And in the tournament

”Keep an eye on that coach over there, I think he doesn't let everybody play.”

It was a football competition between schools. A few of our classmates had arranged it and we were there to run the competitions of girls aged 10 to 11. We had told the coaches to follow the rules of Fair Play, which meant that everybody should play as much.

The coach had twenty minutes time to give every girl a change to play. Instead two of the girls got to the field only for the last two minutes. That was when the coach realized that they had lost the match. If one of us hadn’t had the guts to go and talk to the man during the game, maybe the two girls hadn’t played at all.

The coach was taking the game ridiculously seriously. He seemed to want to win more than the girls. If the most important thing for the coach is to get the children he trains to win, the children will probably start feeling too much pressure towards the sport they train. In that case children won’t have enough joy from doing sports. (Martin 1993, 34-35.)

Adults’ participation in children’s’ sport is inevitable: they plan their training, put the plan into practice and assess children’s performances. That’s why adults should remember not to highlight winning too much. Every coach should remember that sports are for children and not vice versa! There is no place to set performance anxiety or to demand success in children’s sport. (Nuori Suomi 2012, 5.)

Children don’t usually even play competitively until they go to school. If adults participate too much and have too much authority while coaching, kids may forget how to enjoy the games. Winning becomes everything and playing may develop into something worse. (Auvinen 2004, 24-25.)

Every educator should learn their own values in coaching and realize which values are the ones that should be preferred while coaching children. If you’re in it to win it, you’re not there for the kids.

”Keep an eye on that coach over there, I think he doesn't let everybody play.” That’s what one of my school friends said just before the gold-game. Ironically there were two kinds of opposites of coaches (one of them I already “introduced”) whose team had made their way up to the gold-game. The other coach had said in the beginning of the tournament: “Winning isn't important at all, we just came here to play!”

And they won.

Sources:

Auvinen, P. 2004. Kilpailu lasten ja nuorten urheilussa: Vertailututkimus 11 lajiliiton kilpailujärjestelmistä. Liikuntapedagogiikan pro gradu-tutkielma. Jyväskylän yliopisto. Osoitteessa: https://jyx.jyu.fi/dspace/bitstream/handle/123456789/9598/G0000583.pdf?sequence=1 7.10.2013

Martin, L. 1993. Coaching children in sports: Principles and practise. Spon press. Lontoo, Iso-britannia. Osoitteessa: http://ez.ramk.fi:2143/lib/ramklibrary/docDetail.action?docID=10060750&p00=sports%20coaching 7.10.2013

Nuori Suomi. 2012. Lasten ja nuorten kilpailutoiminnan suositukset. Osoitteessa:  http://www.nuorisuomi.fi/files/ns2/Urheiluseurat_PDF/Kilpailutoiminnansuositukset.pdf 7.10.2013 

Picture: http://leemcgowan.wordpress.com/tag/saturday-morning-soccer/