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”