Do no harm…

The Hippocratic Oath is an oath historically taken by doctors swearing to practice medicine ethically.  I think coaches need a similar oath to understand the weight of their influence on children that they coach. As a coach of young players my goal is to encourage them and challenge them and build their confidence. Young players need time and encouragement to develop. Coaches need patience because children develop in spurts of emotional stability, mental toughness (abstract thought) and physically. Coaches need to be aware of this and approach their players with a longer term plan. Most coaches at the youth level don’t get fired because they didn’t win the championship that season.

A friend of mine recently had a very trying experience with his daughter recently and it breaks my heart to hear these kinds of stories. The coach had told his wife that his daughter wasn’t playing well. His daughter was devastated because the situation is confusing. Her confusion was apparent in the only coherent sentence she could get out between sobs, “how can he say that, we only did fitness today?” His daughter is 11 years old and only wants to please her parents, her coach and play soccer. This is about the 3rd time in two months that the coach has told her either directly or through her parents that she isn’t playing well. The first instance he told the father, 2 weeks ago he pulled her out of a game that she had played a total of 6 or 7 minutes, and then the mother today.

This is a coach that has gone through all of the NSCAA accreditation up to and including the NSCAA Premier Diploma. I’ve taken courses through the Advanced National and we’ve covered why kids play, but maybe the NSCAA needs to pay more attention to psychology of developing youth players.

I guess I’m trying to figure out why it matter’s so much that she improve overnight. She’s growing and knows what she needs to work on – dribbling and being able to hold the ball. Let her work on it and give her time. She doesn’t play in the EPL and shouldn’t need to have drastic improvement from one game to the next to keep her spot. Repeatedly telling a kid they aren’t cutting it isn’t going to help them improve, but giving them positive reinforcement and having patience is a much more positive and fruitful approach  for developing youth players.

There are so many issues with the current situation that “U.S. Youth Soccer” is facing that I’m surprised at this level of coaching credentials I am seeing such an amateurish approach. This is why there is such a drop-off of players after age 12. This is why we don’t get better development, because the kids are quitting before they mature. At least this kid won’t be like those American Idol kids that think they can sing…  she won’t have much confidence at all at the end of this season.