The Ballad of Bad Coaching or Why I Hate Coaching Youth Sports

If this is you, do yourself a favor and stop coaching youth sports

 

There are a few pieces of advice my father doled out in my childhood that stayed with me:

• Always open the door for a lady.
• Don't eat the yellow snow.
• The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

That's some pretty solid advice from a man who always has sported a handlebar moustache. However, it's the last one I want to delve into on this blog post as I share both my experiences and views of coaching youth sports here in the United Snakes.

My first foray into coaching was in 2009 when I assisted the first year the boys played football. Coaching on the Colts was actually a very positive experience for the kids and I really enjoyed it far more than I thought I would. The head coach was positive and made it a priority to teach all the boys how to play football. Everyone had a chance to play different positions and while trying to win was important, teaching and mentoring was really the order of the day. Here's a picture of our happy experience right before our final game against the pesky Seahawks.

Yes, I'm a visor guy!

The next year we moved about six miles north which resulted in a team change to the Packers. Now, why you would allow a youth football team to be called the Packers IN CHICAGO  OF ALL PLACES is beyond me but that's for another blog post. Since I had such a great experience coaching the previous year, I thought I would volunteer to coach again. I made the very incorrect assumption that all the coaches in the league were drinking the same Kool-Aid when it came to their perspective coaching. You may want to sit down: I was wrong.

The head coach of the Packers (Let's call him Coach Whistle) was in his first year coaching and was VERY eager to begin. Coach Whistle made it a point of letting me know that he played high school football and that he had a scholarship to a Division III school but due to some circumstances that were never really explained to me, he was unable to accept the scholarship. On the team that year, we had 16 kids (it was 8 on 8 football) and only four kids - including my two - had played football before. I could go on and on (and on and on and on) about how miserable that year was for just about every kid on the team that year. He assigned specific positions for each kid, made winning a priority (remember, all the kids on this team were seven), and generally rewarded talented but lazy kids over the hard working average ones. To make a long story short, I was asked to step down from coaching by Coach Whistle before the regular season even began because it was very clear that Coach Whistle and I were going the Buddy Ryan/Kevin Gilbride route. If you are unfamiliar with this reference, please enjoy the below:

 

After the debacle with the Packers, I did end up coaching soccer and baseball which were both fantastic experiences. I was the head coach for spring soccer which is sort of a sport. I mean, is it really a sport when the players wear silk shorts and knee-high socks? But I digress....coaching soccer was a lot of fun for me, and more importantly, all the kids. We lost more games than we won but each kid had a chance - at least once - to play every position.

 

After baseball season, I announced my retirement from coaching youth sports in a tear-filled ceremony broadcast live on ESPN 8, "The Ocho". And, you want to know what happened? I really began to enjoy youth sports again! I was able to just be a dad and be filled with pride as I watched Drew and Mitch give every ounce of effort even though they still didn't play a whole lot due to Mr. Whistle's preference of winning.

 

Smash cut to our recent move to Nashville and the kids were begging Sandy and me to play football again. While we had our reservations (the radical religion of football in the SEC being one of them), we relented and they are playing in a Pop Warner program, the Franklin Cowboys. This is their "game face":

 

So mean....so very mean.

And, as my luck would have it, I was asked to come out of retirement to help coach the team. Being the "new guy" and all, it seemed like a great idea. Well, much like Sugar Ray Leonard, I think I should have stayed retired. I've seen kids yelled at, embarrassed, and, on more than one occasion, humiliated. There are 21 kids on the team and eight of them are playing both ways (both offense and defense) so you have 13 kids fighting for the six other spots which. The coach (let's call him Coach Ditka) drives these kids - who are nine and ten - so hard that several of them have been reduced to tears. And, it's put me in the position of building the kids back up after he screams and spits at them for snapping the ball wrong or getting out of position when playing linebacker. Honestly, it's a role I don't mind but I hate that these kids desperately need someone to make them feel better after the coach beats them down verbally. And, before you suggest I say something to the coach, I have in my own sarcastic, slightly humorous way. All it does is make it appear that I'm focusing only on my kids (I'm not) and that tends to make it worse for them.

 

I realize that my view on this will make me sound like a ninny and, frankly, I don't care. I realize that at some point in all of our sporting careers we won't be good enough to start or even make the team. However, I think that the ages of nine and ten are a little early for that necessary fact of life. Plus, I don't think that kids need to be humiliated in front of their peers and parents to correct an on-the-field transgression. 

 

My goals as a coach have always been the following:

• Teach the kids the fundamentals of the sport
• Learn how to win and lose gracefully
• Be fair to each kid and give them a chance to play
• Learn how to do your job within the scope of the team
• At the end of the season, I want each kid to say, "That was awesome! I can't wait to do it again next year"

I realize that I'm no Tom Landry and that my limited technical knowledge of football has been eclipsed by Coach Ditka, but I still think there is room for all kids to play at this age. It's troubling to me that the head coach approaches each game like it's the Super Bowl (breaking down film, scouting teams in advance of playing them, saying ridiculous things like "YOU protect THIS house!") while the kids are still approaching it as a game. Do we really need to take the fun out of sports this early in childhood? Can't we balance the importance of winning with the importance of a positive experience for all? I get that some kids are ding-dongs and aren't going to be the best athletes but is nine years old the time to crush that dream and teach them how to ride pine?

I know that both Coach Whistle and Coach Ditka had good intentions when they agreed to coach their respective football teams but those intentions have morphed into a burning desire to win and win at all costs. The funny thing about it is that both of them are good guys when they aren't coaching football. Maybe they get sucked into a world where they feel they have to work their team harder than the other ones or they fear they will be laughed at by their coaching peers. It doesn't really matter to me because the way they end up coaching is morale shattering to these kids.

As for me, I can't wait for this season to end. I haven't shared my opinions of Coach Ditka with Drew and Mitch but they are both smart enough to understand that Ditka doesn't think they are good enough to play other than kickoff and kickoff return. I've seen enough screaming from Ditka, witnessed enough hat-throwing by Ditka's assistant coach brother and watched the dreams of too many good kids destroyed for me to want to continue on. While I'm staying on as a coach this season - if only to advocate for all kids to see some playing time during games - I honestly hope this will be my last year on the sidelines.