How To Ruin Your Kid’s Life In Sports

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Picture it. A spunky 5th grader dribbles the ball across midcourt and loses her dribble. The defender scoops it up and goes in for an uncontested layup. In the two following trips, the same flustered girl throws ill-advised passes that have no hope of reaching her teammates and four more points are tacked on the scoreboard for the opponent. Trailing by ten points now late in the 4th quarter, all hope of winning the game is lost.

This young player, she knows exactly where her dad is sitting. After each turnover, she catches him out of the corner of her eye as she turns to sprint back on defense. His body language depicts anger and frustration. He leans back in his seat with excessive drama, throwing his hands in the air. She looks to her coach on the other side of the floor. His reaction is no better. He jerks his head back, rolls his eyes and stares angrily at his point guard.

She knows what went wrong. But she’s also smart enough to know that she’s not big enough or strong enough to make all the plays that are going to win every game. She needs more practice. She needs encouragement and patient teaching. And she needs freedom to have small failures without shame.

The game is lost. But more importantly the slide toward losing the kid is already in full motion. The steps toward confidence building just ran into a brick wall.

Somewhere in the gym sits an innocent bystander. He has no interest in the game’s outcome on the scoreboard. As the game unfolds, he watches intently, but his eyes aren’t on the same things as the coaches or the overly excited parents. His focus is on the looks on the players faces. Their reactions when plays don’t go their way. Their reactions to the coach’s instructions. Where their eyes turn when they know they’ve made a mistake. How they react to the words and body language of mom, dad, and coach. He wonders to himself if each player will be ruled by fear or by confidence as they grow older.

He’s watched enough kids in enough games that he’s disturbed by it all. To him, the kids are obviously overwhelmed by it. What should amount to simply playing and competing in a game, quickly evolves into playing to please adults. The joy and the freedom of children is stolen from them. When the atmosphere of this game is multiplied by 60 or more times a year for multiple sports over the course of grades 3 through 8, where does this leave a young athlete? Just messed up in many cases.

Fear, doubt, and lack of confidence. These things exist and grow pretty well inside the minds of kids without being fertilized repeatedly. There’s an awkward stage that may not go away until…….well, never for some. For youth coaches and parents alike, we’re all somewhat guilty. So much of what we do and say consistently over the long haul only serves to make it worse.

In the end, kids give up on sports and walk away for the wrong reasons. Not because of lack of ability, but because the fun left long before it should have. The doubts and fears eventually become too much. The pressures of misguided parents and youth coaches take their toll. Parents try to claim the level of excellence their child will reach. Efforts of youth coaches focus on simply winning. Player development and mental approach to the game are neglected by all.

So how do we change it? First of all:

Parents, please just shut up. 

Really, just stop talking and start cheering. That conversation you’re in danger of having with your kid in the car after a game, it’s worthless. The cumulative effect of your words, game after game after game X300, about what they can do better………is that they want you to shut up. They live in danger of reaching the end of their high school career someday, believing that they never played a single game that pleased their mom and dad. What you’re saying isn’t necessarily anywhere close to what they’re hearing.  And all that coaching you do from the bleachers, just stop. Most of the time, it’s just instructions on how your kid can score more, and not tips on how the whole team can fare better. You’re not helping. You’re cultivating selfishness and confusion. Just let them play. Just let them be coached. Just let them have fun. Just let the experience be theirs. In the end, you can’t pick your kid’s level of excellence. But you can help cultivate a love for the game, boost their confidence, and teach the values of work ethic and being a great listener. Yeah, it’s good to focus on those things.

Coaches, just smile more.

Be a cheerleader during the games. Don’t obsess over outcomes. See what you need to address in practice. Address it in practice. Games are the times when we all tend to wreck our kids’ heads. Instead lead their hearts and heads every bit as much as you coach their actions.

The greatest skill that youth coaches need is the simple willingness to smile and clap their hands.  The kid that just missed two straight wide open layups? That kid that just got a scowl from their mom? The one whose dad is gonna tell him, on the car ride home, all the corrections to be made so he can rack up 30 the next game? Yeah, every time those kids hit the inner turmoil of failing to meet their own or their parents’ twisted expectations, they need to see an assuring look from their coach. This is where your body language shines. Smile, clap your hands, and belt out one of these magical phrases:

“It’s alright”

“Keep shooting, the next one’s going in”

“It’s okay, just keep playing”

“We’re good”

“Hang in there, just keep fighting”

“Keep you head up”

“Put it behind you. Just be ready to make the next play”

I could drag out these points for pages and pages because I’ve made every parenting mistake along with every coaching mistake.  So maybe this is the most important point to end with in summary.

Look at your little 3rd or 4th grader on the court today. Give some thought about what your hopes are for them when they’re 18. If your goal is athletic greatness, I suggest that you adjust that just a bit. Maybe you can lead your kid in this direction:

“I hope my kid is able to play totally without fear of any task or any opponent, without fear of making a mistake, and with complete determination to simply do their job the right way every single time”.

Is this the direction we’re leading our kids in? I don’t think it is. I know I failed miserably in this area. And I know every court and every field is full of fearful kids. Most every time I look at the face of a kid in competition, they look like they’re afraid to make a mistake and most don’t respond well when they do. The fun is leaving. Let’s change that.

Smile. Clap your hands.

“It’s alright”

Hey Sis, I Think I’ll Hang On To These

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I sat in my office recently talking to a couple of twenty-something guys about life insurance.  Neither of them were dads, but I noticed one was staring at the hand-painted artwork of my daughter Maddie, that rests proudly at the front of my desk.  Insurance talk came to a brief halt, “That’s about the neatest thing I’ve ever seen”.

I quickly answered that it was my most prized possession, a Father’s Day gift.  It’s taken me a few days to understand why I hold it so dear.  Other than the obvious reasons, I thinks it’s this; it shows that for our shared experiences, her perception matches mine.  The spirit of her memories is perfectly in line with mine in her artwork.

In a wild life of hectic schedules, we found quiet times together.  She always knew where her dad was.  She always had someone to lean on.

I don’t think I’m a hoarder, but I do tend to intercept a lot of thing that are bound for the garbage or the yard sale.  Maybe it’s just a matter of awareness of the value of looking ahead because I know the treasure that lies in looking back.  Possessions that have no monetary value become treasures for those who can look back together at shared experiences of earlier times.  Often a single object does the trick.

It’s become a Thanksgiving tradition for my brother, sister, and I to rummage through our dad’s basement and attic for worthless things that bring back priceless memories.  A Happy Days board game.  A slew of ticket stubs from concerts or sporting events.  A little league baseball hat and a 40 year-old baseball glove.  Treasures that remind me how thankful I am for my family and for childhood memories.

In a home with four children, sometimes the purges are great.  It seems that you can fill a 32-gallon garbage bag with Happy Meal toys at least twice a year.  Sometimes items go away that parents wish they’d kept…….or someday they will wish they kept them.  There was a coat that both of our girls had worn as toddlers that I spent a few years thinking had gotten away from us.  I had a silent celebration when I discovered the Pooh coat buried in the bottom of a storage tub.  “Get your Pooh coat on sis”.  It has meaning for me now.  Someday it may have meaning for the girls as well.  Maybe they’ll dig it out together some Thanksgiving after dinner…….as adults……after they’re married.  And they’ll give thanks for the childhood they spent together.  And I’ll give thanks once again for the time I spent being the daddy of two little girls.

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They’re not so little any more.  Macy is a college graduate, living 4 hours away, and getting married in September.  Maddie just completed her first year of college, but is thankfully home to spend the summer with us (as much as a college student spends the summer with their parents).  The start date of her summer job was pushed back for a week, so she decided to have a yard sale last week.  Mostly things that belonged to her and Macy.  I showed up to help her set things up early on a Saturday morning.  As I was digging through the tubs and boxes, placing items strategically so they could be seen, I hesitated when I pulled out a pair of well-worn soccer shoes with a $.50 price tag on them.

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I silently walked to my truck and placed them in the front seat.  Maddie looked up from her work, “You decide to keep those?”

Maddie probably didn’t know why. They were her sister’s shoe’s.  I didn’t know myself. Macy had put together a pretty successful soccer career.  A player on our school’s first regional championship team to go along with some notable individual accomplishments. Two years of soccer in college.  But I honestly couldn’t even begin to remember what season she wore them in.  And she may not remember herself.

But I remember well the night she picked them out.

And as the days count down to her wedding day, I wonder if she remembers too.  For a dad that really knew little about soccer (other than learning just enough to be a youth soccer coach) and little about soccer shoes, I placed myself firmly in the middle of the annual soccer shoe buying process.  Our girls generally wore their shoes out by playing in both the fall and spring.  Sometimes I had to insist that they replace worn out shoes.

“Daddy, I think these will be alright”.

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So the tradition became that dad combed the internet for shoes that were acceptable for his girls to play in each season.  Time after time, I’d call one of them to the arm of my recliner, “What do you think about these, sis?”.  As they got older, they came to my recliner, iPad in hand, “Dad, what do you think about these?”.  And the dad who hated to overspend on fancy things or pay too much for shoes or clothes that would soon be outgrown always made an exception when it came to soccer shoes.  I don’t think the girls really grasped just how little I understood the game of soccer.  But I think they did come to understand that their dad thought it was important for his girls to play in quality shoes.

“Are you sure those are the ones you want, sis?”.

“Yeah daddy, I’m sure”.

So I’ll store the shoes away in a tub with other treasures.  Other memories.  Someday they’ll come back out.  Maybe on a Thanksgiving afternoon, Macy will dig them out with her brothers and sister.  And maybe she’ll tell her own kids that she was a pretty fair soccer player in her day.  And it may not be worth mentioning to her kids, but I have a feeling that she, and her sister too, will have fond memories of picking out soccer shoes with their dad.

I’m glad I saved the shoes.  But they’re just shoes.  The real treasure lies in shared memories.  And sometimes saving an item here and there helps to keep precious memories alive.

And somewhere in my house is a Thomas the Tank engine wooden roundhouse that would fetch about $50 on eBay.  I was thinking about selling it.  But both of our boys spent hours playing with it.  I guess I’ll hang on to that too.

 

 

 

Men Are Just Stupid Sometimes

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Yeah, I’m a basketball coach again.  Sure, I’ll do it.  Maybe I trust God to get me through the situations He leads me into.  But maybe I worship the idol of self-reliance.

Yeah, there’s a backstory.  There was a period of about a year of feeling as physically bad as I ever had in my 48 years.  Many many headaches, lack of focus and energy, minor bouts with anxiety and depression.  The fight in me was gone.

“You’ll feel better if you get into an exercise routine”.  No, this wasn’t the voice of my marathon running wife.  This was my inner voice beating me with proven truth.  So I started lifting weights and running on the treadmill.  About 2 weeks into an actual routine, I started experiencing neck pain.  But I continued to workout (because men are stupid).  My wife noticed my discomfort as I ran on the treadmill one night.  I told her, “it hurts when I run.”

“Don’t run!”   Good idea.  World of exercise was done.

Pain worsened.  Problems from an old neck/spinal problem sent steady pain to my shoulder and arm.  Sleep became more difficult.

Next problem.  Family vacation.  I only take one full week off each year, and dangit I’m gonna fish nonstop from the beach while I’m there.  Cast after cast, many with 12 and 14ft rods, made things worse.  Sleep became very difficult.  I could no longer lay flat in a bed.  Pain worsened.  But I continued to fish, continued to cast (because men are stupid).  My son and I were gonna haul in something big, even if it killed me.

Upon returning to work I have been too prideful to ask others to help me with things that I am used to doing myself (because men are stupid).

One month later, I still can’t lay flat in a bed.  Sleep comes 30 minutes at a time sitting upright, and usually tops out at 4 hours a night.

Almost 3 weeks ago, I started another tour as a middle school girls basketball coach.  Working 45-50 hours a week, plus spending 3-6 hours in the gym each night, sleeping 3-4 hours, and trying to keep young ladies excited about the game of basketball……….I was scared.

“I can’t do this”.  My inner voice returned.  The pain was constant.  My movements became limited.  My doctor and therapy visits didn’t promise any relief in the immediate future.

I struggled mentally, focusing on the things that I wasn’t able to do.  I was no help around the house.  I felt like a 100 year-old man raising a 10 year-old son.  The idol of self-sufficiency was apparent even if I hadn’t struggled with living for achievement.

But the prayers were constant too.  I received texts from my wife, “I’m praying for you right now.” I knew that others were praying also.  I don’t know exactly what they prayed for.

I’m certainly not healed today.  The pain remains a constant.  But my perspective sure shifted in a hurry.

About a week into practice, I could see clearly that I am coaching a group of young ladies that will be a joy to coach.  A feeling of peace seemed to arrive so suddenly coupled with the thought of, “this is where you’re supposed to be, this is what you’re supposed to be doing”  (yes, my inner voice talks a lot).

And I soon realized that there’s a big difference in being uncomfortable and being miserable.  Yes, I’m uncomfortable all the time, but I’m not miserable.  Headaches are miserable.  I’ve gone the longest period in my life without having one.

When God leads us to the mountain, He will also lead us over the mountain.  He provides a way.

It’s all relative.  Sure, I could be better.  But I can see clearly now that I could be much worse.  Seems pretty lame to complain about discomfort when I look at the physical problems and the absolute heartbreak of others.  My eyes have been opened.

Maybe others have prayed for healing for me.  But maybe God just wanted me to not be so stupid and whiny.  And maybe He desires for me to be more compassionate toward the suffering and struggles of others.  I’m getting there.

We don’t feel the need to change if we don’t feel broken.  We don’t ask for help when we fool ourselves into believing we can do it all on our own.

Text from Kristy today, “How you feelin dear?”

“Hurting and overloaded, but in good spirits.”

Answered prayers.  By His strength and not my own.

I’m not quite as stupid as I was yesterday.  Trying to absorb those lessons in humility, trust, and surrender.

I’m not afraid anymore.

 

Get Up, You’ll Be Alright

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I guess most graduating seniors these days like to use the top of their graduation cap as a form of expression.  If this had been an “in” thing to do back in the 80’s, I’m sure my cap would have looked like a Skoal can or Van Halen album cover.

Our daughter Maddie graduates next week.  When I came across her cap last night, I held back tears.  “She knew who she was and whose she was”.

On our way to Maddie’s regional track meet today, her little brother Kal asked in that irritating little brother way, “why do we even have to go to Maddie’s track meet?”  Before I could reply in “dad tone” with a lecture, her sophomore brother answered beautifully from the front seat, “because it could be Maddie’s last track meet, and we love her, and we’re gonna support her”.  This was a day that was going call for support.

I’ve watched in silence many times as our kids have had disappointing finishes in sporting events.  It’s a struggle to hold your tongue when poor results line up perfectly with the amount of and the consistency of training that went into preparation for contests.  But that wasn’t going to be the case today.  Maddie had finished 2nd in region and 13th in state as a junior in the 800m run.  Excitement and confidence fueled her motivation for her senior season.  She had trained consistently in the offseason and supplemented her team training during the season with extra work with a trainer.  Maddie was ready for this day.

 

On an unseasonably cold May day, Maddie lined up to start her 800m run with high hopes.  She had turned in a season-best time the week before that was 6 seconds better than her previous best.  There was an outside chance of being a regional champ and a good chance of advancing to the state track meet, simply by matching her time from a week ago.

With her sister, two brothers, two grandmothers, and her mother & I nervously watching, she got off to a good start.  But as she got into the first straight stretch, disaster struck.  Her feet became tangled with another runner’s.  Maddie stayed on her feet.  The other runner went down.  But Maddie absorbed hard contact from the falling runner and spent 20 feet trying her best to stay on her feet.  There was no recovering.  The race was basically over for her.  Maddie finished 6th, almost 18 seconds off her time from her last meet.

I stood in silence, overwhelmed with parental emotions.  For all the times I’d thought and said, “I love to watch you play”, I knew I’d watched her play for the last time.  A sobering thought.  And the injustice.  For all her training and effort, her own efforts did not determine her place of finish on this day.

Little brother Kal stewed with anger.  In his eyes, Maddie got tripped.  She got cheated.  It wasn’t fair.  She deserved another chance.  He was distraught over the unfairness of it all.

I thought of all the complaints he has lodged against me.  “Dad you always tell me that, I get tired of hearing it”……….Life’s not fair.  You’ll live.  Get up, you’ll be alright.  But he doesn’t understand it yet.

I looked out past the finish line.  Maddie does understand it.  I saw her hugging the girl she got tangled up with.  Two upset young ladies consoling each other for disappointing finishes.  Life isn’t fair.  Bad things happen.  It doesn’t do any good to place blame or become angry.  What matters is how you respond to disappointment.  You can’t win every game or every race, but only you can decide when you’re defeated.

When her mother and I met up with her as she left the track, I couldn’t find any words.  She was visibly upset.  A perfectly formed shoe mark across her knee pretty much summed up her final 800m race.  I just hugged her in silence, knowing that if I tried to speak, my own tears would come.

And as I held our daughter, I knew……she was disappointed but not distraught.  Sad but not angry.  Hurting but not defeated.  She knows who she is.  She knows who she belongs to.  She is a child of the King.

Someone asked her mother and me recently what we had done as parents of our daughters.  I didn’t have an answer.  I do now.  It’s not what we have done as parents, but it is what they have come to understand.

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Their identity is in Christ.

Bad things will happen.  Life’s not fair.  Physical and emotional pain will come.  But they will not be defeated.  They will always get back up.

They’ll be alright.

As we parted ways to go in separate directions after the meet, I hugged her one more time. This time I found my words.  “I’m proud of who you are”.

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Let’s Just Be Awesome Instead of Trying To Be Great

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A funny thing happened on the way to supposedly leading my daughter and her friends to basketball greatness.  They all became awesome.  But not necessarily at basketball.

My wife played college basketball.  I played high school basketball.  This is a basketball house.  Doggone it, my four kids are all gonna be basketball players!  I was determined to guide my daughter and whoever wanted to tag along, down the path to basketball greatness.

From 3rd grade through 8th grade, I was Maddie’s coach.  I’d never coached before this adventure, but I knew basketball and I knew kids.  I could figure it out as I went, right? Was I preparing them for high school basketball?  Was I giving life lessons?  Could I even communicate basketball in a language that young girls were able to grasp?  Could I provide a path for each player to achieve greatness if they desired?  Did these young ladies love the game of basketball?  Would they become good high school players?

I thought the answer to all these questions was “YES”.  I always reminded them that they were teaching me as much as I was teaching them.  About life.  About being a leader.  About being a better communicator.  But I’m sure none of the girls understood that they were unfortunate guinea pigs to my learning experiment.

When you learn on the fly you mostly learn by your own mistakes.  And what was my biggest mistake?

I coached all of these girls as if they were basketball players for life.  It turns out they were only basketball players through their middle school years for the most part.

My daughter Maddie is now a senior.  Our high school’s basketball team will celebrate Senior Night this week.  Maddie won’t be part of that celebration.  Neither will 14 other girls that played together on that 6th grade team of 2009.  Mandy is our lone senior basketball player.  I find a great sense of pride and joy in Mandy’s basketball accomplishments…….from a distance now.  As she finishes her career, I’m hit with doubts.

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Now that she’s in the homestretch of her career, did I do all I could do to prepare her for success?  To instill a great work ethic and to be coachable?  To be a great teammate with a positive attitude?  To enjoy the game?  To play with confidence, to believe in herself?

And what about the rest of the players, knowing now the direction they took was away from basketball?  The “should haves”.  I should have laughed more and yelled less.  I should have coached the looks on their faces instead of their actions on the court.  I should have searched harder for small victories and successes for every single player. I should have coached less and cheered more.

But I don’t lose sleep with the regrets of “what ifs” and “should haves” though.   Why?   Because I know that Mandy has turned out to be an awesome young lady as well as a very solid basketball player.  And when I look at the other girls from that 6th grade team (that seems like yesterday), I see that they also have moved on to be awesome in other activities.

Soccer, cross-country, track, volleyball, band, cheerleading, modeling, golf, archery, and more.

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Colossians 3:23  Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters

And they are, without a doubt………..AWESOME AT LIFE!

 

Coaches and parents, don’t set out with intentions to lead your kids to greatness.  Instead, teach them to pursue excellence in all things.  In doing this, they might just find greatness on their own.

Or in the case of Maddie and her middle school teammates…….awesomeness.

I can’t take any credit for this.  But I can give thanks to the Lord for the times shared with these amazing young ladies.  And I’m forever grateful for the lessons they taught me along the way.

We had a goofy catchphrase, “If you can’t do it right in practice, how do you expect to do it right in games?”  The games are almost over.  And I see that my girls, from a distance……….seem to be doing just fine.

Good luck Mandy.  So proud to say I was once your coach!