The State of Youth Sports!

ON CHILDREN’S SPORTS TODAY

Remember when you were a kid and you played all kinds of different sports and participated in various activities?  Fast-forward to today and that reality has changed drastically for our kids.  Someone along the way decided we needed our children to be specialists at the one sport they love the most.  For most kids, it’s the sport their parents love the most, because they are too young to know the difference.  And once it “clicks” with a kid, like the first time they hit a homerun or score a goal, then it’s game on.  They need to play all year long; fall-ball, winter, spring, summer tournaments.  It never ends.  A good friend of mine, a fellow coach, made a comment asking why we would schedule a vacation during soccer season.   My reply was that its always soccer season.  It has all gotten extremely insane. 

And yet I am one of the biggest perpetrators of this around.  Even though I openly admit its madness, I actively and willingly participate in this as a coach and now a member of the board of my children’s soccer league.  I love coaching.  It is my hobby.  Some guys golf.  I coach soccer.   Which brings me to my present dilemma.  The politics of youth sports, namely soccer, is a wild and precarious beast.   And it’s all based on a long con being pulled on suburban soccer moms and dads the country over.  It’s called “club ball” and it’s a pack of lies being sold to people to get their money.  It promises college scholarships and glory.   But what’s even worse is that the high schools not only promote this notion of if they didn’t grow up playing club ball then they’ll never make the high school team, they even refuse to consider talented athletes who don’t adhere to the model.   It’s this fear that’s put into the heart of parents that lingers over our wallets like a vulture on a limb. And even though I know it’s all b.s., I also know that its how it is.  I can’t change it.  I can’t fight against it.  But my afore mentioned good friend, my mentor of soccer coaching, and yes that’s a thing, even though it sounds ridiculous, but I’ve learned a lot about coaching from him and I use his methods when I coach my other teams, etc, but this friend of mine is trying to fight against it and I admire his efforts for it.  He’s right to do it.   His rebellion puts me in a perilous position.   On one hand, his rebellion thus far has been successful and promises to be even more so.  We put together a “select” team of girls my daughters’ age about two and a half years ago.   We trained them ourselves and kept the costs down, considerably compared to club fees.  In the winter we had a chance to compete against some of the top clubs around our area and we not only competed at their level we excelled and beat most of them by large margins.   We beat the number one team (one of the top teams in the state).  We got a lot of notice and our team has a strong reputation now in our area.  We were the Rocky of club soccer.  I love the underdog and it was amazing to see the faces of those people paying thousands of dollars for a product inferior to what we were offering for a few hundred bucks at the end of it all.  People stuck around to see what we would do.  They watched us beat some serious clubs.   Now they’ve started to bring their daughters to our team.  My friend has the potential to build a team even stronger and bigger than the winter team that was so successful.  It’s important to note that his daughter is one of the best players on the team.  She’s very athletic and aggressive and has a powerful shot that scores a lot of goals for us.  It’s also important to note that my daughters are not quite up to that level.   They are good players but they don’t have that killer instinct that makes a great athlete.   Right now, one of my daughter is more into it that the other.  But I always ask them if they still want to play and they always say yes.  They both still love to play and I’m of the belief that soccer is one of the best sports for kids to play for health reasons.  I like the fact that they have to run around all the time.   But on the select team, the one daughter that’s not into it as much, doesn’t play as much as the other one, but both are on the cusp of the middle ground as far as talent on the team goes.  Some of that comes down to personality as much as anything.   On this team, I am the assistant coach, so I have no say on who sits out.   Which is how it should be.  When I’m the head coach of my son’s team, I make those decisions.   The head coach, my friend in question, the rebel leader, has a very high standard for the girls.  Which is something I like about it.  He pushes them all to excel, and that’s something I think we’ve lost sight of in our modern society.  His daughter can and usually does live up to those standards, where my daughter, the one that’s not as competitive or into as the other, often falls short of his standards.  I get that.  When we were kids there was a thing called a bench-warmer.  And the problem is, she’s not that bad at soccer, she’s better than most girls around, but on this team, of very gifted players, she’s not quite there.   This is an A level team while, right now, she plays at a B or C level.     So it can be awkward at times when she doesn’t get as much playing time and when she does go in the pressure is so much on her and her personality isn’t full of confidence anyway and so she plays tense and it comes across as timid and he pulls her right back out.  It breaks my heart.  Keep in mind, this is competitive soccer, not some average rec team playing for fun and not keeping score.  So I get that he wants to win and that he’s going to play the people who play the best.   I do the same thing on my boys team.  I have seen her trying to improve but sometimes I wonder if it’s too late.  But I don’t want for her to give it up yet.  She likes it and its good for her to push herself at something.  Coach pushes her during practice and I like that.   So here lies part one of my dilemma.   As mentioned before Coach is adding a bunch of new older players to the roster for next year.  He wants his daughter and his Rocky team to play “up” an age level.   I get that. That is very good for his daughter.  Not so good for my daughters, especially the one that’s not so into it.  It is good for her during practices to play up, but not during the games.   So she’s being trained very well.  But my wife is very concerned that she’ll never see the field.  Now, I’m a believer that if you think you’re good at something, you’ll be more likely to try harder at it than if you don’t think you’re good.   So sitting the bench all season isn’t going to make her love soccer or try harder at it.  That’s not her personality.  I wish it were.  I wish she was Rudy and would train and work on it in the off times and try to earn her spot on the team.  But like I said, she’s not that into it.   I wonder though, that if she thought she was good at it, would she try harder?   I know one thing, she has a better shot at choice B as opposed to choice A.  

Another aspect of my dilemma is my boy’s team.  I tried to reproduce the Rebel team with my son’s age group.  I put together a group of boys who all stood out on their rec teams.  I took these All-Stars and put them together at the end of fall and I thought I had a super team.   But when we went into the winter season against club teams, we got our butts handed to us.  Although in fairness, we improved toward the end of the season.  But I found that the parents didn’t gel like they did on the girls’ team and some of my parents were unruly and judgmental.  I even received reverse racism in that one parent went over my head and asked if his son could play for a coach who spoke Spanish.  The white coach doesn’t understand soccer like a Mexican does.  I wasn’t offended by this; I found it funny, but also I had a sense of good riddance toward that parent.  He was a nightmare to deal with, walking up and down the sidelines yelling at his kid in Spanish, micromanaging every move the kid made.  That’s for another story.  My point is, it wasn’t the wonderful experience I had with the girls’ team and the cool parents and fun tournaments.  Another problem again comes back to personality.  I found coaching my own son was a challenge of personality and wills.  He wouldn’t act the way he sometimes acts with another coach, refusing to do things, whining about a certain drill he doesn’t like.  We left many practices with him being grounded from something or another.  Of my three kids, however, my son has the most drive and love of the game.  He understands it better than his sisters ever did and he plays at a higher level than they did, especially at his age.  He’s three years younger than them.   He enjoys watching it on TV.   He loves to go to the Chicago Fire games and wear his foam finger and yell and cheer.   Soccer is one of our bonds. 

Now to back to the long con.  I am still aware that in this society, as it stands, if a child doesn’t play for a club, then they won’t play in high school.   Rebel teams aside.  It is inevitable that we will have to take them to one of these expensive clubs sooner or later.  The fear of later being too late, lingers.   Is it too late for my daughter who isn’t as into it?  One of the positive things a club like the Chicago Fire offers is, they have different level teams for kids to play on that meets their abilities.   So if she gets put on a team that’s C level, then maybe she would have more playing time and therefore grow more confident.  But that all depends on the coach.   It is unknown.  I wish I knew the future but unfortunately, right now, I don’t.   My son and wife really want him to play for the Chicago Fire.  He loves the idea that it’s the same club as the profession team he so loves to root for.   One of the problems with the Rebel club system is that we have to find games to play when and where we can.  Coach doesn’t want to enter into the regular club league yet.   That’s getting into the expensive side of things.  He thinks we’ll get more games out of just taking them to tournaments.   He’s right.  But my wife likes to have a set schedule.  She likes to know what’s happening way in advance.  The Rebel club can’t guarantee this regularity, because we are always looking for tournaments to enter, and in the meantime looking to pick up friendly games with various people when we can.   We might not know that we have a game in two weeks until the week of.

Peel the onion further to reveal:  The Rebel club is growing.  We’ve added several teams this spring to be carried over into the fall.  Something is building here.  I am a part of that.  I am a key member of the board who advocates turning the rec program into something more resembling a club.  Even though I know in the long run it is a futile effort and that we will not achieve club status and recognition by high school standards and it will have been in vain.  Unless we succeed!  And there aren’t that many obstacles standing now in our way of turning it into a club.  Coach has been handed the keys to the castle and is taking over as Commissioner of the rec program.   Which means that there is no one standing in his way and he can take this program to the next level.   It’s exciting and fun to be part of.  Like I said before, I love coaching.  But it’s not about me; it’s about my kids and what’s best for them.   I am losing a few boys from my select team, but in the fall I will be gaining several older boys and we will be playing “up” an age level.  This is good for my son.   Unlike my daughters who might not be able to play up, my son can and will come out of a season with older boys that much stronger.   But on the other hand there’s that personality clash between my son and I, where he’d grow more from another coach, in my opinion.  But on the other hand, it is a bonding experience for us.  We spend that time together.   My wife really wants to let him try playing for the Chicago Fire club.  It’s a bigger more established and proven institution in her mind.   Plus there’s that set schedule, where you can prioritize life around it, instead of waiting to make plans until we know when the games are going to be.  She likes to make plans well in advance.  So I find myself between a rock and a hard place.  I don’t want to be the parent that breaks up the Rebel girl’s team, not after all they’ve been through together.  They love each other, those girls, and they have real pride in that team.  Plus, Coach and I are very good friends, and we work very well together.   I don’t want to walk away from a program that I helped establish and let down those people who have joined in on building it.   There are several people coming back to our anti-club from club teams because they believe in what we’re trying to do.   The rebellion is growing. 

I thought I had a solution.  I proposed that I send my son to the Fire Club and I stay on as coach of the Select boys Rebel club team.  We keep the girls team together for one more season.  But Coach suggested that would not look good to the parents that are sticking with our model that I don’t believe in the model, or the idea that an anti-club can exist.    It would be kind of weird to coach a team without having my son on it.   I get that.   Coach has been working hard to keep me involved in the new anti-club and I’m flattered that he thinks I’m such a good coach or whatever that he needs my help to keep his rebellion going.   So it’s basically down to if I want to continue to coach I need to keep my son involved.   One compromise is that the Fire program doesn’t yet know where they’ll send my son to play.  It’s down to two possibilities.   A town fifteen minutes away is possibility number one and number two is a town thirty minutes or more away.  My wife and I agree that number two won’t work for us.   I spoke with a representative for the Fire and told him that if that’s where they try to send my son to play that we won’t be participating in the program.  So there’s my out for club ball this year.   Usually when presented with a choice, there’s one that’s better than the other.  Here I can see both sides equally.   I’m fine with either outcome.   On one hand, I’ll feel like I’ll be letting some people down.  On the other, coaching soccer and running a league comes with a lot of headaches and stress that I don’t really want or need.   So if he goes with the Fire I won’t have to deal with as much stuff.  It will be someone else’s problem. 

Here’s where I get a little spiritual or whatever.  I grew up as a Christian.  One aspect of Christianity is that when presented with a dilemma it is always best to leave it in God’s hands.   As corny as that might sound to some people, I see it as the universe helps us decide things.   That’s a passive way of going through life, sure, but I do want to believe that things happen for a reason.  Though, I have friends who will adamantly say that is NOT true.  The curse of my mind is that I can see all sides of things from many perspectives.   It makes my beliefs malleable and constantly in flux.    So I decided to wait and see where they send my son, to make my final decision.   If they say he’s supposed to play in the town thirty minutes away, then the universe decided I should stay and coach and help build the anti-club for another year at least.   The problem is, Coach wants an answer sooner, rather than later, and the Fire isn’t letting us know.   So I may be forced to decide before the universe weighs in.  But I guess that’s still the universe deciding?  Let’s not get weird here.   But why am I developing an ulcer over all of this? It’s just little kids playing soccer.  

If you’ve read this to its conclusion and have advice for a man standing on a fence looking at two pastures, one new and ripe with possibilities and the other established and proven, but also expensive and a scam and part of the order of things, of which I always like to rebel against, as is my nature, please feel free to comment.  I could use different takes on this.   If anything its’ a slice of reality that parents deal with now days with youth sports.