Someone
sent me a thread of comments this morning from some parents talking about Winnipeg
youth soccer eliminating league standings below U12. In case you missed it,
eliminating standings and player stats below U12 is part of the general
recasting of Canadian youth soccer along the lines of Long-Term Player
Development (LTPD). The move has inspired a lot of heated debate in the media
in Ontario in particular, and most of the discussion is very poorly informed.
If
you want to understand the rationale for why LTPD recommends eliminating
standings at these early ages, simply read this backgrounder from the
Canadian Soccer Association. I don’t want to waste time reiterating what it
already clearly explains. Instead, I want to address another emerging part of
the discussion, which is the claim that kids “won’t learn important lessons
about winning and losing and dealing with disappointment” if league standings
and championship trophies are removed. Below
age 12.
I have coached youth soccer for more than 15 years, including the BC
provincial finals, and I have raised three children who are top academics and
high performance athletes who have also competed in provincial level
tournaments. Let me assure those parents and coaches who express concern over
the absence of league standings below age 12. Kids will still learn about
winning and losing.
Here’s how it works. Week by week, the children will still win and lose games,
they will still feel excited when they know they have won, and they will still
feel disappointment when they know they have lost. And they will know whether they have won or
lost – because indeed, they will keep score, as will the parents and the
coaches. This is good and healthy and integral to the sport.
But the kids will forget about the win or loss within 20 minutes of
finishing the game. And by dinnertime, they will hardly remember that they even
played soccer that day. This is how it should be at these early ages. It’s a game
among children, not the World Cup.
But some coaches and parents want to pretend it’s the World Cup. They
get very excited with wins, and very upset with losses.
When they feel upset and disappointed, they often want to let the kids
know. Some conduct themselves like orangutans on the touchlines, while others
are a little more discrete, quietly conveying their disappointment to their
children through post-game commentary on the car ride home. All because of the
kids’ failure to garnish the three points in the league standings that they
needed that day to retain any hope of winning the league title and the
championship trophy. At age nine.
As adults, do we remember what it was to be nine years old? Or even 11 years old? And do we imagine that children these ages
need to live with the same competitive pressures as a 25-year-old professional
soccer player at the World Cup?
Could it be – just maybe – that the cognitive and psychological
development of a nine-year-old girl or boy is different than that of a
25-year-old adult?
Let’s think about that for a minute.
And while we mull over that question, consider my observations as a
soccer coach who has coached a variety of competitive and recreational soccer
teams for more than 15 years spanning ages U6 to U21, including child house
leagues where no standings were kept.
The argument about kids not learning how to win and lose is entirely
misleading. We are not talking about teenagers as they enter the years where
competition and sport specialization becomes important. We are talking about
children under the age of 12.
In the absence of league standings, kids under the age of 12 are learning
what they need to learn:
"Hey, we lost the game today. That's disappointing. Oh well, better
luck next time. Coach says if we practice a little more passing, we’re sure to
score more goals."
That’s certainly an appropriate lesson in winning and losing for a six
year old, or even an 11 year old.
As opposed to this common scenario where standings are involved:
Dad or mom: "You girls LOST today – I can't believe it! That’s
going to cost us. Suzy should have passed, but instead she shot and MISSED –
and it cost us three points in the standings! There's no way the team can win
the league now. Suzy is AWFUL! And it’s not the first time, either. She should
get cut from the team next year!"
And we are talking about an eight-year-old child.
Do we really want an eight-year-old child to be living the disappointment
of losing a soccer game for weeks afterwards? And have it affect their
schoolwork, their sleep patterns, their social relationships with their peers,
and their familial relationships with their parents?
And should we bench them because they are less skilled than some of
their peers? Even though their parents paid money for them to play and learn
the game, just like every other child on the team? Does benching them help to
develop their skills? Does it improve their competitive mentality in games?
Furthermore, if these less-skilled players are deemed to have made a
poor play or series of plays that cost their team of eight-year-olds the
crucial championship game, should we make damned sure they aren’t selected to
the team next year when the kids progress to the dizzying heights of nine-year-old
community soccer? After all, there will be a championship title to play for
again, and we need to start preparing early….
Really?
Sure, having good coaches helps to mitigate these problems. However, even
well-intentioned coaches face a huge challenge then dealing with the pressures
from the groups of parents who too often become fixated on the “prize” of the
league title. I mean, if the league title is there, that must be what it’s all
about, right? So why is the coach playing Jacob at forward, when we know he
sucks?
The bottom line here is that standings are for the adults, not the kids.
In the absence of league standings, kids generally feel disappointment with a
loss, but they forget about it after a few hours, if not a few minutes. It’s
the adults who can’t let it go.
League standings are part of an engineered competition structure, and
the way we structure competition affects how coaches approach that same
competition. If we create a structure that rewards “win at all costs”, then we
tend to get coaches who care about winning at all costs. If we have a
competition system that emphasizes player development, then we start to attract
coaches who care about player development and helping kids to achieve long-term
excellence. These tend to be adults who care about instilling a love of the
game and who make the effort to develop the skills of all players, instead of adults
with stunted self-esteem who need check marks in the win column of their U7
league standings in order to find peace with themselves.
Trust me, you don’t want your child coached by someone who desperately wants
a trophy on his mantelpiece at home, so he can tell his poker buddies on Friday
night, "Yeah, I'm such an awesome coach, I won this trophy with my team
... [hesitates, shuffles feet, casts his eyes downwards, murmurs barely
audibly] … of eight-year-old girls ...."
One more point. Some people have tried to argue that eliminating league standings is a form of social engineering. That
is, they argue that the absence of league standings is an unnatural state in children’s
sport.
Again – really?
When have you ever seen primary school kids keeping
standings and player stats?
When I was in elementary school, my rural home was
the epicentre of every neighbourhood baseball game, soccer game, basketball
game and football game. We never maintained standings or player stats. Yet my
friends and I competed so hard against each other that we occasionally got into
fistfights when one of us felt aggrieved by a personal foul or a bad call. I’m
not advocating that kids have fistfights while they play – I’m just making the
point that we still cared about winning and losing despite the fact that there
was no league and no league standings.
(Those were great years. As 10 year olds, we provided our own
officiating through collective bargaining and negotiation. Occasionally kids
would go home prematurely because they felt they had not been treated justly.
This posed a serious problem in instances when they took the ball with them.)
The truth is this: league
standings are social engineering.
To have league standings, adults actually have to contrive to create league
tables, collect scores from different games as they are played across the city,
update websites, send people nasty emails when they fail to report scores on
time, occasionally hand out fines for noncompliance, and all the rest of it.
Your average 11 year old has not the least interest in doing this, and your
average six or seven year old certainly doesn’t.
Remember what we are talking about. We are talking about children
under the age of 12 years. We are not talking about high-performance players at
ages 14, 16, or 18. When the kids get older and their cognitive and emotional
development is in the right place, we will bark at them and put more demands on
them. Light a fire under their asses, if you will. But we don’t need to do this
when they are five, eight, and even 11 years old.
So please stop fretting. The kids will learn how to lose without league
standings. And in the process, they’ll actually become much better soccer
players with a deeper love for the game.
Copyright © 2013 by Jim Grove.
All rights reserved.
