No tourney, so here is a rant on youth sports

Today is Monday July 26, 2010 and this in not the blog entry I had hoped to be writing after this past weekend. I was scheduled to watch a weekend full of hoops and then come home to write about all that I witnessed. Unfortunately the tourney I was going to attend was canceled because of low numbers. As I said in my last post I had emailed Mike Jeffferds who is the basketball director at the Southern Maine SportsZone with the hopes of attaining a team list. I did hear from Mike and he informed me that the numbers were looking very low and that he didn’t think they would be able to pull off the tournament. It was a bit disappointing but I decided that I was still going to do a post today it just is going to be one of a different nature. This post will be about the low numbers of athletes that many Maine schools are dealing with these days, and possible reasons why this is happening.

Many people want to blame technological things like television, video games and computers exclusively for kid’s lack of interest in sports. I do acknowledge that those things have had some effect on the sports scene but in my opinion one of the biggest reason kids stop playing sports as they get older is because they stop having fun. I found a short article about this at; http://life.familyeducation.com/sports/behavior/29512.html i also witnessed how this happens first hand. The article states,

“Twenty million kids register each year for youth hockey, football, baseball, soccer, and other competitive sports. The National Alliance for Sports reports that 70 percent of these kids quit playing these league sports by age 13 -- and never play them again”.

Yes that does say 70 percent! Clearly something is drastically wrong with out youth sports leagues across the country if almost three quarters of kids who start playing a sport stop be their teenage years. I stated this earlier and the article seconds my sentiment, kids quit sports because they are not fun. The blame often gets transferred to television, video games or computers because that is usually what the kids spend their time doing once they are done with sports. Why do they turn to those types of things? I believe the answer is simply because they are fun and pressure free activities. In other words they are activities that are completely opposite of the experiences most kids have when playing youth sports. When athletes are young the goal of coaches, parents and organizers should be to instill a joy and love of the game in every kid. When people forget what youth sports should be about things often turn ugly.

A prime example of how things can go so wrong and the effects even something as small as one junior high game can have on athletes happened to my own sister. She was an 8^th grader playing on her junior high varsity team, which at this time had great numbers of athletes. Their team was not ripe with basketball talent but it was full of good kids who were benefiting from all the great things basketball has to offer. They played a regular season game against a far more talented team and lost 74-1! In my opinion it doesn’t matter how much better your team is than the other there is NO excuse for a score like that in junior high basketball. The opposing teams coach played his starters for almost the entire game and had several players on his bench that did not get a chance to play. In a 73 point win mind you! My sister went on to high school and continued playing basketball but by her sophomore year she was the only girl from her grade that was still playing the sport. That can not simply be a coincidence, a whole year of girls decided that playing basketball was not worth being embarrassed in front of their friends and family so they just quit.

I am sure many of you readers (If there is anybody actually reading these posts?) are thinking that I am one of those winning doesn’t matter types; nothing could be further from the truth. I am one of the most competitive people around and absolutely hate to lose but with youth sports I have a different mentality. I have coached kids from 2^nd grade through high school and I have learned this one simple fact; you can not coach a team full of 6 year olds the same way you would a team of 16 year olds. The mistake many coaches and parents make is not being able to separate their own competitive drive from what is best for the kids they are working with. The younger the athletes the less winning, rules and restrictions matter. At that age its all about having fun and instilling a life long love of basketball in the kids. As they get older you can begin to add more structure and competition into the mix but not until the high school age should winning become a concern.

Ok well I feel better now that I have that off my chest and will gladly step down from my soap box now. I am still hoping to watch some basketball this upcoming weekend up in Lewiston so that you won’t have to endure another rant like this post. As usual I will leave you with a quote that I either enjoy thinking about or perhaps motivates me.

“I think some parents now look at a youngster failing as the final thing. It's a process, and failure is part of the process. I would like it if the teacher and the parents would connect more. I think that used to be, but we're losing a little bit of that right now.
Mike Krzyzewski”

End of summer plans

Today is July 20, 2010 and I this is my second blog entry for mainegirlsbasketballreport.blogspot.com. I am enjoying this sunny warm weather on my last day of vacation before heading back to the real world tomorrow. Though I can not say I am looking forward to getting back to my job I can say that I am excited to start watching and writing about some basketball!!! I have three major events on my schedule over the next few weeks, first there is the By the Beach End of Summer tourney on July 24^th and 25^th, after that I will be at the Lewiston Summer Conclusion tourney on July 30^th and 31^st and finally I will attend the Class A Summer showcase on August 7^th. These three events will be my first opportunity to see first hand what teams and players are looking like for the upcoming season, I am ready to get to work.

The first of these events, the By the Beach End of Summer tourney starts this upcoming weekend. Here is a link to the tourney site

http://www.mbrbasketball.com/July%2024%20&%2025%20girls%20HS%20tourney.htm .

I am working on getting a list of the teams that are going to be playing and I will share that on here as soon as I get it. I am extra psyched for this event because it is a high school team event so it will be a great early chance to see some of the teams before the season. I am hoping to do some live blogging on both Saturday and Sunday while watching the games (Got to love smart phones). I also will try to talk to a few coaches or players if I can and with their permission recap the interviews for my readers.

This blogging will be difficult and possibly boring at first because I don’t have anybody who is reading me on a consistent basis and because it is the off season. With that being said as my readership level increases and the season gets closer I should be able to make things more interesting. More readers should mean more comments which will lead to good conversations about basketball. The season getting closer means fall AAU and more games to attend live, ergo more material to blog about and in theory better reading for you. I hope to have built up a decent reader base by the time the fall AAU season is over so that we can kick things up during the high school season. For now I will do my best to get the most mileage out of the few remaining summer events as well as commenting on articles I find interesting online. I hope this will be enough to garner some interest in mainegirlsbasketballreport.com. Please feel free to comment on any of my posts with ideas for the blog or ways to make things more interesting or user friendly.

I think that’s about as far as I can stretch this entry. Hopefully I will be writing again soon with info about what teams will be playing in this weekends tourney. I will leave you with a quote that I really enjoy from my childhood hero,

“The game is my life. It demands loyalty and responsibility, and it gives me back fulfillment and peace.” – Michael Jordan

First Blog Entry:

Today is ____ and this will be the first of hopefully many entries on my blog, mainegirlsbasketballreport.Blogspot.com. I guess I should start off by telling you a bit about myself and why I have decided to write this particular blog (If you don’t really want to know about me I understand just skip down a bit to get to the good stuff). My name is Shawn Wyman. I am 26 years old and live in Portland, Maine. Basketball has been in my life basically since birth. My grandfather was a coach in Massachusetts for almost 40 years. I actually have a photo of him handing me a basketball when I was maybe 2 years old. Naturally I played basketball my whole life straight through high school at Lincoln Academy where I was a team captain my senior year. From there I attended the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, and my freshman year was the first year in my life that I didn’t play basketball. It was difficult and I knew I had to change that before the start of my next semester. Thankfully I found a work study job as the team manager for the UMass Women’s basketball team which I held for the next 3 and ½ years (Yes I had a super senior year for those counting at home, Amherst was too much fun to leave in only 4 years). I returned home to Maine with my degree in Sports Management to realize that I was again faced with the same dilemma as freshman year, no basketball. I played in some men’s leagues and at any open gym I could find and also spent one year coaching middle school girl’s basketball. That coaching ended around 3 and 1/2 years ago and was the last direct involvement I have had with basketball.

I recently decided that it has been long enough and I need to get basketball back into my life. I tossed around multiple ideas in my head before settling on this one, coaching, adult leagues, I even tried taking a course on NBA scouting, but somehow writing a blog came out as the winner. I have never done anything like this before and really never enjoyed writing when I was in school, but I figure if there is anything I can enjoy writing about everyday it has to be basketball. Perhaps it is because I am tall (6’6”) but to me the sport of basketball is simply the best sport ever invented. Firstly it is fair, everybody plays both offense and defense, and it forces you to be complete. Some sports you can be an amazing offensive player and that is enough but not basketball, no matter how great you are on offense if you stink on defense the other team will make you pay. Secondly basketball has great flow, things just transition so well, one team scores and then are immediately on defense and the defensive team now goes on the offensive. Then there are the sounds of basketball, a ball being dribbled, the chirp of a sneaker on the wood floor, the painful clang of a missed shot and the sweet sound of the net as a perfect shot swishes through.

With that being said it should be clear why writing a blog about basketball was so intriguing to me, but you might be asking why girls basketball? Good question, and there is a simple answer, as I have gotten older I have grown to respect girl’s basketball more and more. I also feel that in the sports world and especially in the state of Maine girl’s basketball is not given the attention it deserves. I plan to do my part in changing this by writing about girl’s high school basketball in a way that hopefully shows others the beauty I see in the game. While the dunking and above the rim play might not be the same as the boy’s game all the things that I love about basketball are still there (And as players like Candice Parker have shown the above the rim part of the game no longer belongs solely to the male gender).

While I don’t know all the specifics I do have a general idea of how I would like this blog to work. My first goal will be to see first hand as much girl’s basketball in the state of Maine as possible so that I can write about it with an informed opinion. That should be easy during the season with games almost every night across the state. Things get a bit harder in the off season but I still believe I can provide interesting reporting and opinions from AAU and summer league games as well as summer camps and tourneys. I want to bring light to girl’s basketball in all corners of the state. If you feel your region, conference or even team is not getting a fair amount of attention please let me know so I can get out to your area and see what it has to offer.

I plan on attending as many summer basketball games, camps, tournaments and other events as my work schedule will allow so don’t be surprised to read comments about you on my blog soon! I look forward to providing some much needed publicity to girl’s basketball in the state of Maine. Until next time, remember, all the work you put in during the summer pays off in the winter.