After these past several years of watching my boy play sports, if he doesn't have any sports to watch, I feel sort of lost sometimes. It's strange, but before you have kids, it seems like it'd be a drag to haul your kids to a zillion practices and games.
The boy has been involved in sports since he "played soccer" at age 3. I volunteered to coach his team. The way I volunteered was on the first day of practice, a kid from the Y asked if I "wouldn't mind helping out coaching a little bit."
I said, sure, but emphasized that I never played soccer and wasn't entirely sure if it was the one with the black and white polka-dot ball or the one with an orange ball and a hoop. From that point forward, I was the head coach.
We've done soccer, swimming, football, baseball, basketball, hockey and karate. In the end, we've settled on the three major sports: football, baseball and basketball, plus a season of swimming in the Summer.
I really look forward to taking my son to these events and practices. I got a little lost when I saw that his rec team has no games scheduled for this weekend. However, he's got a tournament with his travel team on the schedule! So, I don't have to wonder what to do with myself all weekend.
Sometimes I wonder what I'll do once the boy is out of the house and out on his own. Throw myself into my work? Volunteer for some worthy cause somewhere? I don't know. I just know it'll leave a vacuum. I know that I'll have to find something else to do. I'll probably be that old man who shows up to the senior center every day for a cup of coffee to chat up anybody who is willing to sit down and talk.
Monday, February 27, 2012
Sunday, February 26, 2012
The Stacked Team, Part Freux...
Fortunately, the boys had another game after yesterday's debacle. The gist I gather is that this was one of the better teams in the league last year. The boys cruised to a 47-22 victory. This is pretty much what I was expecting.
A few of the other team's parents grumbled, but I don't blame them. I would, too, probably. Thing is, if they don't like that our team is stacked, that would mean we should have taken more players from the other Highland team... the team that beat us yesterday.
That really changes up the equation quite a bit. Losing to that other team was actually a good thing to quell any allegations of gross unfairness. Our team is unfair? Should we have taken more players from the team that beat us, then?
Although the blowout was probably not that fun for the other team, about halfway through the first half, our boys really loosened up. They look like they've made the adjustment to rec basketball. I imagine they'll be able to cruise through the rest of the season. The new kid is picking up the offense. Once he starts understanding how to play in a motion offense, these scores might get even more lopsided.
I did notice that about halfway through the second half, with a 20+ point lead, the boys stopped running their offense, entirely. The coach probably told them to take their foot off the gas at that point. They still got to play hard, but the other team was just completely ill-equipped to deal with a motion offense. Thing was, they still scored just as many points without it because they took open outside shots instead of hitting whoever was cutting to the basket.
It was just fun to watch the boys having fun. I'm hoping this will help them learn how to play loose.
A few of the other team's parents grumbled, but I don't blame them. I would, too, probably. Thing is, if they don't like that our team is stacked, that would mean we should have taken more players from the other Highland team... the team that beat us yesterday.
That really changes up the equation quite a bit. Losing to that other team was actually a good thing to quell any allegations of gross unfairness. Our team is unfair? Should we have taken more players from the team that beat us, then?
Although the blowout was probably not that fun for the other team, about halfway through the first half, our boys really loosened up. They look like they've made the adjustment to rec basketball. I imagine they'll be able to cruise through the rest of the season. The new kid is picking up the offense. Once he starts understanding how to play in a motion offense, these scores might get even more lopsided.
I did notice that about halfway through the second half, with a 20+ point lead, the boys stopped running their offense, entirely. The coach probably told them to take their foot off the gas at that point. They still got to play hard, but the other team was just completely ill-equipped to deal with a motion offense. Thing was, they still scored just as many points without it because they took open outside shots instead of hitting whoever was cutting to the basket.
It was just fun to watch the boys having fun. I'm hoping this will help them learn how to play loose.
The Stacked Team, Part Treux...
Brief Summary: 6 of the kids from my son's travel basketball team signed up for rec basketball. Instead of distributing the players throughout the league, they were all put on the same team, with one new kid.
I was very concerned that we'd be destroying the other teams and end up being resented and viewed as bullies.
Fast forward to the events of yesterday. Our boys almost all go to Highland Elementary. We played the other Highland team. The other team had one kid from the travel team on their team. I'll call him OTP for "other travel player". He played with them in the regular rec season that just concluded.
Now, I wanted our boys to have fun, but I didn't want any hard feelings. I also wanted things to be sporting. I was hopeful that our coach had a way to take his foot off the gas if the scores got out of hand.
I am friends with most of the parents on the other team. A few of them have spent hours with me in the stands at various sporting events our kids were playing in. Prior to the start of the game, one of them said, "you guys might very well pitch a shutout today."
That's sort of what I was afraid of. Really, I didn't want to see a lopsided score like 50-0. I said something like, "Oh, I doubt that. You guys have (OTP). Plus, you guys are solid in a lot of ways."
In all honestly, did I mean it? Yeah, but I was also afraid that maybe he'd be right, which would be a situation that would be bad for everybody involved.
The game started and after a few minutes, OTP was lighting us up. Not only were we not blowing them out, the score was tied at 6-6 a few minutes in. I thought, "Oh, good. Nobody is going to get humiliated today."
How wrong I was...
OTP kept lighting us up. By the time the first half was over, they were up 18-10 and he had accounted for a 14 points.
It took me a while to realize it, but for some reason, our new kid was covering OTP. Now, the new kid wasn't a bad player. The other team had half a dozen kids just like him. However, he was absolutely no match for OTP. OTP, alone, scored more than our entire team in the first half.
OTP was one of the better players on our travel team. He was nothing to be trifled with. I'm all for making it sporting once you're cruising ahead with a comfortable lead, but this was ridiculous.
Now, at the very end of the second half, our team adjusted. The coach put our most tenacious defender (also one of the better players on our travel team) on OTP and that finally neutralized him. In the end, we battled back to a 1 point deficit, but ended up having to foul with the clock running down.
We lost by 4 points. I think the final was 22-26.
Now, I know why it happened. First and foremost, it was insane that we put our worst player on their best, allowing him to go buckwild for almost an entire half. Second, the new kid didn't know our offense and it showed. A motion offense is a little advanced for kids this age, and when one piece breaks down, the entire thing breaks down.
While we couldn't quite get our new kid to run our offense, they had already played together for a season and meshed very, very well.
However, the main reason we lost? Because they played great and we played flat. I can't take anything away from them. We had one new kid. They had a team that was a majority of kids who played at that level. In any other circumstance, I'd have been rooting for them. They were the absolute epitome of scrappy underdogs. We were the epitome of overconfident favorites.
After the game, I was standing in the hall with the regular coach of our boys' travel team and one of the other dads. We talked about how the style of play was different and we didn't adjust. We talked about the matchups. We talked about how our boys played flat.
My observations were these:
"All we had to do to lose is show up and expect them to hand it to us."
"As far as I'm concerned, the better team won today."
I feel bad for my boy. He had a great game. I think he had 7 points and he always plays hard. I told him he played great and had nothing to feel bad about. Still, he was heartbroken at the end of the game. I think, more than anything, he was in shock. He's going to get some ribbing from his classmates this week, for sure.
However, there are lessons to be learned in this game. Now, he will understand, at a fundamental level, how it could happen that, for instance, University of Toledo could beat University of Michigan in football.
The boys play again today. It'll be interesting to see how they react to a rather stunning upset.
I was very concerned that we'd be destroying the other teams and end up being resented and viewed as bullies.
Fast forward to the events of yesterday. Our boys almost all go to Highland Elementary. We played the other Highland team. The other team had one kid from the travel team on their team. I'll call him OTP for "other travel player". He played with them in the regular rec season that just concluded.
Now, I wanted our boys to have fun, but I didn't want any hard feelings. I also wanted things to be sporting. I was hopeful that our coach had a way to take his foot off the gas if the scores got out of hand.
I am friends with most of the parents on the other team. A few of them have spent hours with me in the stands at various sporting events our kids were playing in. Prior to the start of the game, one of them said, "you guys might very well pitch a shutout today."
That's sort of what I was afraid of. Really, I didn't want to see a lopsided score like 50-0. I said something like, "Oh, I doubt that. You guys have (OTP). Plus, you guys are solid in a lot of ways."
In all honestly, did I mean it? Yeah, but I was also afraid that maybe he'd be right, which would be a situation that would be bad for everybody involved.
The game started and after a few minutes, OTP was lighting us up. Not only were we not blowing them out, the score was tied at 6-6 a few minutes in. I thought, "Oh, good. Nobody is going to get humiliated today."
How wrong I was...
OTP kept lighting us up. By the time the first half was over, they were up 18-10 and he had accounted for a 14 points.
It took me a while to realize it, but for some reason, our new kid was covering OTP. Now, the new kid wasn't a bad player. The other team had half a dozen kids just like him. However, he was absolutely no match for OTP. OTP, alone, scored more than our entire team in the first half.
OTP was one of the better players on our travel team. He was nothing to be trifled with. I'm all for making it sporting once you're cruising ahead with a comfortable lead, but this was ridiculous.
Now, at the very end of the second half, our team adjusted. The coach put our most tenacious defender (also one of the better players on our travel team) on OTP and that finally neutralized him. In the end, we battled back to a 1 point deficit, but ended up having to foul with the clock running down.
We lost by 4 points. I think the final was 22-26.
Now, I know why it happened. First and foremost, it was insane that we put our worst player on their best, allowing him to go buckwild for almost an entire half. Second, the new kid didn't know our offense and it showed. A motion offense is a little advanced for kids this age, and when one piece breaks down, the entire thing breaks down.
While we couldn't quite get our new kid to run our offense, they had already played together for a season and meshed very, very well.
However, the main reason we lost? Because they played great and we played flat. I can't take anything away from them. We had one new kid. They had a team that was a majority of kids who played at that level. In any other circumstance, I'd have been rooting for them. They were the absolute epitome of scrappy underdogs. We were the epitome of overconfident favorites.
After the game, I was standing in the hall with the regular coach of our boys' travel team and one of the other dads. We talked about how the style of play was different and we didn't adjust. We talked about the matchups. We talked about how our boys played flat.
My observations were these:
"All we had to do to lose is show up and expect them to hand it to us."
"As far as I'm concerned, the better team won today."
I feel bad for my boy. He had a great game. I think he had 7 points and he always plays hard. I told him he played great and had nothing to feel bad about. Still, he was heartbroken at the end of the game. I think, more than anything, he was in shock. He's going to get some ribbing from his classmates this week, for sure.
However, there are lessons to be learned in this game. Now, he will understand, at a fundamental level, how it could happen that, for instance, University of Toledo could beat University of Michigan in football.
The boys play again today. It'll be interesting to see how they react to a rather stunning upset.
Lessons from Youth Baseball
Watching the way good youth coaches interact with children boils down to some very commonsense rules that extend to nearly every walk of life. For the most part, coaches are leaders in the same way that military officers, corporate managers and even heads of household are.
These lessons become even more apparent when you see people who are not following these best practices. The contrast between good and bad coaches is stark.
So, here are the lessons that come to mind:
1. People will do anything to avoid being yelled at. The results are, at best, short-lived. Doing this can ultimately be counterproductive to the organization's goals.
Adults know this. There was a time when raised voices were probably more common in the work environment, but that day has passed. Not only was it rude and inconsiderate to yell at employees, but ultimately, in the end, it was counterproductive.
Most people simply become resentful. There's also a substantial risk that by focusing on avoiding being yelled at, that a person will lose focus on the tasks they should be most focused on.
When I see successful coaches, they raise their voices a lot. They especially raise them when giving praise. They raise them because they have to be heard over long distances. However, generally speaking, the days of a coach dressing-down a player on the sideline are gone.
Youth sports has progressed quite a bit, too. Even during my day, virtually all coaches were positive and encouraging.
However, I still see coaches who think they're modern day Vince Lombardis who are yelling at kids who are still in elementary school.
The environment you want to create is one where players are relaxed, focused and playing with all their senses active. Yelling at them motivates them by fear. There are very few complex tasks in life that you can do well while fearful.
2. The bulk of all communication needs to be positive. I've heard a rule of thumb that I firmly believe, that in a good relationship, there are generally at least 5 positive comments for every 1 negative one. For instance, "hey, I notice you got a C on this spelling test" carries a lot of weight if it was preceeded by five comments like, "I'm really proud of you, son", or "I like how you're working hard on your homework."
A relationship of any kind where a person is receiving mostly negative feedback isn't an example of leadership. It's an example of nagging. Those types of relationships are awful for everyone involved. The person being nagged wants out the minute they can get out. The person doing the nagging is generally not very happy, either.
In baseball, there are SO many occassions to provide positive feedback: every ball that's fielded correctly, every ball that's thrown, every ball that's hit, every time a guy hustles to first base even if he gets thrown out.
A good coach, leader, officer, executive, parent should be cheerleader-in-chief of their organization. Ultimately, you want people to be DRAWN to positive behaviors. That happens through positive reinforcement. You don't want to merely PUSH them away from negative behaviors. That's all negative reinforcement can accomplish.
I read some good advice when my son was very young. "Catch them being good". Now, my son is very young and it's far too premature to roll out the "mission accomplished" parenting banner, but for the most part, I have tried to see things he's doing that are positive and comment on them.
When I think of the military leaders, executives, managers, coaches I've interacted with, my favorites have always been the ones who pumped their people up.
Those leaders got perhaps the most impressive title a leader can get. They were "motivational". That is, that they made people want to perform to their fullest.
3. Praise publicly, criticize privately. In sports, this one can be tricky, but for the most part, praise can be loud and public. Criticism? Needs to be handled carefully. If possible, criticism should be done one-on-one, out of earshot of others.
That's not always true in sports. It seems very common for a coach to say something when a player muffs a play in the field or has a bad at-bat. However, how productive is this? The kid knows he messed up. Is there some NEW information you're giving, or are you just using it as an opportunity to tell the kid how badly he did?
Some of the best coaching I've seen with my son's team comes when, for instance, a player has a bad at-bat. The coach doesn't yell at them at all. He waits until they're in the dugout and says, "Hey, come here Bobby. Let's talk about that at-bat..."
Mission accomplished. The player knows what they did wrong. The coach communicated it in a way that conveyed neither anger nor disapproval of the kid as a player. The comments were focused on specific actions. "I could see you start swinging the second the pitcher was releasing the ball. Pick up the ball out of his hand and see it, first."
The kid gets something to think about, but in a manner where he doesn't feel humiliated. He also realizes that specific actions are the issue. It's not that the coach thinks less of them as a player.
I've also seen coaches handle it in completely the opposite manner. I've seen coaches threaten players with being benched for looking at a called 3rd strike, for instance. Instead of using it as a chance to teach a player, I think all those kids are thinking is, "I've just been humiliated in front of my friends and the coach hates me."
Criticizing is never easy for anybody involved, but taking it private is a good first step to making sure the desired outcomes are the result. Taking it public increases the chance of resentment and that the person on the receiving end will miss the main point.
4. People can handle, at most, one boss.
This one is more directed towards parents than coaches, but when the game is on, that's the time to let the coach do his job. What parents see as helpful is often nothing of the sort. I've seen cases where the coach was trying to instruct a player on what to do, but had to try and out-shout a parent who is yelling the opposite instructions to a kid. On occassion, our coach has had to ask an overly exhuberant parent to please be quiet so he can coach the team.
We've even had cases where a parent was yelling at somebody else's kid trying to help them out!
From the perspective of the coach, this is an irritant that makes his job harder. However, from the perspective of a kid, good lord. I cannot imagine doing a difficult task like trying to hit a baseball with 2 or 3 or maybe 4 people yelling at me. Kids in sports need to be focused on the task at hand, not trying to please a handful of people all at once.
This one has huge carry-over into the work environment. I remember once we had a manager in another department who would come into my department and start giving tasks to my people. I tried at every turn to make it clear that we'd work with anybody, but that requests had to come through me. Not so much because of a power struggle, but because I didn't want my people to feel like they were being pulled towards different priorities by different people. I've also worked in jobs where I had one formal boss, but a couple of informal ones. That's a very unpleasant situation to be in.
Now, because some sports have a lot of activities and a lot of assistant coaches, sometimes players need to take direction from an assistant. That's fine, but it's imperative that the coach and assistants have coordinated their efforts. There's nothing worse for a kid than having one coach tell him to do one thing, but then to get dressed down by the other coach who didn't realize the kid was just following the directions the other coach gave him.
If you extend that to the work world, it's easy to see the problem. How would most people react if they had two bosses, one of them told the person to do X, and the other boss then criticized them for it?
5. Every good leader is also a teacher. Every good teacher has a plan and executes it.
Coaches aren't just there to fill out the lineup card and call plays. They're there to get the team ready for game-time. Especially in youth sports, there are dozens, maybe hundreds of things to be taught. For instance, if teaching competitive baseball to kids, you have to show them everything from the proper grip on a baseball to how to pop-up slide.
Coaches should take note of how many skills they want to teach, how many practices they have to work with, and have an agenda going into each practice.
Good teachers have a lesson plan for every day. Coaches should have the same thing for every practice. If the amount of things that need to be taught exceeds the amount of practices, then coaches should do what anybody with finite resource constraints should do: prioritize and hit the most important stuff.
Too often, it seems that coaches teach by identifying things kids did wrong, then correcting them, publicly. Yeah, the team learns, but wouldn't it have made more sense to have spent the same amount of time teaching it in a structured manner during practice, instead of waiting to see a kid to mess up?
Teaching by correcting is discouraging for people. It is also haphazard. Much better to identify the things you want done and train them in an orderly and predictable manner.
If you're not teaching, you're not leading. "Leadership" in the absence of teaching is simply administering.
6. You should teach the potential next position not just the current one. Especially early in a playing career or early in a professional career, a good leader looks for opportunities to round out an individual. Granted, when a person is in college, they probably play just one position on their team. The CFO of a company doesn't dabble in sales, either. Those are situations appropriate for a person who is far along in their career and has already attained a level of maturity and success.
However, when the kids are 10 years old, there's no telling whether that scrawny short kid is going to grow up to be a tall lanky kid. The short pudgy kid may grow up to be tall and powerful.
That entry-level programmer might be better suited to sales. It's important to groom people for potential career paths that may not be obvious right now.
So, it's important to resist the urge to pidgeon hole them early on. You need to give them room to grow. It keeps them engaged, it sometimes turns up a diamond in the rough. It also avoids pidgeonholing them too soon.
7. Behind closed doors, you need to encourage open discourse. But once on the field, it's one team, one vision, one plan.
This one is hard on many levels. All coaches should have an open door with their players to discuss anything. When the kids are very, very young, unfortunately, the coaches probably also need to take their parents concerns under consideration.
A kid or employee needs the ability to say things that aren't fit for public consumption. "I feel like I'm being taken for granted", or "I hate this job you're giving me. If I finish it up can I work on something I like better next?"
This is not to say that a leader needs to GRANT anything that's asked for. That's clearly untrue. However, people will shut down if they feel they're not being heard. A good leader will listen and then give insight as to why a decision is going one way, versus another.
People are sometimes insecure and can take various things as personal attacks. A good leader has to set that aside. Listen. Teach. Advise. Inform.
Once that conversation is over, though, the responsibility is on the player or employee. When that meeting ends and they're back in circulation, it's one team, one message, one vision. Whether the player likes it or not, the coach's decision is THE decision and the player needs to support it 100%.
Same with employees. The best managers I had would tolerate some very heated discussion and disagreement. However, once the discussion was over, they expected you to go out and put your oar in the water and pull in the same direction as everybody else.
With some of the worst leaders, disagreement wasn't tolerated. With the best leaders, disagreement was tolerated in the right venue. However, disloyalty or insubordination was not.
These lessons become even more apparent when you see people who are not following these best practices. The contrast between good and bad coaches is stark.
So, here are the lessons that come to mind:
1. People will do anything to avoid being yelled at. The results are, at best, short-lived. Doing this can ultimately be counterproductive to the organization's goals.
Adults know this. There was a time when raised voices were probably more common in the work environment, but that day has passed. Not only was it rude and inconsiderate to yell at employees, but ultimately, in the end, it was counterproductive.
Most people simply become resentful. There's also a substantial risk that by focusing on avoiding being yelled at, that a person will lose focus on the tasks they should be most focused on.
When I see successful coaches, they raise their voices a lot. They especially raise them when giving praise. They raise them because they have to be heard over long distances. However, generally speaking, the days of a coach dressing-down a player on the sideline are gone.
Youth sports has progressed quite a bit, too. Even during my day, virtually all coaches were positive and encouraging.
However, I still see coaches who think they're modern day Vince Lombardis who are yelling at kids who are still in elementary school.
The environment you want to create is one where players are relaxed, focused and playing with all their senses active. Yelling at them motivates them by fear. There are very few complex tasks in life that you can do well while fearful.
2. The bulk of all communication needs to be positive. I've heard a rule of thumb that I firmly believe, that in a good relationship, there are generally at least 5 positive comments for every 1 negative one. For instance, "hey, I notice you got a C on this spelling test" carries a lot of weight if it was preceeded by five comments like, "I'm really proud of you, son", or "I like how you're working hard on your homework."
A relationship of any kind where a person is receiving mostly negative feedback isn't an example of leadership. It's an example of nagging. Those types of relationships are awful for everyone involved. The person being nagged wants out the minute they can get out. The person doing the nagging is generally not very happy, either.
In baseball, there are SO many occassions to provide positive feedback: every ball that's fielded correctly, every ball that's thrown, every ball that's hit, every time a guy hustles to first base even if he gets thrown out.
A good coach, leader, officer, executive, parent should be cheerleader-in-chief of their organization. Ultimately, you want people to be DRAWN to positive behaviors. That happens through positive reinforcement. You don't want to merely PUSH them away from negative behaviors. That's all negative reinforcement can accomplish.
I read some good advice when my son was very young. "Catch them being good". Now, my son is very young and it's far too premature to roll out the "mission accomplished" parenting banner, but for the most part, I have tried to see things he's doing that are positive and comment on them.
When I think of the military leaders, executives, managers, coaches I've interacted with, my favorites have always been the ones who pumped their people up.
Those leaders got perhaps the most impressive title a leader can get. They were "motivational". That is, that they made people want to perform to their fullest.
3. Praise publicly, criticize privately. In sports, this one can be tricky, but for the most part, praise can be loud and public. Criticism? Needs to be handled carefully. If possible, criticism should be done one-on-one, out of earshot of others.
That's not always true in sports. It seems very common for a coach to say something when a player muffs a play in the field or has a bad at-bat. However, how productive is this? The kid knows he messed up. Is there some NEW information you're giving, or are you just using it as an opportunity to tell the kid how badly he did?
Some of the best coaching I've seen with my son's team comes when, for instance, a player has a bad at-bat. The coach doesn't yell at them at all. He waits until they're in the dugout and says, "Hey, come here Bobby. Let's talk about that at-bat..."
Mission accomplished. The player knows what they did wrong. The coach communicated it in a way that conveyed neither anger nor disapproval of the kid as a player. The comments were focused on specific actions. "I could see you start swinging the second the pitcher was releasing the ball. Pick up the ball out of his hand and see it, first."
The kid gets something to think about, but in a manner where he doesn't feel humiliated. He also realizes that specific actions are the issue. It's not that the coach thinks less of them as a player.
I've also seen coaches handle it in completely the opposite manner. I've seen coaches threaten players with being benched for looking at a called 3rd strike, for instance. Instead of using it as a chance to teach a player, I think all those kids are thinking is, "I've just been humiliated in front of my friends and the coach hates me."
Criticizing is never easy for anybody involved, but taking it private is a good first step to making sure the desired outcomes are the result. Taking it public increases the chance of resentment and that the person on the receiving end will miss the main point.
4. People can handle, at most, one boss.
This one is more directed towards parents than coaches, but when the game is on, that's the time to let the coach do his job. What parents see as helpful is often nothing of the sort. I've seen cases where the coach was trying to instruct a player on what to do, but had to try and out-shout a parent who is yelling the opposite instructions to a kid. On occassion, our coach has had to ask an overly exhuberant parent to please be quiet so he can coach the team.
We've even had cases where a parent was yelling at somebody else's kid trying to help them out!
From the perspective of the coach, this is an irritant that makes his job harder. However, from the perspective of a kid, good lord. I cannot imagine doing a difficult task like trying to hit a baseball with 2 or 3 or maybe 4 people yelling at me. Kids in sports need to be focused on the task at hand, not trying to please a handful of people all at once.
This one has huge carry-over into the work environment. I remember once we had a manager in another department who would come into my department and start giving tasks to my people. I tried at every turn to make it clear that we'd work with anybody, but that requests had to come through me. Not so much because of a power struggle, but because I didn't want my people to feel like they were being pulled towards different priorities by different people. I've also worked in jobs where I had one formal boss, but a couple of informal ones. That's a very unpleasant situation to be in.
Now, because some sports have a lot of activities and a lot of assistant coaches, sometimes players need to take direction from an assistant. That's fine, but it's imperative that the coach and assistants have coordinated their efforts. There's nothing worse for a kid than having one coach tell him to do one thing, but then to get dressed down by the other coach who didn't realize the kid was just following the directions the other coach gave him.
If you extend that to the work world, it's easy to see the problem. How would most people react if they had two bosses, one of them told the person to do X, and the other boss then criticized them for it?
5. Every good leader is also a teacher. Every good teacher has a plan and executes it.
Coaches aren't just there to fill out the lineup card and call plays. They're there to get the team ready for game-time. Especially in youth sports, there are dozens, maybe hundreds of things to be taught. For instance, if teaching competitive baseball to kids, you have to show them everything from the proper grip on a baseball to how to pop-up slide.
Coaches should take note of how many skills they want to teach, how many practices they have to work with, and have an agenda going into each practice.
Good teachers have a lesson plan for every day. Coaches should have the same thing for every practice. If the amount of things that need to be taught exceeds the amount of practices, then coaches should do what anybody with finite resource constraints should do: prioritize and hit the most important stuff.
Too often, it seems that coaches teach by identifying things kids did wrong, then correcting them, publicly. Yeah, the team learns, but wouldn't it have made more sense to have spent the same amount of time teaching it in a structured manner during practice, instead of waiting to see a kid to mess up?
Teaching by correcting is discouraging for people. It is also haphazard. Much better to identify the things you want done and train them in an orderly and predictable manner.
If you're not teaching, you're not leading. "Leadership" in the absence of teaching is simply administering.
6. You should teach the potential next position not just the current one. Especially early in a playing career or early in a professional career, a good leader looks for opportunities to round out an individual. Granted, when a person is in college, they probably play just one position on their team. The CFO of a company doesn't dabble in sales, either. Those are situations appropriate for a person who is far along in their career and has already attained a level of maturity and success.
However, when the kids are 10 years old, there's no telling whether that scrawny short kid is going to grow up to be a tall lanky kid. The short pudgy kid may grow up to be tall and powerful.
That entry-level programmer might be better suited to sales. It's important to groom people for potential career paths that may not be obvious right now.
So, it's important to resist the urge to pidgeon hole them early on. You need to give them room to grow. It keeps them engaged, it sometimes turns up a diamond in the rough. It also avoids pidgeonholing them too soon.
7. Behind closed doors, you need to encourage open discourse. But once on the field, it's one team, one vision, one plan.
This one is hard on many levels. All coaches should have an open door with their players to discuss anything. When the kids are very, very young, unfortunately, the coaches probably also need to take their parents concerns under consideration.
A kid or employee needs the ability to say things that aren't fit for public consumption. "I feel like I'm being taken for granted", or "I hate this job you're giving me. If I finish it up can I work on something I like better next?"
This is not to say that a leader needs to GRANT anything that's asked for. That's clearly untrue. However, people will shut down if they feel they're not being heard. A good leader will listen and then give insight as to why a decision is going one way, versus another.
People are sometimes insecure and can take various things as personal attacks. A good leader has to set that aside. Listen. Teach. Advise. Inform.
Once that conversation is over, though, the responsibility is on the player or employee. When that meeting ends and they're back in circulation, it's one team, one message, one vision. Whether the player likes it or not, the coach's decision is THE decision and the player needs to support it 100%.
Same with employees. The best managers I had would tolerate some very heated discussion and disagreement. However, once the discussion was over, they expected you to go out and put your oar in the water and pull in the same direction as everybody else.
With some of the worst leaders, disagreement wasn't tolerated. With the best leaders, disagreement was tolerated in the right venue. However, disloyalty or insubordination was not.
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Kids and Baseball
Working with the boy's team at hitting stations has me thinking that someday, when I'm old and the boy is a man and out of the house, that I may want to coach youth baseball. By this, I mean either at the tee-ball or maybe the first year of coach-pitch level.
We have some kids on the team who never played travel ball before, and it's obvious. Most people don't realize that there actually is a wrong way to throw a baseball. Also, the baseball swing is one that I just can't imagine that many people will stumble upon merely by accident.
We'll have to wait and see. Some good coaching at an early age would yield big dividends with these kids. I think we can straighten some of them out, but I also think the kids probably have a ding against them in terms of achieving their potential. The kids who had good instruction early are already instinctive on a good swing and throw.
The new coach should start sometime next week and I'm really excited about that. As much as I would like not to coach any of the boy's sports, I end up helping out a lot more than I might have wanted. Not a biggie. I don't think it should be only other people's responsibility to pitch in. If I can help, I feel as though I should help. My son, at this age at least, doesn't seem to mind my involvement.
In fact, I think he's puzzled when, for instance, he goes to do his reps pitching and I'll tell him to pitch to a different coach and not me. I just think it's important for him to get used to working with a lot of different people. He's obviously comfortable working with me, but he needs to break out of that comfort zone and get used to working with whomever is wearing a glove at the other end of the throw.
The other thing is, I need to let the coaches coach. My son will do everything he can to please everybody around him. He doesn't need my voice in the mix at game-time. I still believe that people do way too much chatter at the kids in youth sports. They already have one coach. They don't need 2 or 3 or 4 trying to give them instruction at game time. That's enough to overwhelm anybody, let alone a little kid.
Soon, he'll be playing High School ball and I won't be there to guide his every move or comment on every rep in practice. I would imagine that will be a relief to him. At the moment, he seems to really like it when I coach. So, it's not all bad.
I fear this may be his last year in travel. The schedule is gruelling. I told him I'm fine with him playing rec baseball next year. His fundamentals are so good that he almost certainly will be a standout on his middle school team. More fun, more glory, less work. What's not to like? I think he'll pay a price when he gets to High School tryouts, but oh well. I figure sometime in middle school, if he gets the fire in the belly for baseball, it won't matter what he did for a couple of years when he was in 6th or 7th grade. He can catch up. No fire in the belly? Who knows. Might make his High School team, might not. If he doesn't, he'll live. He can play lacrosse or run track. It's just not worth losing sleep over.
On the other hand, I'm hoping this new coach will really infuse a spirit of fun into this whole thing for him. He toiled away in obscurity on his last team. Got almost no infield or pitching reps. Batted in the bottom half of the order. He responded by leading the team in OBP, batting with the team's leaders all year long and playing gold-glove caliber center field. I had issues with it, but it was what it was. I felt like he was treated like a scrub. I thought he deserved a better chance to develop than what he got. Never communicated it to him, but I think he got what was going on.
Kids realize what's going on. When Logan would hit a slump, he would bat 11th or 12th. Another kid on the team would hit a slump and he'd work it out batting 4th. Logan outhit that kid all season long, but at the end, Logan tailed off and that kid surged. Ended up edging out Logan by a few points in BA. If ever there was a case where kids rise or fall according to your expectations, that was it. The message was clear: that other kid was a good player who was important to the team. Logan was a kid who could lead the team in hitting for a few weeks on end, but he was never to be allowed to bat in the top half of the order.
With this new team, he should have a more integral role in the team. If the coach is a good one, maybe he'll really start enjoying playing. I don't think he had that much fun playing last year. When push comes to shove, fun is what its supposed to be all about. Also, the talent is a lot more differentiated on this team. Logan should really stand out.
I hope this leads to him batting more appropriately in the batting order and getting some reps in the infield. Despite the layoff, his arm is amazingly strong and accurate this Spring. He's ready to play shortstop again. Maybe he'll feel more involved. Maybe he'll feel more valued. Maybe it'll make the whole thing more fun.
I hope this year is a lot more fun for him.
We have some kids on the team who never played travel ball before, and it's obvious. Most people don't realize that there actually is a wrong way to throw a baseball. Also, the baseball swing is one that I just can't imagine that many people will stumble upon merely by accident.
We'll have to wait and see. Some good coaching at an early age would yield big dividends with these kids. I think we can straighten some of them out, but I also think the kids probably have a ding against them in terms of achieving their potential. The kids who had good instruction early are already instinctive on a good swing and throw.
The new coach should start sometime next week and I'm really excited about that. As much as I would like not to coach any of the boy's sports, I end up helping out a lot more than I might have wanted. Not a biggie. I don't think it should be only other people's responsibility to pitch in. If I can help, I feel as though I should help. My son, at this age at least, doesn't seem to mind my involvement.
In fact, I think he's puzzled when, for instance, he goes to do his reps pitching and I'll tell him to pitch to a different coach and not me. I just think it's important for him to get used to working with a lot of different people. He's obviously comfortable working with me, but he needs to break out of that comfort zone and get used to working with whomever is wearing a glove at the other end of the throw.
The other thing is, I need to let the coaches coach. My son will do everything he can to please everybody around him. He doesn't need my voice in the mix at game-time. I still believe that people do way too much chatter at the kids in youth sports. They already have one coach. They don't need 2 or 3 or 4 trying to give them instruction at game time. That's enough to overwhelm anybody, let alone a little kid.
Soon, he'll be playing High School ball and I won't be there to guide his every move or comment on every rep in practice. I would imagine that will be a relief to him. At the moment, he seems to really like it when I coach. So, it's not all bad.
I fear this may be his last year in travel. The schedule is gruelling. I told him I'm fine with him playing rec baseball next year. His fundamentals are so good that he almost certainly will be a standout on his middle school team. More fun, more glory, less work. What's not to like? I think he'll pay a price when he gets to High School tryouts, but oh well. I figure sometime in middle school, if he gets the fire in the belly for baseball, it won't matter what he did for a couple of years when he was in 6th or 7th grade. He can catch up. No fire in the belly? Who knows. Might make his High School team, might not. If he doesn't, he'll live. He can play lacrosse or run track. It's just not worth losing sleep over.
On the other hand, I'm hoping this new coach will really infuse a spirit of fun into this whole thing for him. He toiled away in obscurity on his last team. Got almost no infield or pitching reps. Batted in the bottom half of the order. He responded by leading the team in OBP, batting with the team's leaders all year long and playing gold-glove caliber center field. I had issues with it, but it was what it was. I felt like he was treated like a scrub. I thought he deserved a better chance to develop than what he got. Never communicated it to him, but I think he got what was going on.
Kids realize what's going on. When Logan would hit a slump, he would bat 11th or 12th. Another kid on the team would hit a slump and he'd work it out batting 4th. Logan outhit that kid all season long, but at the end, Logan tailed off and that kid surged. Ended up edging out Logan by a few points in BA. If ever there was a case where kids rise or fall according to your expectations, that was it. The message was clear: that other kid was a good player who was important to the team. Logan was a kid who could lead the team in hitting for a few weeks on end, but he was never to be allowed to bat in the top half of the order.
With this new team, he should have a more integral role in the team. If the coach is a good one, maybe he'll really start enjoying playing. I don't think he had that much fun playing last year. When push comes to shove, fun is what its supposed to be all about. Also, the talent is a lot more differentiated on this team. Logan should really stand out.
I hope this leads to him batting more appropriately in the batting order and getting some reps in the infield. Despite the layoff, his arm is amazingly strong and accurate this Spring. He's ready to play shortstop again. Maybe he'll feel more involved. Maybe he'll feel more valued. Maybe it'll make the whole thing more fun.
I hope this year is a lot more fun for him.
Saturday, February 18, 2012
The Stacked Team, Part Deux...
As a follow up to the last blog post about my son's basketball team, I contacted the rec and let them know that they had just inadvertently taken almost an entire travel basketball team and dropped them into a rec league, intact. I got a follow-up e-mail that said they were working on it.
Not sure what they meant by that. As of last night, the rosters hadn't been changed at all. Maybe they'll act, maybe they won't, but at this point, my conscience is clear. I've made sure they are aware of a potentially disastrous situation.
Now, some might wonder why this is such a concern for me. It's not like my son will be on a losing team. As I posted last time, though, anybody else in the league will view this as my son's team being an unfair bunch of bullies.
A bit of this goes back to my belief in recreational sports. My son doesn't play much of those anymore, and I think they're great. Travel sports are great for kids who have at least a little talent, a whole lot of drive and parents who can afford the finances and time involved. That's a very, very small minority of school aged kids.
Rec sports are for everybody else. There are a whole lot of us who didn't meet all the preconditions for travel sports. However, sports are fun, and everybody should be able to enjoy them.
There are, however, things you can do that makes sports not very fun. We used to call it stacking a team. For instance, you took all the good players, put them on one team and then let them whip everybody else in the league. Various leagues do this for various reasons. For instance, the kids on the stacked team are the ones most likely to be named to an all-star team and post-season play. So, you get them used to playing with each other all season.
Personally, I don't agree with that. One of the huge benefits of travel leagues is that you no longer have an excuse to try and prep a tournament team in a rec. league, etc. The recreational leagues are now free to be exactly that: recreational.
Despite this, it's amazing the lengths that some parents will go to in order to try and stack a team in a rec league. For instance, many rec leagues will make reasonable accomodation if you have kids who all need to car pool to practices together. This reasonable accomodation will, in the eyes of some parents, be an excuse to say that all the talented players their kid knows all belong to the same car pool.
My friend Stevie pointed out that what I was doing was exactly the opposite of this. Those parents are trying to stack a team to create an unfair competitive advantage in the league. I'm trying to unstack a team to prevent an unfair competitive advantage.
Even in the travel leagues, for instance, there's one travel baseball team where instead of putting together a strong community-based team, they take kids from all over the metro area. Fine if that's who you're playing against, but a bad show if you're doing it so you'll be able to easily defeat all the other community based teams in your league.
I'm all for competition. However, there's a fine line between competing as hard as you can, and doing things to gain an unfair advantage. I guess each person needs to let their own conscience be their guide on this. My take is that if a league is composed of randomly selected kids, then all the teams should be randomly selected kids. If one team ends up, by luck of the draw, to have more talent than the others, oh well.
Again, nobody TRIED to make this happen. In some ways, this is really great... FOR US. Also, the other teams will only play us once this season. So, maybe they figure, hey, we'll have one disastrous game, but the rest of the season won't be any different. I just worry.
As of today, it doesn't look like anything has changed at all. So, I guess the rec has decided to go through with this. It's just that sometimes your conscience tells you that something isn't right. We'll see how this goes. In a way, this is very positive for the travel team. Their rec practices and games will essentially be tune ups for their travel tournaments. I just hope we don't end up being the bad guys of the league.
Not sure what they meant by that. As of last night, the rosters hadn't been changed at all. Maybe they'll act, maybe they won't, but at this point, my conscience is clear. I've made sure they are aware of a potentially disastrous situation.
Now, some might wonder why this is such a concern for me. It's not like my son will be on a losing team. As I posted last time, though, anybody else in the league will view this as my son's team being an unfair bunch of bullies.
A bit of this goes back to my belief in recreational sports. My son doesn't play much of those anymore, and I think they're great. Travel sports are great for kids who have at least a little talent, a whole lot of drive and parents who can afford the finances and time involved. That's a very, very small minority of school aged kids.
Rec sports are for everybody else. There are a whole lot of us who didn't meet all the preconditions for travel sports. However, sports are fun, and everybody should be able to enjoy them.
There are, however, things you can do that makes sports not very fun. We used to call it stacking a team. For instance, you took all the good players, put them on one team and then let them whip everybody else in the league. Various leagues do this for various reasons. For instance, the kids on the stacked team are the ones most likely to be named to an all-star team and post-season play. So, you get them used to playing with each other all season.
Personally, I don't agree with that. One of the huge benefits of travel leagues is that you no longer have an excuse to try and prep a tournament team in a rec. league, etc. The recreational leagues are now free to be exactly that: recreational.
Despite this, it's amazing the lengths that some parents will go to in order to try and stack a team in a rec league. For instance, many rec leagues will make reasonable accomodation if you have kids who all need to car pool to practices together. This reasonable accomodation will, in the eyes of some parents, be an excuse to say that all the talented players their kid knows all belong to the same car pool.
My friend Stevie pointed out that what I was doing was exactly the opposite of this. Those parents are trying to stack a team to create an unfair competitive advantage in the league. I'm trying to unstack a team to prevent an unfair competitive advantage.
Even in the travel leagues, for instance, there's one travel baseball team where instead of putting together a strong community-based team, they take kids from all over the metro area. Fine if that's who you're playing against, but a bad show if you're doing it so you'll be able to easily defeat all the other community based teams in your league.
I'm all for competition. However, there's a fine line between competing as hard as you can, and doing things to gain an unfair advantage. I guess each person needs to let their own conscience be their guide on this. My take is that if a league is composed of randomly selected kids, then all the teams should be randomly selected kids. If one team ends up, by luck of the draw, to have more talent than the others, oh well.
Again, nobody TRIED to make this happen. In some ways, this is really great... FOR US. Also, the other teams will only play us once this season. So, maybe they figure, hey, we'll have one disastrous game, but the rest of the season won't be any different. I just worry.
As of today, it doesn't look like anything has changed at all. So, I guess the rec has decided to go through with this. It's just that sometimes your conscience tells you that something isn't right. We'll see how this goes. In a way, this is very positive for the travel team. Their rec practices and games will essentially be tune ups for their travel tournaments. I just hope we don't end up being the bad guys of the league.
Thursday, February 16, 2012
The Stacked Team: Okay, this is going to be... wierd...
I signed my son up for a little 6-game Winter basketball rec league that was starting right around the time his travel league was wrapping up. We didn't act in concert with the other kids on his travel team, but it turns out that 7 out of the 8 kids on his travel team are going to play rec. I envisioned the rec director dividing the kids out into two teams that represent the elementary school where they all go.
6 of them got put on the same rec league team. Now, you'd think that would be an embarassment of riches. Literally, this league will have kids who are just learning to dribble the ball. It's rec league sports. The emphasis is on participation and fun. Logan doesn't really play rec sports anymore and I wanted him to be able to play a little bit just for the fun of it.
Having his team essentially come over intact is going to be great in a lot of ways for the team. He loves his team-mates and loves playing with them. They've been running some very sophisticated college offenses, press breaks and defenses. (Their coach has been involved with a local college's women's team for years.)
They were, give or take, an average travel team in their league. Yes, that's how good the coaching is at the travel level. I like the idea that they'll play rec because they were learning a lot this year, but they played under a lot of pressure and played tense a lot of the time. I think they could have played a lot better if they'd just relaxed a little bit and played loose.
Now, there's a downside to all this. They're going to absolutely annihilate every team they face. In a way, it's sort of unfair to the other teams in the league. Literally, I am expecting scores like 70 to 4. Literally.
Also, there are only 7 kids on this team. 6 from the travel squad and 1 who is a rec player who didn't previously have a team. The problem here is that there's not really going to be a way to take our foot off the gas in these games. I mean, literally, to keep from running up the score, we'd have to tell our kids to dribble left handed or something.
I'm still of the old school where running up the score is a really unsportsmanlike thing to do. I'm not eager to see my son's team do it. It's not fun for anybody. These kids are not too old to cry, either. If our boys play as well as they played during the season, the other teams literally won't be able to run an offense.
If our boys loosen up and elevate their game to the next level, this will be embarassing for everybody concerned.
It would not surprise me if this team ended up being the most despised in the league. It also would not surprise me if it were for good reason.
I guess at this point, we'll just have to wait and see how it plays out. Previously, the rec said that kids from the same travel team would not be assigned to the same rec team. However, more than half the travel basketball players (on two teams) in our town are from my son's elementary school. 1 of them already was on a rec team. 3 of them decided not to play rec basketball. The other 6 all ended up on one team. So, I am not envying the director of the league. He's going to get an earful about this.
It's not really his fault. Our travel coach pinged him early on about bringing in the travel team as one unit and he said flat-out that he would not let that happen. However, since all these kids go to the same elementary (out of 7 in the city), they were all going to play on the two teams representing the elementary.
The other team's coach asked that his team be kept intact in its entirety. Which meant that all the new kids who were coming out of travel were all going to be on the same team.
We'll see how it goes. Maybe our kids will not take it seriously and the games will be close. However, I've seen our kids run a press break. I've seen our kids run their offenses. If they do it half as well as they've done it all year, this isn't going to be pretty. This will literally be a team of 6 of the city's best basketball players running college basketball schemes against teams of rec players being coached by dads. This is literally going to be pickup teams playing against a battle-hardened, hand-selected team that's been playing at the highest levels for the past several months.
It's going to be interesting to say the least.
6 of them got put on the same rec league team. Now, you'd think that would be an embarassment of riches. Literally, this league will have kids who are just learning to dribble the ball. It's rec league sports. The emphasis is on participation and fun. Logan doesn't really play rec sports anymore and I wanted him to be able to play a little bit just for the fun of it.
Having his team essentially come over intact is going to be great in a lot of ways for the team. He loves his team-mates and loves playing with them. They've been running some very sophisticated college offenses, press breaks and defenses. (Their coach has been involved with a local college's women's team for years.)
They were, give or take, an average travel team in their league. Yes, that's how good the coaching is at the travel level. I like the idea that they'll play rec because they were learning a lot this year, but they played under a lot of pressure and played tense a lot of the time. I think they could have played a lot better if they'd just relaxed a little bit and played loose.
Now, there's a downside to all this. They're going to absolutely annihilate every team they face. In a way, it's sort of unfair to the other teams in the league. Literally, I am expecting scores like 70 to 4. Literally.
Also, there are only 7 kids on this team. 6 from the travel squad and 1 who is a rec player who didn't previously have a team. The problem here is that there's not really going to be a way to take our foot off the gas in these games. I mean, literally, to keep from running up the score, we'd have to tell our kids to dribble left handed or something.
I'm still of the old school where running up the score is a really unsportsmanlike thing to do. I'm not eager to see my son's team do it. It's not fun for anybody. These kids are not too old to cry, either. If our boys play as well as they played during the season, the other teams literally won't be able to run an offense.
If our boys loosen up and elevate their game to the next level, this will be embarassing for everybody concerned.
It would not surprise me if this team ended up being the most despised in the league. It also would not surprise me if it were for good reason.
I guess at this point, we'll just have to wait and see how it plays out. Previously, the rec said that kids from the same travel team would not be assigned to the same rec team. However, more than half the travel basketball players (on two teams) in our town are from my son's elementary school. 1 of them already was on a rec team. 3 of them decided not to play rec basketball. The other 6 all ended up on one team. So, I am not envying the director of the league. He's going to get an earful about this.
It's not really his fault. Our travel coach pinged him early on about bringing in the travel team as one unit and he said flat-out that he would not let that happen. However, since all these kids go to the same elementary (out of 7 in the city), they were all going to play on the two teams representing the elementary.
The other team's coach asked that his team be kept intact in its entirety. Which meant that all the new kids who were coming out of travel were all going to be on the same team.
We'll see how it goes. Maybe our kids will not take it seriously and the games will be close. However, I've seen our kids run a press break. I've seen our kids run their offenses. If they do it half as well as they've done it all year, this isn't going to be pretty. This will literally be a team of 6 of the city's best basketball players running college basketball schemes against teams of rec players being coached by dads. This is literally going to be pickup teams playing against a battle-hardened, hand-selected team that's been playing at the highest levels for the past several months.
It's going to be interesting to say the least.
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
The Times, The Are A Changin'...
I just cancelled my subscription to Sports Illustrated. When I was young, we always had Time, Newsweek and a handful of other magazines around the house. My grandmother was always a voracious reader. During times when I was bored, I would pick up those magazines and if not for them, I doubt I'd be able to read very well, today.
I got a subscription to Sports Illustrated because they were giving out a free promotional copy of Madden 12. I wanted that for Logan, anyway. So, it didn't really cost me anything additional to get the magazine for six months. I hoped that having it around the house would encourage him to read. It didn't work. Hahahaa!
When it comes to sports, he's clearly a doer, not a reader. His grades in reading are good, though, as are his grades in school overall.
This is one of those times where I just have to accept that what worked for me isn't necessarily going to work for him.
His travel basketball season is over except for a few tournaments that his coach may sign us up for in the future. I did sign him up to play a spring rec season that will only be six weeks long or so. I want him to have a little fun playing basketball. The nice thing about rec sports is that they're recreational. This will give him a chance to play basketball just for the fun of it.
Also, the other kids on his team will probably include a few of the kids he hangs out with at school just for fun. At least so far, he doesn't seem to hang with the jocks at school. I like his circle of friends, though. They seem to be a group that's exceptionally kind and accepting of each other.
Baseball workouts are going well. Logan looks pretty sharp. At this point, the trick is to try and keep an interest in baseball going, but without overloading him. We did no off-season workouts this year. I'm afraid that any more baseball beyond what's required and he'll be ready to quit. Not a world-ending event. He'll be fine if he choses to, for instance, run track or play lacrosse.
However, it would just be a shame. It's almost as if he doesn't realize how good he is in baseball. Maybe it's just the fact that I wish I'd been talented enough to play High School baseball and just hate to see a kid who is clearly good enough, but who doesn't seem to care all that much about the sport.
Obviously, that's no reason for him to have to play baseball. If he doesn't want to play travel next year, I'm okay with that. This will be his 3rd straight year of travel baseball and the kid is only 10 years old. Above all else, sports is supposed to be fun. I am hopeful that his new team this year will give him a little different, more fun-filled experience. If it doesn't, and he decides to play rec, then so be it.
It's not like he loses the ability to play baseball later if he plays a year or two of rec. It'll hurt his chance of playing High School ball, but he's got solid fundamentals from the coaching he's gotten over the past couple of years. We owe quite a debt to his coach, Dave. If Logan decides to get serious about baseball in his middle school years, he can probably get back on track.
All in all, I just want him to enjoy his High School experience, and I think playing sports, or getting involved in something, is a way to increase the chances of that. Doesn't even have to be sports. If he wants to be on the High School newspaper, then I'm fine with that.
Sort of like the other day when, much to my chagrin, he told me he wanted to be a rapper. He knows I hate rappers. (Okay, I don't hate them, but I sure don't like them.) I told him that was fine. He can do whatever he wants to do. If he wants to be a rapper, I just ask that he try to be a good one.
All in all, it's just sports. Sports are just games. Games are supposed to be fun. Once they stop being fun, it's time to find a new game.
Now, on the other hand, my cousin's husband, Clay, once said something to me akin to, "People will say that sports are not important for kids. But you don't hear them saying that math and english homework aren't important."
I actually agree with his point. I don't think that the physical aspects of the human being are less important than the intellectual. It's all in the same package. If I met, for instance, a person who had devoted their lives to the ballet, I'd find them to be as interesting and complete a person as somebody who studied nuclear physics. Their contributions to society would be different, but significant.
From a purely pragmatic standpoint, in a nation where childhood obesity is just a sorry state of affairs, I think it's important to tell kids they need to get out and move, too.
Show me a kid who half-asses his English homework and I'll say that kid is not necessarily destined for failure. Maybe he gives 100% at something else. We certainly forgive the kids who half-ass it on the athletic fields if they're doing well in their studies.
I'll just throw a different spin on it. I do think that if sports are your thing, you should go for it. Just as if english is your thing you should go for it. If music is your thing, you should go for it. All in all, though, it's not that sports is as important as homework... it's that homework isn't that important, either.
More important than learning what a gerund is, I think it's important that kids learn what it means to give 100% to something. THAT is the learning they need. You can take a kid who gave 100% on the gridiron or soccer pitch and nurture that drive into a successful career later in life. That link may be harder to trace than, say, a kid who loves science as a kid who eventually becomes a great engineer, but I think it's there. A great many successful people cultivated their drive, killer instinct and competitive streak by playing sports when they were young.
Yeah, there were also some dumb jocks in the bunch, just as the kid who excelled in English sometimes becomes an insufferable bore with no social skills. However, by and large, the kids who do well, with passion, when they're young, are better poised for success than kids who never tried hard at anything.
So, that is the life lesson in all this. Sports is supposed to be fun. However, the life lesson is to find something you love, nurture a passion for it, and pursue excellence in it. Playing baseball? I love the game, but it's just not that important. From a statistical standpoint, only an insignificant rounding error's worth of people ever play it past High School.
But discovering a passion? Pursuing your potential? That's the seed I hope to nurture.
I got a subscription to Sports Illustrated because they were giving out a free promotional copy of Madden 12. I wanted that for Logan, anyway. So, it didn't really cost me anything additional to get the magazine for six months. I hoped that having it around the house would encourage him to read. It didn't work. Hahahaa!
When it comes to sports, he's clearly a doer, not a reader. His grades in reading are good, though, as are his grades in school overall.
This is one of those times where I just have to accept that what worked for me isn't necessarily going to work for him.
His travel basketball season is over except for a few tournaments that his coach may sign us up for in the future. I did sign him up to play a spring rec season that will only be six weeks long or so. I want him to have a little fun playing basketball. The nice thing about rec sports is that they're recreational. This will give him a chance to play basketball just for the fun of it.
Also, the other kids on his team will probably include a few of the kids he hangs out with at school just for fun. At least so far, he doesn't seem to hang with the jocks at school. I like his circle of friends, though. They seem to be a group that's exceptionally kind and accepting of each other.
Baseball workouts are going well. Logan looks pretty sharp. At this point, the trick is to try and keep an interest in baseball going, but without overloading him. We did no off-season workouts this year. I'm afraid that any more baseball beyond what's required and he'll be ready to quit. Not a world-ending event. He'll be fine if he choses to, for instance, run track or play lacrosse.
However, it would just be a shame. It's almost as if he doesn't realize how good he is in baseball. Maybe it's just the fact that I wish I'd been talented enough to play High School baseball and just hate to see a kid who is clearly good enough, but who doesn't seem to care all that much about the sport.
Obviously, that's no reason for him to have to play baseball. If he doesn't want to play travel next year, I'm okay with that. This will be his 3rd straight year of travel baseball and the kid is only 10 years old. Above all else, sports is supposed to be fun. I am hopeful that his new team this year will give him a little different, more fun-filled experience. If it doesn't, and he decides to play rec, then so be it.
It's not like he loses the ability to play baseball later if he plays a year or two of rec. It'll hurt his chance of playing High School ball, but he's got solid fundamentals from the coaching he's gotten over the past couple of years. We owe quite a debt to his coach, Dave. If Logan decides to get serious about baseball in his middle school years, he can probably get back on track.
All in all, I just want him to enjoy his High School experience, and I think playing sports, or getting involved in something, is a way to increase the chances of that. Doesn't even have to be sports. If he wants to be on the High School newspaper, then I'm fine with that.
Sort of like the other day when, much to my chagrin, he told me he wanted to be a rapper. He knows I hate rappers. (Okay, I don't hate them, but I sure don't like them.) I told him that was fine. He can do whatever he wants to do. If he wants to be a rapper, I just ask that he try to be a good one.
All in all, it's just sports. Sports are just games. Games are supposed to be fun. Once they stop being fun, it's time to find a new game.
Now, on the other hand, my cousin's husband, Clay, once said something to me akin to, "People will say that sports are not important for kids. But you don't hear them saying that math and english homework aren't important."
I actually agree with his point. I don't think that the physical aspects of the human being are less important than the intellectual. It's all in the same package. If I met, for instance, a person who had devoted their lives to the ballet, I'd find them to be as interesting and complete a person as somebody who studied nuclear physics. Their contributions to society would be different, but significant.
From a purely pragmatic standpoint, in a nation where childhood obesity is just a sorry state of affairs, I think it's important to tell kids they need to get out and move, too.
Show me a kid who half-asses his English homework and I'll say that kid is not necessarily destined for failure. Maybe he gives 100% at something else. We certainly forgive the kids who half-ass it on the athletic fields if they're doing well in their studies.
I'll just throw a different spin on it. I do think that if sports are your thing, you should go for it. Just as if english is your thing you should go for it. If music is your thing, you should go for it. All in all, though, it's not that sports is as important as homework... it's that homework isn't that important, either.
More important than learning what a gerund is, I think it's important that kids learn what it means to give 100% to something. THAT is the learning they need. You can take a kid who gave 100% on the gridiron or soccer pitch and nurture that drive into a successful career later in life. That link may be harder to trace than, say, a kid who loves science as a kid who eventually becomes a great engineer, but I think it's there. A great many successful people cultivated their drive, killer instinct and competitive streak by playing sports when they were young.
Yeah, there were also some dumb jocks in the bunch, just as the kid who excelled in English sometimes becomes an insufferable bore with no social skills. However, by and large, the kids who do well, with passion, when they're young, are better poised for success than kids who never tried hard at anything.
So, that is the life lesson in all this. Sports is supposed to be fun. However, the life lesson is to find something you love, nurture a passion for it, and pursue excellence in it. Playing baseball? I love the game, but it's just not that important. From a statistical standpoint, only an insignificant rounding error's worth of people ever play it past High School.
But discovering a passion? Pursuing your potential? That's the seed I hope to nurture.
Thursday, February 9, 2012
The Woman Who Didn't Reveal her Child's Gender
Okay, as I read a little bit about this person, she just seems to fit what Hugh Grant called a "daft hippie" in the movie "about a boy."
For instance, she says that her experience is based on having observed her mother and father. Her mother was very "sporty" and her father very emotional.
So, she says that's proof that people shouldn't be stereotyped. What's escaping her, entirely, is that the gender-norming society that her mom and dad grew up in (that were probably far more confining than modern day UK), produced two people who were able to be who they wanted to be. Mom was still sporty. Dad was still emotional.
She draws parallels between gender and other arbritrary delineations like astrological signs. Again, really? Any psychologist can tell you that hormones are real and they manifest themselves in very real psychological and physical ways. Doesn't matter what you want to happen... the hormones will have their way.
Not many 10 year olds imagine that they'd like to grow hairy and start doing previously inexplicable things with members of the opposite sex (or same sex if you're part of that demographic.) However, hormones say otherwise.
So, to dismiss gender as nothing more than virgo vs. capricorn is... wow... it's just stupid. Even before puberty, as pretty much any parent's experience will show, kids will start gravitating towards behaviors. There's a reason why boys gravitate towards boy things and girls gravitate towards girl things. It's not because the human race has just been beating it into them generation after generation.
YES, sometimes you get a parent who did beat their kid or whatever, because it was a boy who played with dolls. That was an unusual kid and a parent who didn't want to accept that. That parent needs help. There's nothing wrong with the kid that I can think of.
HOWEVER, in the vast majority of cases, kids just gravitate. And boys TEND to gravitate towards boy things. Girls TEND to graviatate towards girl things. Nothing wrong with them if they're a boy who gravitates towards girl things. We should accept that. What seems to be missing here is an acceptance of boys who gravitate towards boy things and girls who gravitate towards girl things.
Boys who gravitate towards girl things? That's natural and should be nurtured and should not be punished. Okay, I'm fine with that.
But boys who gravitate towards boy things? That's a pity because it's obviously the result of stereotype. That's the idea I can't agree with. You can pick boy things... as long as it's not skulls or camoflage or anything to boy-ish... okay... but you can put on a pink sparkly swimsuit... that's not too girly... This woman literally had a photo of her son in a fairy princess outfit, complete with ballerina skirt... and used it as the family's Christmas photo. But that's okay. Camoflage pants, though? The tools of bigots who are not realizing the harm they're doing to their kids.
As a further indication of the differences between boys and girls, let's examine sports. Yes, in the past, you could argue that girls got the shaft. They didn't have the opportunities and they were given short shrift in the few opportunities that they got.
These days, I can assure you that doesn't happen. Not only is there Title IX, but there are a whole lot of coaches of both gender who are bound and determined to make sure their daughters get the same opportunities that their sons get.
After puberty, forget it. I hope there's nobody so delusional out there that they don't realize that once boys begin becoming men, women, in the aggregate, can't compete with them. Women can try out for the football or baseball team and once in a while, they do, but the differences are so stark that, frankly, you might have, at best, 1 or 2 women playing varsity football in a state the size of Ohio. And we know because it makes the national news.
But even before puberty, the difference in athleticism is absolutely astounding. If people want to say this is due to sociology and psychology, all I can say is, you really haven't been around kids much. The level of play between a 4th grade boys basketball team and a 4th grade girls basketball team is astounding. Absolutely astounding. Same with soccer. They have to start segregating by gender starting in about the first grade.
If not for girl's sports, there would be only a statistically insignificant number of girls in sports. They simply can't compete.
So, the idea that gender might have implications on how well you handle a basketball, but on nothing else? Farfetched, at a minimum.
(And I need to throw out this disclaimer: I'm not disparaging female athletes. Yes, a good female athlete is better at her chosen sport than most males. However, a good female athlete is no match for a comparably good male athlete in the same sport. A mediocre female athlete is no match for a comparably mediocre male athlete.)
The female blogger is a person who, when the baby was born, demanded that nobody tell her the gender and she and her partner didn't look for half an hour.
Okay, there's "Not making a big deal out of something" and then there's making such a big deal out of not-making a big deal that you're just acting crazy.
I mean, somebody saying, "Oh dear god, thank you! He has a penis! I just couldn't have dealt with this if it were a girl..." That's somebody who is seriously unbalanced.
But "I don't care what the gender is. Don't tell me!! La-la-la-I-can't-hear-you-la-la... I don't care. This baby has no gender..." To me, this smacks of the sort of repression that you see when, for instance, a fundamentalist preacher prattles on and on about the evils of homosexuality, then the next day they're getting serviced downtown by a gay hooker.
If you're trying THAT HARD to say that something doesn't matter to you, it matters. In fact, it probably matters more than it should.
Here is the news article that started the stir:
http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Home/Hes-pretty-in-pink-to-make-you-think-20012012.htm
Here is her blog:
http://beckblogbeckblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/truth-about-sasha-laxton-gender-neutral.html
I also don't agree with some of the harsher assessments that people are making about this woman. She's a daft hippie, but a harmless one. She seems to be very intelligent, thoughful and insightful. I don't see how what she's doing or has done is harmful in any way, to her child or anybody else's.
However, I simply disagree that normal gender-based behaviors are the result of social pressure, alone. That's an idea that was tried and discarded in the states back in the 70s. Just as I would never have smacked a doll out of my son's hand, I would also never prohibit him from playing sports, getting dirty and acting... well... like a boy.
For instance, she says that her experience is based on having observed her mother and father. Her mother was very "sporty" and her father very emotional.
So, she says that's proof that people shouldn't be stereotyped. What's escaping her, entirely, is that the gender-norming society that her mom and dad grew up in (that were probably far more confining than modern day UK), produced two people who were able to be who they wanted to be. Mom was still sporty. Dad was still emotional.
She draws parallels between gender and other arbritrary delineations like astrological signs. Again, really? Any psychologist can tell you that hormones are real and they manifest themselves in very real psychological and physical ways. Doesn't matter what you want to happen... the hormones will have their way.
Not many 10 year olds imagine that they'd like to grow hairy and start doing previously inexplicable things with members of the opposite sex (or same sex if you're part of that demographic.) However, hormones say otherwise.
So, to dismiss gender as nothing more than virgo vs. capricorn is... wow... it's just stupid. Even before puberty, as pretty much any parent's experience will show, kids will start gravitating towards behaviors. There's a reason why boys gravitate towards boy things and girls gravitate towards girl things. It's not because the human race has just been beating it into them generation after generation.
YES, sometimes you get a parent who did beat their kid or whatever, because it was a boy who played with dolls. That was an unusual kid and a parent who didn't want to accept that. That parent needs help. There's nothing wrong with the kid that I can think of.
HOWEVER, in the vast majority of cases, kids just gravitate. And boys TEND to gravitate towards boy things. Girls TEND to graviatate towards girl things. Nothing wrong with them if they're a boy who gravitates towards girl things. We should accept that. What seems to be missing here is an acceptance of boys who gravitate towards boy things and girls who gravitate towards girl things.
Boys who gravitate towards girl things? That's natural and should be nurtured and should not be punished. Okay, I'm fine with that.
But boys who gravitate towards boy things? That's a pity because it's obviously the result of stereotype. That's the idea I can't agree with. You can pick boy things... as long as it's not skulls or camoflage or anything to boy-ish... okay... but you can put on a pink sparkly swimsuit... that's not too girly... This woman literally had a photo of her son in a fairy princess outfit, complete with ballerina skirt... and used it as the family's Christmas photo. But that's okay. Camoflage pants, though? The tools of bigots who are not realizing the harm they're doing to their kids.
As a further indication of the differences between boys and girls, let's examine sports. Yes, in the past, you could argue that girls got the shaft. They didn't have the opportunities and they were given short shrift in the few opportunities that they got.
These days, I can assure you that doesn't happen. Not only is there Title IX, but there are a whole lot of coaches of both gender who are bound and determined to make sure their daughters get the same opportunities that their sons get.
After puberty, forget it. I hope there's nobody so delusional out there that they don't realize that once boys begin becoming men, women, in the aggregate, can't compete with them. Women can try out for the football or baseball team and once in a while, they do, but the differences are so stark that, frankly, you might have, at best, 1 or 2 women playing varsity football in a state the size of Ohio. And we know because it makes the national news.
But even before puberty, the difference in athleticism is absolutely astounding. If people want to say this is due to sociology and psychology, all I can say is, you really haven't been around kids much. The level of play between a 4th grade boys basketball team and a 4th grade girls basketball team is astounding. Absolutely astounding. Same with soccer. They have to start segregating by gender starting in about the first grade.
If not for girl's sports, there would be only a statistically insignificant number of girls in sports. They simply can't compete.
So, the idea that gender might have implications on how well you handle a basketball, but on nothing else? Farfetched, at a minimum.
(And I need to throw out this disclaimer: I'm not disparaging female athletes. Yes, a good female athlete is better at her chosen sport than most males. However, a good female athlete is no match for a comparably good male athlete in the same sport. A mediocre female athlete is no match for a comparably mediocre male athlete.)
The female blogger is a person who, when the baby was born, demanded that nobody tell her the gender and she and her partner didn't look for half an hour.
Okay, there's "Not making a big deal out of something" and then there's making such a big deal out of not-making a big deal that you're just acting crazy.
I mean, somebody saying, "Oh dear god, thank you! He has a penis! I just couldn't have dealt with this if it were a girl..." That's somebody who is seriously unbalanced.
But "I don't care what the gender is. Don't tell me!! La-la-la-I-can't-hear-you-la-la... I don't care. This baby has no gender..." To me, this smacks of the sort of repression that you see when, for instance, a fundamentalist preacher prattles on and on about the evils of homosexuality, then the next day they're getting serviced downtown by a gay hooker.
If you're trying THAT HARD to say that something doesn't matter to you, it matters. In fact, it probably matters more than it should.
Here is the news article that started the stir:
http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Home/Hes-pretty-in-pink-to-make-you-think-20012012.htm
Here is her blog:
http://beckblogbeckblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/truth-about-sasha-laxton-gender-neutral.html
I also don't agree with some of the harsher assessments that people are making about this woman. She's a daft hippie, but a harmless one. She seems to be very intelligent, thoughful and insightful. I don't see how what she's doing or has done is harmful in any way, to her child or anybody else's.
However, I simply disagree that normal gender-based behaviors are the result of social pressure, alone. That's an idea that was tried and discarded in the states back in the 70s. Just as I would never have smacked a doll out of my son's hand, I would also never prohibit him from playing sports, getting dirty and acting... well... like a boy.
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