Youthful Fear and What To Do With It

Young athletes and fear often collide like freight trains racing toward each other on the same track.  All of us face it.  But for the young athlete, it is often horrific.

When our oldest daughter Rachel was five, she started track.  Practice was ok.  She liked running, the new shoes, and a uniform.  Moms and coaches were there in the shadows of an open stadium, with empty bleachers,  lots of encouragement and love.  There was nothing threatening about practice.  Not so on the day of the first track meet.  She got up, got dressed, and started crying.  Her mother and I sat for a long time with her on her bed consoling and dabbing tears.   She told us she was afraid, that she didn’t know if she could do it, that she was scared.   We encouraged her to go, to see what was going on, to give it a try.

Now it was the parents turn to be afraid.  What if she had a negative experience?  What if she never ran again?   What if she wanted to throw rocks at us?   All good questions.  We arrived at the track.  The stadium was full of parents and kids. The infield was covered with the bright uniforms of stretching athletes, high jumpers, track teams, and chatter.  The track was marked with fresh chalk.  The starter carried a pistol.  There were lots of things frightening to a child who had practiced in the shadows of a quiet stadium and did not want to run except maybe home.  So we sat on the grass, watched the runners prepare, and listened to the starter pistol pop in the early morning sunshine.  We just watched.

Her race was called.  “Try it,” I said to her.  “If you don’t like it, we’ll go home.  Give it a try.”   I think that at that moment in time I was more frightened than she.  Such a promise.  She lined up for  the 200 meter, looking at her mother, sister and I, then, at the starter with his huge black starter pistol, his raspy voice, shouting “Ready.”  The gun went off, and the race was on.  Rachel may not have started well.  That pistol was loud and the fans were cheering but she started, she ran, and to everyone’s astonishment . . . she won.   No one was more relieved than I.

At little league tryouts my youngest son, all six years of him, wasn’t sure.   In fact he was absolutely not sure.  There were lots of people.  Names were called over a megaphone for each boy and girl to come up– to throw the ball, to catch it, to swing the bat at a ball pitched and one perched on a T.  But the pitched ball was thrown by a full-grown man that in this case had played ball professionally.   There were ten men with clip boards watching.

It wasn’t the backyard, where everyone loved and adored him.   It was with a hundred parents and seemingly a thousand kids his age, watching . . . him.  His name was called.  He didn’t want to go.  He, like his sister wanted to go home.  So we watched the entire tryout.   He noted that he knew a lot of those kids, that he’d played with them, that they did ok.  He thought about the fact that it was only a ball.  The crowd began to diminish.  No one was carried away in a stretcher.  Finally he decided that he could do it, that it was no big deal.  And it was no big deal.  He’d overcome those fears, all by himself.

We all have fears.   Performance anxiety is real.   It takes time, encouragement, and as little “stress” pressure as possible for young athletes to seize their demons.   Rachel went on to become an all star in track, basketball, and soccer.  She overcame those fears, as did her brother.  Parental and coach patience, together with lots of encouragement are the keys to overcoming fear.  For all of us it is different.  Once the kids know that they “can,”  the parents can relax.  You know they “will.”

It is January–Time for Baseball Sign-ups

I love January. It’s the month before February and February in Southern California, even though it is the rainy season, is when Little League teams are drafted and the first practices of the season are held.   Regardless of calendar declarations to the contrary, that first practice is the real official first  day of Spring.  In the field strawberries are turning red and in the evenings baseball teams practice in  every park.  The rest of the nation may be moribund in winter snow but the grass is green in Ventura, California.

Baseball is a rite of Spring.  It is a rite of passage for every boy and girl. Bubblegum,  sunflower seeds and base hits are what life is all about.  It doesn’t matter whether you are a participant or a proud parent cheering from thirty year old, rusty, rickety stands.  For many those stands supported  your grandparents who long ago  cheered for your mom or dad.

Where should your son or daughter be on March 1, or April 1 if you live in the Northern States?  Baseball practice.   And afterwards?   It’s hot dogs, mustard, and relish and for dessert it’s McDonalds for those soft ice cream cups with nuts, whipped cream, and a spoon.  It is the rite of Spring.  So sign up.  If money is a problem in these recessionary times every little league has scholarship programs.  Just ask.  Baseball is what we live for and remember forever.  It’s spring.  It’s baseball and nothing could be better.

On The Importance Of Remembering Who You Are And What You Want

It has been my observation that a parents’ greatest strengths and greatest single weakness are in remembering who they are and what it is that they want for their youth.

In the course of thirty years I have seen some horrific instances of parental lack of foresight.  In the Montalvo Little League parents actually got into a physical confrontation–fists and elbows, and very loud, filthy talk between coaches, umpires and parents–at third base.   The police came to haul off the offenders and charged them with assault and battery.  I have seen the ramification of a mother getting romantically involved with the general manager of a baseball team, not her husband.  The experience can only be described as devastating.   I coached a set of twins in basketball.  They were beautiful girls except when they were on the court.  Then, with their  parents’ loud, vocal encouragement, their only job was to shoot and pass the ball to one another.  The other three players might as well not have been there.  They could have carried a sack lunch and sat with me on the bench.  I was accused of having a hidden agenda when I required the twins to at least acknowledge the presence of their team members.  These parents did not remember who they were nor what they wanted from their athlete’s team experience.

A story was repeatedly told ad nauseam in the soccer tournaments held in Camarillo, California.  Professionally, being a stickler for the quality of evidence, I admittedly never spoke to the participants, but the tellers of the story were so passionate in the telling that I do not doubt its authenticity.  It was the last match of the tournament for both teams and especially for one player.  He was a Downs Syndrome boy who, by reason of his age, was playing his last game.  He’d never scored a goal in all of those years but had played since he was six, loving and enjoying the companionship of his fellow teammates.  He was simply a happy kid, always on the back defensive line, as far out of the way as his coach could get him.  It was difficult for this man to give his team as much of a chance as he could to win with each player playing at least half a game.  It was truly a difficult, if not impossible, position but he managed it well.

In the last half of the match, one team up four goals to one, something happened that was significant, if nor singularly monumental in the lives of those young men who played on the field that afternoon.  By an arrangement among the players it was planned that the boy should score.  “Send Billy with the ball,”  was whispered among them, and so Billy came with the ball from the far back line, trotting through struggling forward and halfback,  past fullback, the best the league had to offer, and lastly through a diving goalie who’d allowed the fewest goals of all scored against him.   Billy buried that ball in the deepest portions of an open net.

Those young men, all twenty-two of them, on the field that afternoon, gave something worth giving, and  saw something worth remembering.  Billy scored twice.  Yes, the stronger team did win but in a larger, more profound sense they were all winners.  Billy experienced something he would always remember but so did the diving goalie and every player between who contributed something more important then winning to that game.    This was a reflection of wonderful parents who knew what they wanted for their sons.  That afternoon twenty-two athletes knew who their parents had taught them to be.

Coach’s Meeting – Most Important Meeting of All – Part 1

I coached soccer for 18 years, managed little league baseball teams for 17 years, and coached approximately 20 basketball teams.  There is one meeting that’s a must and that leads to success.  Its absence leads to steep walls to climb, additional, multiple hurdles to clear.  It is the coach’s meeting with parents and players.  I have done it both ways: had them and ignored them, and suffered the consequences for not having them.  If I could do it over,  I’d always have them.   This meeting is the first step to a successful season.  The meeting should be held in your home before the first practice.  Both parents and the player need to be present. Stress its importance when you first contact the player and parents.  Here’s what needs to be covered at this meeting:

• Your introduction.  Introduce yourself.  Give your philosophy on coaching; what you hope to achieve.  It shouldn’t be winning.  It should be teaching and learning to play a game.

• The number of practices to be held each week.  This varies with the age of the team you are coaching.

• The location of the practices.

• Who will be present.  Never coach alone.  If you have no assistants to help you, then work out a program for a least one parent to be there at all times.  Why?   If someone is injured, who will take him or her to the emergency room?   Besides, you’ll need at least two people to help you at every practice.  Remember, get the parents involved.   Teach your assistant to coach.   The more involvement you can get, the more you success you’ll experience.

• Dates and times of the practices.  Stress coming to practice on time.  Inform parents and athletes of the consequences of missing practice, or of coming late to practice.  Discussing this will enable parents to work together to get their athletes to practice on time.  Again, the more assistance you get the greater opportunity for success.   If a player is not going to be at practice, require that the player, and not the parent, call to inform you of the situation.  Remember, you are teaching player responsibility not parental responsibility.  Practices are not practices unless everyone is present.  Stress this.

There’s more to discuss.  Follow me to Part 2.