Wednesday, March 7, 2007

JT's Blog - Myths 9 and 10 - March 7

JT's Blog will be a weekly addition to the US Youth Soccer Blog. John Thomas "JT" is the Assistant Director of Coaching Education for US Youth Soccer.

9) Kids will be happy as long as they are part of a winning team.

I wish was true. Most kids prefer to play and play a lot. At the young age Under-8 and younger they really don’t care about being on a losing or not-so-good team, just as long as they’re playing in the games rather than setting all the time while all the faster or big kids play so they can win. They don’t even want to play sparingly on a championship team. Kids instinctively know that the fun of sport is in the actual playing, not in always being on the sidelines and applauding their teammates.

10) The vast majority of Moms and Dads tend to be honest and fairly objective about their child’s ability in sports.

Wouldn’t this be a wonderful thing if it’s was true but if we are speaking of the truth – we really aren’t. Most parents see their child as being better looking, smarter than the other kids, I know my kid is and certainly at least as athletically talented, if not more so, than the others players.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I would have to totally agree with you on this subject! I am currently the president of my local community association and our community is bursting at it's seams with growth. We have two elementary schools that are overcrowded with children there are well over 1600 children. In our community we only have 301 children playing soccer. Looking at the numbers were shocking to me, so as our community board we were worried that not enough children are physically involved, and our goal was to have our community more physically active. As we looked more into why they were not involved, we had many parents complain that it wasn't fun for their children. They dropped out because of a "mega league" in the valley did not emphasis that this was suppose to be fun. So we have begun the process of building our own club for our community. Many parents have voiced to us that they are finally grateful that we are going to emphasis the fun that this recreational program is intended for. The "mega league" is very upset that we are creating a new club and have been trying everything they could do in order to stop us from going forward. We held our community meeting last night and they appeared telling us that we can't do this club because it is not about the fun but emphasising the importance of the competition. Today I logged on to here for the first time thinking that maybe there is something that I am missing out on that soccer isn't suppose to be fun for the kids. Your comments have helped me feel better as a parent and community leader that the importance for young children is the ability to have fun. Thank you!