want to coach, we wanted to just remind the guys of where they should be and let them play and make their own decisions on the field. They all showed the ability to play well, play with a team, and everyone got a lot better by season’s end.

Our record, for the record, was 7-0-1. UNDEFEATED! 2 of those wins came against teams that were far more technically proficient than we were. Really great at passing out of the cluster – if you’ve watched a kid’s soccer game, the Cluster is the maddening huddle that migrates around the ball as it rolls around the field – and getting back on defense. We won against those teams sheerly by just PLAYING. Our guys were just out-hustling the other team, challenging everything. Usually around the 5th game, about 7 weeks in, I tell myself “This is it. Next year is no-go.” But this year I was already looking for ways to get better as a coach, in Soccer and elsewhere. If you make the practice/learning a FUN thing, the play/game takes care of itself. The best part of it all, for me, is when I see the kids and their families around town, and they say “Hey coach! I’m playing this sport this Winter, but are you gonna coach XYZ in the Spring?” Yeah, I probably will. Just gotta get the shoe contract worked out.

November 16, 2017 0

Coaching The Little Stuff

I wrote recently about letting one of my kids quit playing a sport because of how little he enjoyed it, and how that was only being fed by a coach not trying to make it more fun for the players. These are kids. 6-7 year old boys who are naturally hyper and want to move a lot and do the glory stuff in the sport (hitting, catching TDs, driving the lane on Kaidon and dunking on his goofy ass in front of Caitelynne). They don’t like doing the dirty work. But that’s where the professionals excel, the little stuff.

Experts master the little stuff to a point of muscle memory and contextual perfection. It might not look perfect every time, but the golf swing or the jump-shot or the omo plata, it’s all 2nd nature. But it has to start somewhere. And the best way to get kids to get used to doing the little stuff to the point that they pretty much master it is to make it a fun thing to do, and disguise it as a game. Last week, at home, we started a contest to see how many footballs my son could catch, in a row, without dropping one. He got to 21. Then he was kinda burned out on it. So we stopped.

Then we did a little bit yesterday before our flag football game, and he got to tell the team he caught 21 in a row. So now they’re all in to how many times they could catch it. And bingo, we have a drill looking like a game. We won 21-0 with 2 long runs and 1 long pass for TDs. This was a different kid than the one 2 weeks ago who didn’t want to play football because he was scared of messing up.

But in moments of the game, I put my son at Center because he’s the best at snapping, and can catch in a crowd as a taller kid. On our 2nd to last play, I put him at Center to try and get a specific play to throw to him. His face dropped. He broke eye contact. He said he wanted to play Running Back. We have a rule that if you ask to play a position, you won’t play that position. We tell the kids we put them in the places they do the best, and if we want to change it, the coaches have to agree. He called the huddle, snapped the ball, and kind jogged to his spot with his hands up.

After the game, on the way to the car, we had a talk about doing your best no matter where you end up, and how I put him at Center because he is best at starting the play and catching the ball in a crowd. He also got to play Receiver on a reverse that gained 14 yards.

And I started down a path of “You did great today, but…” and “Do you think there was something you could do better next week? I can help you with any skill you want to get even better at.” And it hit me… I’m alluding that he wasn’t trying that hard, and that he needs to be thinking about his performance… in a kid’s flag football game… and how he can improve. I stopped. Instead I told him what I really felt. That I was proud of his big run, of his flagging a kid who tried to spin away, and that he played great in spots he didn’t really want to play.

I was starting to make it “not fun” for him. We won, and I’m still COACHING. Some kids get the fun of a sport from the Competition of it, playing with a fire that is fed when the play starts and comes their way, even at 5 years old and up. Other kids need motivation to stick with it but they flourish in their moments, and that’s really great to see. Some kids are there as a social thing and they like playing with their buddies and that’s enough for them. And that has to be enough for me, too, as their coach, and especially as his dad.

So I told him, later on, that I would play him at Running Back next week if he practiced with me twice this week. And if he would practice twice and do all the games we practice without grumbling, I’d also get him a pack of Pokemon cards.

A BRIBE? No… Incentive. Pro athletes get them in contracts all the time for yards, attending off-season work outs, losing weight, etc.

For a kid who has his dad’s ability to do well at things he feels like doing well at – when the mood strikes him – I am hoping to instill some confidence in his own abilities, and it might take some incentivizing. So why would I do it if it’s “just a kid’s game” and it’s “just for fun”? Because I know what drives him. And it’s gotta be more fun for him, even if he doesn’t become a world-class flag football star, and instead is just an Agent for most of them.

And I needed to practice the little stuff – make it fun, pump up the positives, explain their success, encourage and reward EFFORT – more than twice this week.

May 8, 2017 0

Category: Coaching