Responsibly guiding your child athlete is hard work. I'm blogging on sports-parenting, and now I feel the pressure to be a "perfect parent." While interviewing former high-level athletes regarding their own children, I'm learning some amazing tips for responsible sports-parenting. It's important for me to implement some of these tips with my own children.
For the first time in a while, I'm coaching third and fourth grade girls in a recreational soccer league. As a parent and as a coach, I tried really hard in our first game to 1) make it fun, 2)encourage the girls to work hard, and 3) seek for improvement/progress for each and every girl, at all skill levels.
I'm quite pleased to report that all three of my goals were met. Not only did the girls work hard, they each have progressed from practice into a game situation with many improvements. I'm not sure the girls even realized that they are now passing the ball, staying in position, and scoring goals as a result. It took a lot of hard work in practices, and I believe they were and are having fun. I think it's fun for the girls to feel a sense of personal accomplishment in just knowing that they are improving.
On the other hand, the coaches on the other team clearly did not have the same goals as our team. Like many of you, the coaches were parent-coaches. What I heard on the sideline from these parent-coaches was unacceptable. These coaches expressed in front of their own team that they were highly disappointed with the girls' performances. Additionally, these coaches were trying to intimidate the youth refs, and that was completely unfair.
I talked with my assistant coaches about this, and we all agreed that when we saw the girls do something wrong on the field, we noted it to ourselves to work on those points in practice. We believe in encouraging the girls to bring out the best in each of them. If what we're doing is not working, we look to approach an issue from another angle. For example, if the girls don't seem to be paying attention to a certain drill, we sometimes try to make a fun game out of a drill. This sometimes gets their attention better.
The most amazing part of our first game of the season was seeing our weakest player try her hardest and succeed in stopping a ball and passing it. Not only were we surprised as coaches to see this progress over just several weeks of practices, but suddenly at the end of the game, the girl asked us to borrow some equipment so she could practice more at home. I was shocked because I really didn't think she was very interested in soccer.
Sure, I felt pressure to be "responsibly coaching," but the pressure was worth it to see a group of very happy soccer players who deserve a pat on the back. Good job Tigers!!!
Monday, September 10, 2007
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