Coaches’ Corner 3

On the subject of competitive vs. recreational

Since I got back to Albuquerque almost a year and a half ago, the most hotly debated subject in the youth soccer community that captured my attention and motivated me to come back into the coaching scene is the one concerning competitiveness. The debate fluctuates between those parents and coaches who want to turn children into soldiers of soccer, and those that prefer not to expose their kids to an atmosphere where they are expected to behave brutally when the game is on the line. The root of this problem, I believe, lies on the warring conceptions of childhood that divide the adults involved, and that also question some of the most ingrained social values in the U.S.A.: competitiveness, individuality, material success, status quo, and winning. To a considerable degree, the question of competitiveness on our youth soccer fields is a questioning of our general values, and also, of the final development of our definition of childhood.

The concept of childhood, according to many historians, anthropologists and sociologists, is of recent birth for us in the Western World. Up until the mid 1800’s, children were seen as chattel, or the property of the parents; who sometimes rented them, sold them or sent them to work at the first factories during the birth of Industrial Capitalism (yes, the first workers of our age were children as young as 4, older children labored up to 16 hours a day, 7 days a week under subhuman conditions). Parents in those days could beat their children mercilessly without much trouble at all. During wars, it was not unusual to see soldiers, not even in their teens yet, in the thick of battle. This situation started to change when a group of wealthy English ladies, now known as Child Savers started to advocate for the rights of children, a movement that developed into the a set of laws that set the path for an educational system, labor laws prohibiting child labor and even a separate justice system.

Of course, these institutional changes were only introduced some one hundred years ago, our laws in regards to children have changed; however, attitudes take longer to shift. This is one of the reasons some people still hold on to parenting and coaching approaches that, to many modern parents, seem utterly primitive. These stern adults mean well in most instances, nevertheless, their style is not only out of tune with the times, but is actually wrong from a scientific point of view. Contemporary scientific research clearly shows that children’s brains are not fully formed until late in their teens, and in some cases, a complete development of the brain is not finished until the mid-twenties. These studies allow us to pass judgment on past coaching techniques and confidently advocate for the institutionalization of more humanistic approaches to the treatment of our youth players.

This point, however, does not resolve the matter completely in favor of the camp which advocates what we presently refer to as recreational soccer. In fact, this viewpoint does not even constitute a valid alternative given the fact that it is merely a reactionary stance to the so called competitive one; for most of the parents that I have talked to about this issue, and who call for a recreational style of coaching, the main goal they seek is to protect their children from what they consider, and sometimes is, verbal and emotional abuse. Following this end, they have opted to support a passive kind of activity were children are overprotected and where they go unchallenged, which they call soccer merely because a soccer ball is used to pass the time. This method is also faulty, it takes away from children the opportunity to challenge, to exert themselves and to explore the limits of their physical capacities. And in turn, it produces children with health problems which we now know will affect them for the rest of their life.

I propose that we create a synthesis of these polar opposites and that we develop a system, here at Clash, where we treat children as children, where we talk to them in a constructive manner, and where we guide them to push themselves more and more each practice in an age and developmentally appropriate fashion. This new style will call for the child to explore the limits of their physical capacity, but will do so not for the purpose of stroking the ego of a coach with an ephemeral victory, but for the exclusive objective of helping the child develop a love for soccer and physical activity that is inherent to the sport. I hope all of you will join us in this endeavor, and perhaps through it, we will help establish a more concise view of childhood, for children here and around the world.