By Dan Bauer
Daydreaming at a stop light last fall I noticed an elementary after-school football practice on the field next to me. No helmets, no pads, just a dozen or so kids standing around as a couple of adults demonstrated what appeared to be the proper technique for a hand-off.
It didnât appear that anybody was having fun.
That is when it hit me. We have convinced ourselves that teaching and coaching these eight-year-olds the finer points of the game is fun for them. We may have also convinced the kids that this is the way sports are intended to be, boring, with lots of standing around listening to coachâs talk. If you havenât stood before a group of nine-year-olds lately and tried to get them to listen, you donât have a clue what I am talking about. We throw terms and concepts at them that they are ill-prepared to grasp. Many at this age are still mastering reading an analog clock. A fake 32 blast with a backside George reverse is equally confusing.
Sitting and listening to someone talk is quickly becoming a lost skill for our children. When they have a video screen in front of them they are engaged. When the power of technology isnât available to them the gene inside of them that wants to run and play still exists. The problem with âcoached-upâ sports as opposed to play is coaches spend too much time lecturing and teaching and in turn the kids get less time playing. As coaches we are stepping into their lives at younger and younger ages and replacing their free play time with structured games.
The demise of their play instincts is evident.
Recently, as I watched a high school baseball game, a youth team assembled for a practice on a nearby field. Player after player arrived with bats, balls and gloves and proceeded to sit on the bleachers until their coach arrived. Not one kid played catch or hit some fly balls, instead they just sat and waited for their coach to appear and give them permission to âplay.â I was stunned. We are convinced that our anal attempts to teach them the game through our lens is what they really need to develop their full potential at age six.
Parenting has become the most fiercely competitive sport. The result is a heavy diet of coach dominated camps and high pressure teams. Our desire for our kids to be the best athlete in their age group has reached toxic levels. We have attached our own self-worth to the t-ball batting average of a kindergartner or the won-loss record of a mite team. While we seldom miss our kid making a mistake during a game, we have been completely blind to the evolution of play into structured sports. And in the process we have convinced ourselves that they are one and the same.
They are not.
I remember taking my son to his first t-ball practice on a warm, muggy, mosquito infested June evening. It was two hours of complete boredom as players swatted more mosquitoes than baseballs. After it was finished, my son asked, âDo we have to go to that again?â We didnât and his baseball skills developed nicely during backyard whiffle ball games with his neighborhood friends.
What we are creating is a generation of little sports robots that only respond to a coachâs command.
We have to beg kids to go outside and playâfor one hour a day. That would have been the equivalent of being grounded when I was growing up. If I had to spend one hour a day in the house it was punishment. In the summer our next door neighbor would send their kids outside, seemingly at dawn and not let them back in until sunset. They even had to eat outside!
Our paranoia between sending kids outsideâunsupervised and our fear that we might be falling behind the neighbor kidâs athletic development has sentenced our kids to a childhood of structure and instruction that would have sent child development psychologist Jean Piaget to therapy. I have seen the glazed over look in the eyes of kids and the body language that tells me they donât want to be here. The difference between unstructured play of the days of old and todayâs ridged high leverage formula is significant.
At some point we need to ask ourselves is this even fun anymore?
Case in point, my small area games summer hockey camp was completely canceled due to the pandemic. However, at one point the rink was going to allow us to teach skills as long as we socially distanced on the ice. At the last minute they canceled again, but many customers told me their kids werenât interested in a skills only camp. Their kids enjoyed our camp because we play small area competitive/fun games. My summer program is more like an afternoon on the pond than another highly regulated practice. We clearly still believe in the âpower of the pond or the sandlotâ.
One particular parent told me that his kids loved my summer program because it was fun. He talked about all the camps they attend, yet mine was their favorite. Throughout the conversation he continued to apologize for labeling my camp as fun, like I would be offended. I wasnât. In fact it was the best compliment he could have paid me. My goal is for kids to enjoy the experience, try new things, not worry about mistakes or turnovers or systems and just play the games we put before them.Â
My belief is kids today have enough high pressure practices and games and far too little time to experiment with their skills and the game itself. Time where mistakes arenât pointed out and coaches drink more coffee and talk less. In short, a famine of what we call ârat hockeyâ ice time. It is a drum I will continue to pound on because nurturing a passion for the game is what I believe is the key to becoming not only a good player, but a hockey enthusiast for life.
Then the hockey experience for the 99.9% that wonât get a division one scholarship is a success story and not a bitter, failed dream. We all know someone who hung up their skates after high school and never put them on again. As parents and coaches, none of us should want to be a part of that tragedy.
Fun is still the number one reason why kids play and stay in sports. In our race to build the next Patrick Kane or Connor McDavid we sometimes lose sight of that. I grew up loving the âsandlotâ neighborhood sports we played and I will never apologize for doing my best to make teaching the game fun.
Dan Bauer is a free-lance writer, retired teacher & hockey coach in Wausau, WI. You can contact him at drbauer13@gmail.com
Responses
Dan is right on! Our failure as coaches to maintain the “joy and wonder” of the game is sad. Let the games be games and kids be kids!