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8 Myths We Need to Stop Believing For Kids to Enjoy Youth Sports
There is one definition of success. Success is not a black and white concept and it is certainly not synonymous with winning.
There is one path to success. Just as it is not a black and white concept, success does not have one route of travel.
If a child struggles with a sport at the beginning stages, she’s not likely to ever be very good at it. The early years are about developing basic skills of athleticism. Some kids, especially those who are physically smaller or younger than their peers, might take longer to get develop those basic skills but that does not mean that they won’t thrive in time.
Coaches should pay more attention to kids who have more talent. Talent identification is largely a self-fulfilling prophecy, known as the Pygmalion effect. Coaches who select talent and coach only those kids also inadvertently demotivate the other kids.
Happiness comes from winning. Not according to the kids themselves. In a very comprehensive survey of youth athletes on 81 traits of “fun” in sports “winning” ranked forty eighth.
The best way to learn the game is to play it. Not really. The best way to learn a game is to develop the skills and strategies to play it. While playing can be fun (and fun is important), for example, trying to play ice hockey when you cannot skate well or shoot a puck from a static position is likely to lead to frustration.
It’s not possible to love a sport that you are not great at. Walk into any Y basketball court on a weekend, golf course or hit a beach with volleyball nets and you will see dozens of people enjoying a sport they are not great at.
It’s a waste of time to do a sport that you are not great at. It’s a waste of time not to do something you enjoy and that is good for your physical development and character.
We deal with parents concerned with instilling competition and winning in their 6 year olds. How important it is to play games. I want to make t shirts with this info and hand out to our participants. I have worked with professional and collegiate sports teams and my biggest take away was how much time is spent on basic skills and fundamentals at the highest levels. The most enlightening example was from a conversation with a former NBA and University of Kentucky Basketball player. He asked my “where do you think I spent the most time on fundamentals?” As I fumbled for the answer, he laughed and said, “in the NBA!”
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