Nothing is Given
January 1, 1970
5 min read
When did the values our parents instilled in us become so ambiguous?
“Nothing is given to you.”“You have to earn it.”
When I was finishing my junior year at Ithaca College, I came up with the idea of starting a 7th/8th-grade summer program in my hometown. In 1982, kids in my hometown were not introduced to the great game of lacrosse until 9th grade. At the time, I was working at a local Nathan’s. I began my lacrosse coaching career bringing kids from the Nathan’s Arcade to the lacrosse field for practice. After playing Yorktown in the 1st game of the summer, and taking it on the chin 13-4, my understanding of what was important in teaching kids a sport was formed.
That day, I learned that day that the best athlete does not always win the game. Also, I learned that ALL my players’ needed to be taught the game from the ground up!
After spending the next 4 weeks teaching highly athletic kids the game of lacrosse, we got another crack at the Cornhuskers from Yorktown, this time the score reflected our kid’s incredible improvement. The final score was 12-8 with our boys’ coming out victorious.
Fast Forward to 1991 when I moved my young family to Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y., on the north shore of Long Island. At the time, Long Island was the so-called Hot Bed of Lacrosse.
In Cold Spring Harbor, I became actively involved in the youth sports scene. My coaching and directing experiences included youth soccer, football, basketball and lacrosse.
My involvement was around my own kids. For me, this was an adjustment. It was a much different than my experience coaching the Westchester boys from our local Nathan’s.
Coaching your own child is a rather unusual and uncomfortable process.
Are you too hard on them, are you too easy on them, are you favoring them, are you treating them fairly or unfairly?
I can tell you one thing when coaching your own kids, you always got a corner of your eye on them.
Did they come off the field and need water, are they playing to the best of their abilities, are they okay? When you love someone as much as a parent loves their own child, coaching them takes your complete attention.
It wasn’t until my son was in 5th grade that I finally had my “Ah Ha!” moment.
It was a big game at West Islip on Mother’s Day, and parents from their community were serving our Mom’s Bloody Mary’s & Mimosa’s. It was a hard fought 1-goal game. After our team ended up winning that day, I felt like the worst coach in the world.
Four players’ on our team played very limited minutes that day. I decided to play four 5th graders considerably less than their other teammates that day becuase my entire focus was on winning the game.
Those four Boy’s practiced equally as hard as their other teammates.
Those four Boy’s deserved a better mentor, a better man, a better coach that day.
When I got home, I vowed to myself this has to stop, I called all 4 Boy’s & apologized to the player and their parents and vowed that this will never happen again.
Since that day, I have made sure that all of the teams I am responsible for play their kids as equal as possible. All children deserve to play. All children deserve to experience the joy of competition. All children deserve to be treated just like their friends if they all put in the hard work.
What I have learned over the last 10 years in the youth sports movement, our philosophies of playing all players’ equally is not the philosophies of most youth sport organizations.
Why do the other organizations think winning a youth sport’s game is more important than making sure every player gets equal opportunity?
When you explore the reason Why, you learn a lot about our biggest issues in youth sports TODAY!
When someone wins at something they feel like they are better than the opposition, so is it that important to be better than your opposition. Why can’t we compete and not keep score?
Competition is good for you.
I am sickened by the unscrupulous actions of people in the youth sports world.
Calling a family to recruit their 7th grader to leave their team to play for another team is absolutely disgusting. How can a person look themselves in the mirror and think that is okay.
What does that person think they are accomplishing?
I have been involved in youth sports for 41 years, and it just continues to amaze me of the actions of so-called adults.
I was just told a story of a Mom of a 4th grader, a 8 year old playing youth lacrosse did not play in his youth game, DID NOT PLAY? Can we be that ignorant to allow adults to treat children this way?
Are we gonna help children become good people or breed selfish, abusive adults.
We are not helping the youth by not allowing them to compete and grow under our guidance.
We should not allow adults to treat children this way- I truly believe this is child abuse, this is definitely a form of child abuse.
If parents allow you to mentor and coach their kids you have a responsibility to help them grow as young children into high quality young adults.
