Loving our Youth Athletes

Last week, while reading I came across the following quote from Matt Lisle, a baseball coach, who has 16 years of coaching experience in both college and professional baseball, and the quote is as follows “Coaches: Want a secret to your success? LOVE YOUR ATHLETES. Show them every day - a smile, high 5 or pat on the back is all it takes most days. The most respected coaches don’t try to get athletes to respect them - they create a respectful environment by showing respect and trust”. This quote made me think back to my coaching days and the number of children who needed that small bit of extra attention and what it meant for them.

Too many times we, as coaches, get too involved in the “winning and losing” aspect of coaching that we forget that these are children that we are dealing with and; although, they may be children, they have things going on in their lives that we, as coaches, are not aware of and that might be affecting them and causing their young heads not be in a certain game or practice. Now I am not saying that coaches need to be psychiatrists or psychologists, nor should they pry into people’s personal lives, but just knowing that a child may come from a broken home or is having some difficulties, or may not have a male or female role model to emulate is important for a coach to know because if that coach could spend just a few minutes asking that child how his/her life is going things may become easier for that child. Simple questions such as how was your day? how is school going? what’s new? etc., could go a long way in helping a child get through a rough patch in their life because could be the only time that anyone shows that child any positive attention.

Growing up in the 1970s and 1980s I had my dad and a number of uncles who were my role models so I didn’t necessarily need my youth sports coaches “checking in” with me because I had people that I could talk to when needed, but what would have happened if I didn’t have my dad or uncles in my life? Would there have been a coach who would have checked in with me to see how I was doing? Would they have showed me a smile and given me a pat on the back? Would they have asked me how school was going and what was going on in my life? Thankfully, I never had to find out; however, I coached quite a few children that needed the few extra minutes that I gave them before each practice and game. And what did it cost me to do this? Absolutely NOTHING. And what did I get out of these simple conversations? Young people who I still see today and enjoy talking with, young people who like to share with me their dreams and successes and who may ask for some advice about life and in most cases, young people who have just thanked me for being there for them.

I’ll admit that I’m a big fan Charles Barkley. I think that he can be funny and insightful, sometimes doing both at the same time. In 2019 he stated that “I can’t be a role model for your kids. Your kid doesn’t know me. I can be an athletic hero, but a role model should be a mom, a dad, an aunt, or an uncle, someone the kid has contact with” Now but I don’t totally disagree with what Sir Charles was saying, but what is a child to do if they don’t have a mom, a dad, aunts or uncles that can be role models for them? Unfortunately, in those cases, Charles Barkley may become the role model that a child looks up to whether he likes it or not because a child may be looking for someone to look up to and Barkley may be the only option that the child has. Last summer I attended the “Way of Champions” Conference, a conference dealing with youth sports. One of the moderators, Jerry Lynch, a well-known Sports psychologist stated that “coaching is not a job but a calling and love is the reason that we coach” he went on further to say “the goal of youth sports is to WIN THE DAY and not to WIN CHAMPIONSHIPS” and I could not agree with him more. He further said that “a coach’s influence is never neutral, it is either positive or negative and the more aware that a coach is of their influence on young athletes, the more we (coaches) can change our and other lives”.

My feeling is that as youth sports is a laboratory and coaches need to spend more time building our youth up as opposed to tearing them down. I’m not talking about the “trophies for all” mentality that seems to be pervasive today, but rather having coaches work to build character in our youth, and teach them how to be successful in the future. We need to spend a few minutes before each practice or game talking to our young charges and seeing how they are doing, not athletically, but personally. Again, I am not saying that a youth sport coach needs to be a psychiatrist or psychologist, but they just need to be caring individuals who are ensuring that we are doing what is right by our young athletes and not only worrying about winning but preparing them for the future after their youth sports careers come to an end.