Savor Setbacks
Help kids learn and develop amid difficult times
By John Engh
One of my most memorable youth-sports coaching experiences was the first season I coached my son in T-ball. Having played baseball my entire life, I couldn’t wait to coach the sport I loved so much. I had unexpectedly coached a couple years earlier when I signed my daughter up for Under-6 soccer and the team needed coaches. I had never played soccer, but how could I say no? After all, I had been working for years at an organization that tells volunteers that experience at that age does not matter. All that were needed were a willingness to learn and patience! I had a lot of fun coaching my daughter and learned quite a bit about soccer—and parents, and the craziness of youth sports. I would never trade that particular experience. But now, I was ready. I had been playing catch with my son for over a year with the hope he would fall in love with the sport as well. Like most youth-sports stories, this one didn’t go as planned!
NAYS
As many people know, at that level one of the key responsibilities of an administrator is to do one’s best to create teams of equal talent. Usually, this means holding a skills-evaluation session before the season begins, and drafting players after. Now, because I was a first-year coach and did not have an assistant, I only had my son on the roster before the draft. Because every other team started with two players (both coaches’ kids), I had first pick.
A Cut Above
Elisabeth Wales, Unsplash
During the evaluation, I noticed one player who stood out both physically and with skills well above the other players. On a scale of 1 to 10, it was 10s across the board. I just assumed he was one of the other coaches’ kids. But at the draft, there he was at the top of the available-players sheet, with an average of 9.9. For reference, of the 100-plus kids who were evaluated that day, the second-highest score was in the low 6s. It was a no-brainer. This kid would be a game changer—literally.
So, what went wrong? We had by far the best player in the league who hit a base-clearing home run almost every at-bat and could field better than any player on any team, so we went undefeated. Because of this, however, the parents started to think the scores and the record mattered. They also felt their kids had a reason to feel some accomplishment, all because we had an unfair advantage. The kids on our team, however, saw things differently. They were constantly comparing themselves to what the star player was doing. Frustrated, they really didn’t feel like they were part of why the team was winning. Plus, the team never lost. Because scores and standings were recorded, my other players never experienced failure, or the sting of losing a close game, which can be an important source for inspiration to work harder and strive for improvement.
Part Of The Process
The National Alliance for Youth Sports has a teaching point used in classes to help administrators understand what happened to me and the team. Adults (parents) are mostly product-oriented and care about results. Did the team win? Did their child get to play? Did he or she get any hits? On the other hand, children, especially those under 10, are process-oriented. Is it fun to be out on the field? Yes, winning is fun, but is playing the game and the process of learning and skill-building fun?
That first-year experience was a huge, practical lesson for me, and something I have always remembered. The kids did enjoy winning, but they weren’t having as much fun doing the work it took to win. Plus, kids learn so much from failure when they are young that it is important to make sure it’s part of the process so they will know later how to deal with the setbacks and disappointments that are a part of life.
John Engh is executive director of the National Alliance for Youth Sports (NAYS) in West Palm Beach, Fla. He can be reached via email at jengh@nays.org. To join more than 3,000 communities by starting a NAYS Member Organization, visit www.nays.org, email nays@nays.org or call (800) 729-2057.