Hope Solo’s failure is an opportunity for every youth sports coach in America.
This weekend, from Ballwin to Brooklyn, young athletes will be taking to the baseball field, hitting the gridiron, diving for digs in volleyball gyms or kicking the soccer ball down the pitch. Their parents will be stalking the sidelines, as will their coaches. And guess what will happen, over and over again?
Words similar to the infamous ones spouted by the now suspended goalkeeper for the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team after an Olympic loss will be uttered by kids and adults all over the land.
“I also think we played a bunch of cowards,†after her team, favored to win the gold medal, lost to Sweden. “The best team did not win today.â€
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The words were widely criticized in American as clearly unsportsmanlike. On Wednesday, the national team suspended Solo from international play for six months.
But guess what?
All over ºüÀêÊÓƵ, and Missouri, and the Olympic-proud U.S. of A., similar words will be spoken by parents and coaches, and athletes, all weekend long.
For years now, I’ve been a devotee of Bob Bigelow’s book “â€.
The book is part analysis — of everything we do wrong in youth sports — and part fix-it manual. Bigelow speaks from a place of authority, as a former professional basketball player for the Sacramento Kings. He knows sports. He knows winning. And he knows we are often doing both of them wrong when it comes to our kids.
Bigelow’s book, much like ºüÀêÊÓƵ Cardinals manager is a challenge to many of the things we do in youth sports today, from the overcoaching, to specializing, to focusing too early on elite teams that cut kids, to paying professional coaches and raising expectations that Johnny is already fighting for that college scholarship when he’s 10 years old.
One of the toughest challenges for me in Bigelow’s book is this: Ask your kids why they play. When my daughter quit soccer in high school, I did just that. Her answer broke my heart. For at least two years she played just because she knew how much I enjoyed coaching her. She wasn’t playing for her own enjoyment, and that’s why she eventually quit.
It’s one reason why Bigelow challenges parents to purposefully miss some of your kids’ games. Let them play for themselves, for their teammates, without constantly looking to the stands for approval or that last pre-at-bat adjustment.
As a coach and a parent, I’ve broken most of the Bigelow rules, even while encouraging others to adhere to them. I coach through the fence, I talk to my kids too much after the game about what just happened when all they want is a hot dog and a slushie.
And last weekend, I was Solo.
I had the best of intentions. A boy walked back to the dugout, upset over a strikeout, as 11-year-olds will be. I grabbed him gently by the shoulders and told him what a great at bat it was, told him to keep his head up, and then I said, “Don’t worry about it, that last pitch was outside.â€
Whether it was or wasn’t isn’t the point.
I gave the kid a reason to blame the umpire, to find excuse in failure, to do something other than accept that failure, and losing, is part of the game.
It’s a huge part of what we teach children when they compete. The thrill of victory is meaningless without the agony of defeat.
Nobody threw a temper tantrum or screamed at the umpire or the parent — though those things happen, plenty. Each year, my friend Doug Abrams, a , compiles a year-end list of the 10 worst things he’s heard about in youth sports, and there are outrageous examples of bad sportsmanship and violence that make Solo’s tired act look tiny in comparison.
But the road to bad sportsmanship and overindulgence in youth sports can start with the tiniest of acts. And that is where the opportunity is in learning from Solo’s mistake. Let the sports pundits debate whether six months was too long or not enough.
If you’re a parent or coach of kids, and you’ll be on a ballfield or court or ice rink this weekend, ask yourself this simple question:
Can you get through an entire game without blaming something that happens to your kid or another kid on your team on somebody else, be they a coach, an umpire or that parent out of earshot?
It’s harder than it looks.