The Car Ride to and From Games

So, recently my brother sent me a Reel from Malcolm “Duke” Baxter who is a “motivator, speaker, clinician” who helps baseball and softball coaches with drills and tips and has quite a following on Instagram.  The Reel discussed “The Hat” Rule that Mr. Baxter developed for the rides to and from his 8-year-old sons baseball games.  I watched this Reel with great interest and thought it was brilliant as, being a former coach of my own children, they were always with me either riding to or from the game meaning the they were living/hearing everything that I was thinking pre-game and then had to listen to me post game…win or lose.

The Malcolm Baxter “Hat” rule was as follows:

·      Going to the game –

o   Dad’s hat on, he could/would talk about the game

o   Son’s hat off, he didn’t want to talk about the upcoming game so dad was talking about the game to himself; however, if his son had his hat on also, they could both talk about the game

·      At the game –

o   Both dad and son had hats on, and dad was the coach, not a dad and son was a player

·      After the game –

o   Dad’s hat off, he was no longer the coach and talks to his son about the game as a dad, NOT as a coach

o   Son’s hat on, they could talk about the game, but dad has to talk about the game as a dad and NOT a coach and finally,

o   If both hats were off no one talked about the game and they talked about getting ice cream, going to the movies, going to grandma’s, etc.

Now, why do I think this is a brilliant idea? Because the child of a coach takes the brunt of the game, good and bad, win or lose and the child of a coach usually rides to and from the game with mom or dad and has to listen to what is being discussed, both good and bad while the other children on the team may not suffer the same fate.

Thinking back to my coaching days I can honestly say that cannot remember the car rides to and from game and would imagine that if we lost a game that my children might have taken the brunt of what happened in the game.  I would be talking about the game, probably mostly to myself, but they heard everything and maybe they did not want to talk about the game, but I really did not give them a choice.  One thing that I did do was when I coached my daughter’s travel soccer team was I had a tendency to yell at her when a mistake was made on the field, whether she made the error or not, and I think subconsciously I felt that no one (other parents) could tell me that I could not yell at my daughter and she took the brunt of any issues during the game (while she was in the game).  Well one day, during a game, I was yelling at my daughter for a mistake that was made by another girl and my assistant coach came over to me, during the game, and told me that if I yelled at her again for something that she did not do he would ask/tell me to leave the field and he would take over coaching.  On the way home (we usually drove to the games together with my daughter) he told me that I had to stop taking out “in game issues” on my daughter because it was not fair to her.  That night I did some self-reflecting and realized that he was correct, and I was not being fair to her, and I needed to change what I was doing quickly, or I was going to have a major issue with my daughter.  Thankfully, for a change I listened to myself and changed the way I coached my daughter and while she might not have noticed any of this, I certainly felt much better about myself and my coaching.

            In doing some research on this subject I found the following article in “Youth Sports Psychology” entitled “A Big Mistake Sports Parents Make After Games.”  The article states “after a game, it’s only natural to want to talk about all the things, good or bad, that you noticed about your athlete’s performance during the game. Whether you want to drown your children in praise or have some critiques about their performance, ask yourself: “Is now the right time to talk about this? Is this helping or hurting my child’s mental game?”  Now, as a child I can remember losing games and feeling that it was the end of the world and the sun would not rise the next morning and yet, the sun rose and I went on about my day; however, those were simpler times as we did not have all the trave/select/elite teams, we just played recreation level sports.  Today, children are playing in a much more highly competitive environment causing pressures on them we (me and my teammates/friends) never faced.  Parents have made youth sports an “all or nothing” proposition meaning that youth sports have now become emotionally exhausting for our youth meaning that parents now need to have tools in place, so they deal with the ups and downs that their children face following youth sporting events.

            The article further states that parents should abide to the “30-minute rule” whereby they do not talk about the game for at least 30 minutes or more following a game.  The reason for this is following a loss your child(ren):

·      May get angry, frustrated, and upset. And you might be emotional too.  True communication is very difficult for anyone who is emotional. While this is a given truth for adults, this is even harder for kids.

·      The emotions create “noise” that will cause your kids to interpret your message in a negative way.

·      It’s unlikely you and your young athletes will be able to have true communication at this point.

The “30-minute rule”  does the following: 

·      This 30-minute rule gives your sports children time to calm down after a loss, and you will find that talking about the loss later, when both of you have some emotional distance from the game, creates a more open and less stressful environment to discuss the game.

·      You can remind your young athletes that a loss is a necessary part of the game and is not the end of the world.

·      You can remind them that this is but one game of the many they will play, and that no one is judging them.

·      You can remind your sports kids that losing does not make them bad competitors, and that their performance will improve if they accept that losses are inevitable—and that they can learn from them.

Now, you may be reading this and thinking that all this is just coddling young athletes instead of speaking “truth” to them and in a sense that might be true; however, it is the parents who have made youth sports the emotionally exhausting spectacle that it has become and if they have caused the problem, then they, the parents, need the necessary tools to help their young athletes navigate the pitfalls that come with playing a youth sport.