Almost 14 years since my last public blog post, I somehow stumbled upon my last two unfinished drafts.
Remember when so many of our friends were writing interesting blogs? Is anyone even writing full articles anymore? Heck, are there even full paragraphs being published by us normal folks? Shoot, I barely see complete sentences on the major social media platforms. I mean, today's character-counting tweet culture has resorted to shorthand that barely includes complete words, or even letters. The emoji comms style feels like we have come full circle - I guess the hieroglyphic cave drawings (like the vinyl record) was bound to make a major comeback!
Well - I guess that story turned out ok.... Even though it took 12 games to finally get a "W" on the board - the focus on fundamentals paid off in the league championship game, when this group of youngster pulled the upset win over the previously unbeaten (and seemingly unbeatable) top team in the league.
This week, I am reaching out to some of my circa 2008 blogging friends to challenge them to get back in the saddle. #bringbloggingback Maybe I can even get Sean Tevis to repost all of his highly entertaining and authentic content that got whitewashed when the political strategists took over his image in 2008. (I wonder if Sean will even respond to my phone calls: Sean DID answer the call and says he is IN!). Other challenge call-outs go to my dear high school friend and career freelance writer Kim Olson and serial entrepreneur Kimberly Corbitt.
I will leave it to Sean to post the official blogger redux challenge: For now, I am just going to ease into it and knock the dust off of this draft and try to figure out where I was going with all of this.... having spent countless hours on the sidelines of youth sports as a volunteer coach and photographer I have more observations, reflections and strong opinions than I would ever try to fit in one post, so let's just go back and see what November, 2009 Tom had to say about things:
Anyone who knew me growing up could tell you that I was never an average-sized kid. (OK, so maybe I'm not average-sized now either). Growing up in Texas in the '70s, any kid my size was supposed to play football. Add to that the fact that my father would don his black and white striped outfit every Friday night to officiate a major Texas high school game (with me frequently watching from the sidelines), Saturdays were spent watching the Southwest Conference regional game of the week and Sundays were all about the Houston Oilers (Dad had season tickets up until their defection to Tennessee).
So with all of this, you would expect that I would have been out there tearing up the gridiron by the time I was 6 years old, right? If I had any say in it I would - but youth sports were strictly out until we became old enough for organized school-sponsored activities, save for one season of baseball as a 7 year-old and a bit of hockey at 6, and a couple of seasons of YMCA swimming competitions. These notable exceptions were solely a result of my father's personal knowledge and trust of the individual (volunteer-dad) coaches.
As you can imagine, no over-sized 8 year old could ever appreciate the insight of a father who had spent years officiating youth sports, exposed to the inappropriate nature of untrained volunteers who showed little interest in adolescent development and would do whatever it took to get another piece of hardware for the trophy case. Of course, back in those days, many dad-coaches would teach their kids to put their head down and use their helmet as a weapon. (It wasn't until I was in middle school that the rules were changed to make 'spearing' illegal.)
Today, in the 21st century, we are much more enlightened than we were in those barbaric 70's. Participation in youth sports is commonplace and ordinary. There are multi-tiered leagues with de-emphasis on scores and winning and a greater focus on developing life-long habits of physical activity and recreational sport. Of course, that's the theory, isn't it? But it doesn't always work out quite that way, does it?
Personally, I believe in having multi-tiered options for all sport. I've come to appreciate the value of this through coaching hockey. At the Kansas City Stars organization in Overland Park Kansas, for example, you could have three different levels of competition for 9 and 10 year-olds. Two highly competitive travel teams ('AA' and 'A') and 3 to 4 recreational house teams that play against each other and against house teams from other rinks. If done right, this system creates a league based on parity and good, competitive contests with kids of similar skill level and experience. [We'll avoid the debate about the appropriateness of dragging 9 year-olds all over the country for elite-level, high stress competition - others have opined at length on this topic...] But, even with the parity and level playing field, how do you get a 10 year old to put "fun" before "winning". Let's face it, even in the 6 year old soccer games where there is no scoreboard and not published results, every kid walking off the field can tell you how many goals each team scored. The adolescent mind doesn't seem to accept the idea of an athletic event without a 'winner' and a 'loser'.
Here's an approach I'm using with the Portland Junior Hawks Squirt team (9 and 10 year olds). First of all, every time the team takes the ice, they are given an objective. It may be to
win most every face-off, or to have at least one good cross-ice pass per shift, or to have less than 40 turnovers, or to get at least 25 shots on goal, or to give up no power play goals. Ultimately, the objective of hockey is to score more goals than your opponent, but, with a 30-odd game season, we have a long time before we need to put all of our focus on the scoreboard. I told the team that, in order to get more points on the scoreboard and win the war, you have to start winning the individual battles first. The fun part is; the kids are buying in to it and seeing the results (of course, it's only 7 games into the season, with a LOT of hockey left to play].
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