The State of Youth Sports

Week 4

What is the state of youth sports in your area? What do you think of the people in charge of teaching your kids about sports, how to compete and about good sportsmanship?

From recent articles in the Oregonian and from reading posts on Oregonlive, I find that the state of youth sports in the Northwest varies from area to area but it seems that only a few are able to find a balance between the two extremes. One extreme is the "go for broke, win at all costs" attitude that is within some organizations and the other extreme is the "pat everyone on the back and tell them what a good job they are doing, give varsity letters out to all regardless of ability or what their actual accomplishments are" that is happening in other organizations.

Within single communities the same comparisons can be seen from youngest of teams and coaches to the varsity levels as well.

What seems to be lost in all this is that sports is a means to an end. And the end is not what most coaches and parents think it is.

Sports are a character study in how to succeed in life and learn to work with others within a system to achieve a common goal. No single player on any team can accomplish a team goal without the help and input from their teammates and coaches. Even in so called "Individual Sports" like Golf, Tennis. A player cannot achieve his goal without the help and support of another individual at some point along his journey.

Sport is meant to be a competition. The purpose of competition is to WIN by bettering your skills to the point where the team can succeed in overcoming the opposition. The individuals who can best achieve those ends are the ones who become members of the team. The goal of the team is to continue to work to improve to the level necessary to WIN. The goal of each team member is to know their role within the team and to continually strive to improve their abilities for the betterment of the team.

Teams that are not endorsing these philosophies are teaching their players the wrong things. Sports competition is only a small part of a person’s life. Life is the ultimate journey that all of us take. Learning life skills that will help you deal with conflict, competition, failure and success are keys to making productive individuals who will be asset to our community and our world.

So, back to the first point of this article, what is the state of youth sports? Are the coaches and administrators in your area working to make successful individuals who know how to overcome obstacles and opposition, to work with others to achieve a common goal? Are the coaches of your teams so bent on winning at all costs that they are overlooking the damage they are causing to the self confidence of the individual? Are the coaches and administrators in your area emphasizing only fun and not teaching the important life skills mentioned above to better the person and the player? Is winning being written off because they want all to feel good about themselves without having done anything to achieve it? These are the extremes I speak of. Striving to win and be successful should be the goal for everyone in all things. But it is the journey one takes to achieve that goal that makes them the better person, not the achieving of the goal.

We have to teach our youth that life is not easy. Life takes work, life takes time, and life takes effort to be successful. When you think you have done enough to be successful is when you should do more. You can never stop in your effort to be the best you can be, it takes continuing effort.

In life you cannot just step into a job and be successful at it without the training, skills and confidence necessary to do the task. In marriage you cannot just expect things to always go the way you want them to go, it takes constant effort. In life you won't win every argument but you can win many more then others if you prepare properly.

If winning was not important we would not keep score. Like it or not, we live in a world that keeps score. But sometimes the scoreboard overshadows the real importance of sports. The betterment of the individual.