Sports Esteem

The start of a new season often means a new coach. Over time, the different backgrounds and styles of each coach will work to benefit a child’s abilities by providing fresh insights and approaches. Parents need to help the coach make the most of the limited time to create the best experience possible for their child. Parents also need to make sure that the coach is someone they want to instruct their child. There are 10 commitments that parents should expect out of a coach. Coaches should be committed to:

1. Safety - Putting player safety first. This means everything from refusing to play an injured player to forfeiting a game that has become unsafe.
2. Fun - Showing an understanding that a player’s effort is often determined by the amount of fun involved.
3. Maturity - Positively handling the emotions of competitive play.
4. Sportsmanship - Demonstrating the right way to lose as well as to win.
5. Goals - Setting expectations for their players and for their team
6. Education - Helping kids better understand and play the sport.
7. Preparation - Spending the time to create organized and productive practices.
8. Communication - Explaining the details of player progress, skills, plays or games to players and parents alike.
9. Players - Demonstrating concern about players as individuals as well as about the team as a whole.
10. Passion - Generating a positive passion for the sport and for fair competition.

Most coaches will meet these commitment tests with flying colors. However, there may be occasions when coaches don’t measure up. Then, parents must resolve the situation. Next week’s newsletter will provide some thoughts on this issue.

The following table shows the average height and weight for boys and girls from the ages of 5 to 18. Wide variations are common. Kids’ height can vary by as much as 6″ at age 5 for kids who will still grow up to be the same size. Girls and boys are very similar in average height and weight until puberty.

Source: National Center for Health Statistics One of the biggest challenges with growth concerns the times when kids are out of step with their peers. If kids are developing slower, they may feel less confident and will need encouragement to continue playing when they are tempted to quit. Players who develop quicker may become overconfident and lack the work ethic to excel. These players will need encouragement to continue improving. Over time, most physical differences will even out but the process is difficult physically and emotionally. Growing up is hard to do.

For More Information:
The complete set of growth charts with percentile variations can be found at the NCHS website:

http://www.cdc.gov/growthcharts.

Youth games are often dominated by the more aggressive players. This leaves some parents wondering why their child does not measure up. One simple answer is that they are just good parents who have raised a polite child.

Habits developed at home often carry on to the playing field. If kids are polite at home, they are likely to be polite on the playing field and avoid confrontations with teammates and opponents. Over time, kids will learn to differentiate their behavior while playing sports from their behavior while at the dinner table. This will lead to more aggressive play and improved performance.

Aggressive play is a behavior that comes from a competitive spirit fed by practice and a better understanding of the sport. Parents can encourage both competitiveness and good manners. It may take time for kids to fully understand the differences. Until then, parents should be patient and be proud of the fact that they are getting the big things right.

A lack of fun in youth sports is not just hard on kids, it also robs high school, college and professional sports of some of its best talent. Kent Holmes, as Executive Director of Hockey Operations for the Dallas Jr. Stars, sees the problems first hand and has a plan to address them. His approach not only can make youth hockey better but also has lessons for other sports as well.

Does Playing Sports Mean No Time to Play?

Organized sports give millions of kids who otherwise would lack access to safe facilities and good instruction the opportunity to play sports. With numbers exceeding 40 million kids1, organized sports have boomed with increased urbanization and growing concerns about safety.

The down side of organized sports is that they seldom provide the opportunity for kids to just play without the associated pressures of stats, coaches and parents. Playing ice hockey in the Southern United States provides a great challenge. A lack of seasonal ice leaves rinks as the only place to play. But, the growth of organized teams and of other activities leaves little free ice time for just having fun. This lack of fun playing time is being blamed by some for a loss of skills at the national level. In the NHL, almost 1/3 of the top slots are filled with European players who get a chance to build their creativity and skills playing and practicing in a less winning-focused environment. A 12 part series in the Toronto Globe explored this European trend and reached some alarming conclusions.

Instead of scoring goals, children are instructed to play defensively and to intimidate. At the age of 13, the dropout rate skyrockets. “They’re robots,” said Marty Williamson, who coaches a Tier 2 junior team in Milton, Ont. “The creativity isn’t in the game and maybe the fun isn’t there, either.”

Dallas Jr. Stars Innovative Approach

There are typically three youth hockey seasons. A long Fall season runs September through March and two shorter Spring and Summer seasons run May through June and July through August respectively. In the past, the Dallas Jr. Stars have run abbreviated versions of the Fall season for their Spring and Summer programs. However this spring, the Dallas Jr. Stars are going to interject some “unorganization” into the process to create more fun for kids while at the same time creating more competitive players for the Dallas metroplex’s growing demand for young hockey talent.
This Spring season, the Dallas Jr. Stars will offer a “pond hockey” program instead of their typical coach led practices and games. Participants in the pond hockey program will get 15 sessions at scheduled times and places. Each session will have approximately 30 kids who will then organize into two teams just before game time. A reversible jersey makes it easy to assign teams at the last minute. Then for the next 60 minutes, the kids will just play with line changes facilitated by a regular buzzer and play supervised by two paid monitors who make sure play is safe and non-stop. There will be no assigned positions. Upbeat music will keep the energy level high. No body checking will be allowed at any age level.

“When was the last time a kid was able to just play hockey without an instructor or a coach?” asks Kent Holmes. “With a lack of backyard ponds, some kids can go years without that opportunity. The pond hockey format is designed to encourage kids to just play. It forces kids to use their own creativity and communication skills. If they don’t get open, call for the puck or work with their teammates, then they won’t get the puck. It is not unusual to see a very high scoring game with lots of shots by all players.”

For parents who focus on winning today’s game, the pond hockey format could be a tough sell. Kent’s advice for all parents is to “be positive and encourage your child to get out of their comfort zone. If your kid plays offense, encourage defense. Encourage experimentation and, most of all, encourage fun. Help your child get excited all over again about playing. The more kids enjoy the sport and learn to use their creativity, the better they will be in a regular season format.”

Though pond hockey does not answer all the challenges facing youth sports today, the fact that someone is trying to restructure a program to deal with the bigger challenges is a step in the right direction. In the long run, fun is not only a winning strategy for kids, it is also a winning strategy for leagues and sports at a national level.

In case parents get too focused on winning, a special report to the President from the Secretaries of Health and Human Services and Education helps put things in perspective:

“Our nation’s young people are, in large measure, inactive, unfit, and increasingly overweight. In the long run, this physical inactivity threatens to reverse the decades-long progress we have made in reducing death from cardiovascular diseases and to devastate our national health care budget. In the short run, physical inactivity has contributed to an unprecedented epidemic of childhood obesity that is currently plaguing the United States. The percentage of young people who are overweight has doubled since 1980.”

Youth sports have much to offer kids beyond the joys of winning a game. Though a child may lack certain skills in a particular sport, the fact that the child is playing and being physically active is something of which parents can always be proud.

At some point, youth sports become more about the team than about the players and spectators start including more than just team family members. As kids reach adulthood, an increased focus on team performance separates recreational players from the truly motivated ones. These players then feed the needs of competitive high school, college and professional programs. Until then, youth sports are more about developing motivation and talent than judging them. Parents facilitate their child’s participation to help make their child better in life and to provide a chance at sports participation past puberty.

The selection of a good coach is a key way parents can help their child maximize his or her development as a person and a player. Before a season begins, it may be difficult to judge the technical skills of a coach. However, one quick test parents may use to size up a coach is to learn the coach’s philosophy on equal playing time.

Equal playing time is hard for coaches to implement. It forces them to put more effort into practices and player preparation. It also tests their priorities. If a coach’s priority is to win above developing players then parents should look elsewhere to give their child the best chances of playing later on. Equal playing time should be one of a coach’s core beliefs and not easily discarded in the last minutes of a championship game.

Teams who practice equal playing time typically have more fun during a season since there are less conflicts over playing time between coaches and parents and among parents themselves. With everyone often making equal time and financial contributions, unequal playing time can quickly build resentments since parents cannot be an objective judge of their own child’s talent.

When a child reaches the advanced levels of athletic play, parents will stop being able to demand equal playing time. However, isn’t reaching these levels one of the goals and a key reason why parents should demand it while they can?

An Easy Way to Turn Digital Photos into Music Videos

Youth sports require a great deal of time and often money. So what do parents get for their time and dollar investment? If done right, a better kid and some great memories. With the chance of sports scholarships extremely slim ($72 in academic scholarships are available for every $1 in sports scholarships), life lessons and lifetime memories become the priorities in all youth sporting activities. To capture those memories in the “old” days, parents would take pictures of their child and request multiple prints. But, the “new” way is digital. Digital cameras now outsell film cameras and Kodak has announced that they will quit selling film cameras in the United States.

An Overview of Plus! Photo Story LE

Digital photos open up many new ways to create, share and present youth sports memories. One of the more interesting is based on Microsoft’s Windows XP. It is a free Microsoft product called Plus! Photo Story LE. Photo Story takes a batch of photos, allows you to add voice narration or a music soundtrack and then turns it all into a video which automatically includes panning and zooming to give the video a very professional look. If you have the photos and the music, the whole process can take just a few minutes.

Photo Story is wizard based which means that it asks a series of questions and prompts the user through each step of the process. Users answer the following questions:

• Which pictures?
• What narration do you want?
• What should the story be titled?
• What music should play in the background?
• How long should each picture be displayed?
• Do you want the large or small version (determines video and audio quality)?

When complete, Photo Story generates the video file. Photo Story handles most of the details automatically and often requires little tweaking. Users can also create titles and other graphics using any popular graphic editing program and then easily add these custom titles to the beginning or ending of the video. Photo Story requires Windows XP to create videos and Windows Media Player Version 9 to view them. A microphone is required to add narration.

Advanced Version Available
Microsoft also offers an upgraded version of Photo Story in its Plus! Digital Media Edition product. This version of Photo Story adds these features:

• Support for higher quality formats
• A larger number of photos in the video
• Support for Video CDs
• Advanced control over individual photos
• Project saving for later editing

To create Video CDs you will also need a recordable CD-ROM drive. These disks can be played in many of the newer home DVD players. Not all home DVD players support the VCD format, but when it works, this option lets others watch the video without using a computer.

Don’t Forget the Film (Memory Card)!

Great memories are an important part of the youth sports experience. Photo Story is only one way to present them. When parents focus on building great memories they are less likely to get side tracked from the bigger goal of building better kids. Parents should keep in mind that many things that may seem important during or right after a game will not stand the test of time. A lack of hustle or a bad play won’t seem as important five years out. However, a child’s enjoyment that comes from being with friends and supportive family can build confidence and esteem that does last throughout a lifetime.

In a previous issue of this newsletter, we identified nine symptoms of youth sports burnout and some simple ways to combat it. If left untreated, burnout in young athletes can lead to a variety of problems including:

• Poor performance at school
• Negative attitudes toward parents
• Complete loss of interest in sports
• Poor health

High school athletes who have their driver’s license also face the risk of an accident caused by fatigue. This problem has become serious enough that the National Institute of Health now actively sponsors programs aimed at educating parents and kids about the dangers caused by a lack of sleep.

Burnout is the body’s way of saying “slow down.” Kids do not often recognize burnout, so it is up to parents to help them address it. When parents see their child struggling with burnout, they need to take immediate action. Waiting until the end of the season or after the next set of games can only make the problem worse and potentially dangerous.

For parents sending their child to a summer sport camp, it is never too early to start planning. Many popular camps fill quickly - sometimes within hours of starting enrollment. For camps with a sports emphasis, the usual summer camp questions apply, such as: activities, staffing, safety, references and schedule. However, sport camps add extra questions to the mix, such as:

• Does your child want to go? Will he or she still want to go in the summer after completing the next season?
• Will camp provide your child enough time to recharge between seasons?
• Is the purpose of the camp fun, work or both? Is your child in agreement with this goal?
• Is the camp fee viewed as an investment in skills or in memories?

While a good sport camp can improve a child’s skills for the fall, it is unlikely that a single camp will make dramatic improvements. Years later, the primary benefit of the camp will be the good memories of attendance.

When considering which sport camp to attend, parents may also want to consider these alternatives:

• Consider a camp in a sport other than your child’s primary sport.
• Consider a camp in another state and integrate attendance with a family vacation.
• Consider summer recreational league play.
• Consider using the camp money on private lessons.
• Do nothing. Use the time to recharge and do other family activities.

There are a large number of sport camps to appeal to almost every need. By ensuring that fun and future memories are a large part of selection process, parents can continue to keep their child playing longer and better in youth sports.