How Young Athletes and Parents view Winning vs. Fulfillment

Recently, I read a blog by John O’Sullivan that was published in “Coaching, Parenting” called “Winning vs Fulfillment: How Society Teaches Us to Focus on the Wrong Things in Youth Sports” (Mr. O’Sullivan is the founder and CEO of the Changing the Game Project).  The premise of the blog deals with how players feel society judges their success and then what was most important in their lives and what brings them the greatest fulfillment in their everyday pursuits.  The most common answers to how others judged their success were:

·       Winning

·       Championships

·       Individual awards

·       Goals and assists/individual stats, and

·       Public attention/social media followers

While the most common answers to what brings the greatest fulfillment in the athletes everyday pursuits were:

·      Family

·      Friends and teammates

·      Health

·      Being successful/winning

·      Religion/spirituality, and finally

·      My dog

I found these lists very interesting, and it brought me back to my travel soccer coaching days and one day in particular when I was coaching my daughter’s U-10 travel team.  We lost a hard fought 3-2 game when a player on the opposing team took a shot from about 25 yards out and scored what became the winning goal.  The parents were apoplectic and the coaches (my assistant and I) were a bit annoyed because the defense broke down leading to the winning goal (in all fairness, it was a tremendous shot and even without the defense breaking down our goalie would have been hard pressed to make the save).  Now, the game was played on a field next to a church and the church had an area where they had animals that were used for their live nativity scene at Christmas so after the team huddle where the parents were grumbling about the loss (if I remember correctly, that loss dropped us into second place in the standings) and my assistant and I were trying to instill the fact that they didn’t do what we had practiced all week we told the girls to have nice rest of the day and dismissed them.  Well, the first thing all the girls did, my daughter included, was ask their parents if they could go and “see the animals”.  Their parents said yes, and girls giddily ran off to see/pet the animals, and looking back over the years it was probably the way 10-year-old girls should act.

Looking at the two lists was interesting because thinking back to that day the parents were definitely the first list as all they cared about was winning and what their individual child’s stats were while the girls, even though they lost the game, were more interested in seeing the animals and having fun with their friends and were more like the second list, being with their friends and having fun (granted, Mr. O’ Sullivan’s blog article was written about college athletes and we were dealing with 10-year-old girls).

Mr. O’Sullivan’s blog goes on to say that he sees the focus on “the societal scoreboard is becoming more and more prevalent on the youth level.  U-10 teams worried about national rankings.  All-star team and cuts happening at younger and younger ages.”  And he goes on to further state that he sees “walk up songs for tee-ball players going viral on Instagram.” I agree with Mr. O’Sullivan’s assessment as I see Reels on Instagram that show videos of the “walk-up” music at tee ball games with kids dancing and jumping around and not one person, coach/parent/or other adult correcting the behavior.  Now, while I believe that kids need to have fun, there has to be someone in the room who explains to the child what’s appropriate and what’s not.  Finally, Mr. O’Sullivan states that when he speaks to college coaches they state that they have to “teach them that everything they and their parent were taught to value regarding stats, points, all-star recognition and the like doesn’t matter anymore, you have to be part of this family, you have to be selfless.  You have to learn to give, not get.  Our youth sports focus on the societal scoreboard in not preparing our kids for the next level.”  I can see why college coaches have to break young athletes of these habits because no one at the youth level is explaining to the children that this behavior is inappropriate and should be stopped and not only is the behavior not being corrected, it’s being encouraged.

Now, to some I may sound like a curmudgeon who doesn’t want kids to have fun or express themselves and that’s far from the truth. In fact, I’m all about children having fun, enjoying themselves and learning whatever sport they are playing but again, it is my feeling that, in some cases, parents are living vicariously through their children and instead of teaching them the proper way to act or encouraging them to have fun, they are caught up in the winning and losing and whatever stats they have as opposed to encouraging them to have fun and enjoy themselves. As I’ve said many times before….let children be children and have fun while growing up as they’ll have more than enough time to be adults later on in life.