Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
<<most of all the kids love the tournaments

Isn't the issue, not that the tournaments are during the holidays, but
that the Club system requires far too many of them?  My sister's
daughters had tournaments last weekend in Bellingham.  Two weekends
before, as I mentioned, they were in different tournies in Sacramento
and San Diego respectively.  The point is that less is more.  If the
Club system had league play for a reasonable amount of games with ONE
important tournament (along the lines of little league baseball) where
the best team (or an all-star alignment) moves on toward regionals then
nationals, the accomplishments would be far more appreciated by all
involved.  [But then Regan wouldn't have had a book to write.]  

Last Sunday morning, both my 17 year old and 13 year old neices teams
made the semifinals.  My nieces didn't seem to be much enthused. When
my sister told me, I thought, "and I'm supposed to be excited, why?"  I
have no idea if either team won.  It didn't make the paper and it
wasn't worth a phone call.  I did save my sister a hotel bill, though,
great brother that I am. 
  

    
The club system, especially for soccer, sounds like a near-facsimile
of the old Soviet and East German system of athlete development. Regan,
can you tell us a bit how club programs got established in the U.S.? 
  

    
Regan, your book is terrific. I passed my copy along to friends from
suburban Boston whose 12-year-old son is a soccer and baseball player.  
They are visiting Colorado this week, between the end of summer baseball
and the start of school. Both parents have been involved with youth sports
governance and coaching, have strong opinions on the subject, and were
loving your book and this discussion.

(Hi Barb and Skip! Post!)
  

    
If the
Club system had league play for a reasonable amount of games with ONE
important tournament (along the lines of little league baseball)><<

in my admittedly narrow perspective and experience that is just how
the actual leagues work. holiday tourneys are extras that teams sign up
for and pay extra for. Every team we've been on it's been a given that
we do an additional tourney or two usually during thanksgiving week,
christmas week or presidents day/mlk day. The parents get to vote on
which tourney participate in. Maybe we're odd or maybe the soccer and
volleyball worlds are a different culture.
  

    
So sorry I've been out of touch today. I was on a gnarly deadline at
the paper and had to go straight from work to an evening out with
friends. 

Many families living the club life, especially in soccer and
volleyball, spend every Thanksgiving weekend and every Chrhistmas break
at tournaments. So that means no Thanksgivng at home with relatives.
And it often means splitting the family members up, with siblings and
one parent left at home while others are in a motel at the tournament.
And it means before kids get to play with the presents they've gotten
on Christmas, they hit the road on the 26th and don't come home till
New Year's Eve. What about relaxing at hime with the family? Visiting
with relatives? Hanging out with classmates who are off school? Where's
the "break" in Christams break? 

I've had partents tell me of thier frustration that every three-day
weekend of the year is given over to a tournament. "Can't we just have
one for ourselves to do what we want?" a soccer mom asked. Those
holiday weekonds scattered throughout the year allow people to get a
break from their hectic work and school lives, maybe see friends and
extended family, to do other activities like go skiing, go to the
beach. I just think that coaches and team parents should consider
giving back some weekends and vacations to families to spend together. 

This year we had plans to go skiing on the Martin Luther King weekend;
it was the only three-day weekend where we didn't have a sports
conflict. And then my daughter's volleyball coach sends out an email
saying we've been invited to a tournament, and asking  parents if their
daughter could come. We replied that no, we had a ski trip planned.
And I guess one by one everyone else refused to give up their plans for
a tournament we'd never signed up for, and so our team didn't go. But
many parents are intimidated either by the coach or the other parents
and feel they can't say no. So they  let the team cut into their family
life and keep taking more and more chunks. Give 'em an inch and
they'll take a mile.

 I think the demands made on families are often unreasonable. And
unnecessry-- is going to 6 tournaments instead of four really necessary
for the team to stay competitive or improve? I think parents should be
asking that question. Jim Thompson of the Positive Coaching Allaince
told me that when he was a basketball coach, he always thought, "Gee,
if we could just have more practices we'd be so much better. So they'd
add a day. And then he'd think, "Gee, if we added another day, we'd be
so much better." And it just wasn't true, but he was caught up in a
kind of greed about it, wanting more, more, more. His point was that
the demand for more tournaments and more practices is something people
get caught up in, but it isn't necessarily rational. He says athletes
get great vebefits from having time off during training. He's a runner,
and he normally runs every day, but if he skips a day, he finds the
next time he runs he actually feels better because he's had time to
relax and recharge hhis batteries.

And these are children we're talking about. Not professional athletes.
I think the parents shoud ask, are we doing this becasueit's the best
thing for the team stats, or the coache's reputation, or for the
children? Is this the best version of childhood we can give them? 

What I'm advocating for is balance. Yes, sports are great for kids,
but there are other experinces that are great for kids too, like
spending Thanksgiving with Grandma and sleeping in on a Saturday
morning once in a while. A lot of parents will say, "Hey, it's only for
a few years." But they already got to have a childhood. Their kid
didn't. So if he's at a Thanksgiving tournament every year from 8 to
18, eating turkey on the road at Applebee's, that's his whole childhood
without smelling the aroma of the cooking bird wafting from the oven
throughout his own house, or his uncle's or grandparents' house.   

One of the young athletes I inteviewed for my book told me, at teh
ripe old age of 15, "Childhood goes by so fast, you shold get to spend
Thanksgiving with the people you love." 
  

    
Thanks, Lisa, for passing my book along to your friends. I get so amny
grreat emails from sports parents and coaches. In fact the California
Youth Soccer Association invited me to speak at their annual wrokshop
in June. There were over 100 league administrators and directors of
coaching and they gave me the warmest welcome. Some league presidents
came up to me afterward and said they'd bought copies for all their
coaches. I've been invited to speak to the annual workhop of CYO
coaches in the Oakland Diocese in September. It's intersting that even
coaches, who you might expect would be the most hardcore folks, think
things have gotten out of whack. 

A college soccer coach I interviewed said he wished the club teams
wouln't have tournaments on holiday weekends becasuehe misses spending
that time with his family -- he has  wife and three young sons. But he
has to for recruiting. He said he's ften thought about getting the
recuriters to agress not to go, so maybe the clubs would stop
scheduling them that way. 

I think family time is valuable, and it ought to be part of the
equation, part of the agenda. It ought to have a place at the table
during team meetings and discussions of how many tournaments to go to.
And the "If you don't like it , go back to rec," response shouldn't be
the only response. I think there could be reasonable adjustments in the
tournament life that would be better for children and benefit families
without hurting the progress or threatening the success of the
athletes.  
  

    
Is there anything that can or should be done in terms of public policy to
relieve some of the pressure? Or is it just a matter of increasing public
awareness of the problems associated with intense club sports programs?

From the book, I get the impression that things are likely to get worse
before they get better.
  

    
i think as the book's title implies, it's got to be a revolution from
the bleachers. Not a public policy. If enough parents do what Regan
described on the MLK tourney and just say no, the over emphasis on too
many tourneys may lesson. Or if more kids choose to play with their
high school teams instead of club teams the pressure to be more
accommodating may take place. Though I think you're right, paul in that
it is likely to get worse before it gets better. 

In my case, we're doing tryouts for two teams over the next two weeks
and are decidedly not going to take a slot on an A team if  offered.
we'll opt for a B level to keep the commitment just a tad less.  That's
our small contribution to sanity.
  

    
re public policy: There's that Utah example of a state mandating a
break for high school athletes. But of course that doesn't mean that
those player won't be training and competing with club teams durring
that period. 

I've found the argument that gets some parents thinking is the medical
one: that this amount of training and competing is hard on their
bodies and causing overuse injuries. When the excerpt from my book from
the chapter that covered overuse injuries ran in The San Francisco
Chronicle, many coaches and leagues and sports web sites posted the
link on their sites. It struck a chord with them, and with many
parents. 

My point about family time resonates with many parents, especially
moms. Ever tried to plan a kid's birthday party during the fall soccer
season? 

As I've said, many people signed up for this high level of committment
not knowing what it would to to family life. The really appreciated
someone holding a mirror up to that life and encouraging people to
speak up for change and for family time apart form the team, especialy
when they're given the opportunity -- like at a team meeting when
parents vote on whether to go or not go to yet another tournament that
wasn't on the schedule at the beginning of the season. 
  

    
I think it' simportant to remember that this club system with the
constant tournaments has only been in place about 15 years. We invented
it. We can tweak it or change it, particularly given new information
that it can be detrimental to kids physically and psychologically, with
all the added stress and the lack of downtime, which kids need to
develop intellectually and creatively. Before this system took hold and
came to dominate youth sports, somehow gifted athletes still rose to
the top, kids still ade their high school team, still go recruited for
college teams, still got scholarships, still made it to the Olympics
and the pros.  College coasches told me parents have forgotten a basic
fact of sports, that crream rises to the top. They've come to believe
that with the best  training and playing at the highest level of
competition will guarantee them some goal they envision -- a
scholarship, a pro career. But in fatc the club system is a pay-to-play
system, so often the kids on those teams are the ones whose parents
can afford  it, and whose parents are willing to live, and pay for, the
tournament life. Shining stars who play Little League or Pop Warner or
street basketball can still make it to the high school team and
develop as great players. I've seen it over and over again. It's harder
for in  soccer and volleyball to break through the club dominance, but
it still happens. 
  

    
I'm really looking forward to Ethan getting to high school an having
the options for more and different activities. wrestling and track and
drama and math club. heh  The worm turned for me when reading
interviews you had with pros and college level coaches and players who
routinely mention that they didn't find their sport till high school.
when their bodies and interests matured. Ethan loves hockey but likely
won't play much past 15 or 16, this being California and not Toronto. 
I just want him to have fun and keep that body fat down to 0 or less.
  

    
>>>I think it' simportant to remember that this club system with the
constant tournaments has only been in place about 15 years. We
invented
it.<<<

I could believe "we invented it" with regard to club volleyball. It's
more difficult to believe we invented it for soccer. Surely the model
came from somewhere. 
  

    
It's true that parents and kids will have to be the ones to start the
Revolution. Unfortunately, many parents still think they are doing the
absolutely best thing for their kids.  They will fight tooth and nail to
continue these practices.  It's too bad for their kids.
  

    
Steve: We definitely invented this verision of the youth soccer life.
The game was invented in England, and existed here on the East Coast in
the 19th century, played by workers in the textile mills and each new
wave of Euopean immigrants. But soccer didn't start to  catch on
nationally until the mid-1960s, starting in Southern California. The
big boom came in the 1980s, and the club system rose to dominance in
the 1990s. So it is in fact quite a recent phenomenon.

Elsewhere in the world it's played as street ball in pickup games and
on school teams. And in England, the pro teams have soccer academies
that they offer scholarhops to. So it's aboslutely not the same
phenomemnon of parents going into hock to support their kid's soccer
career. If they demonstrate special talent, they will be picked up by a
pro team and groomed from teenagerhood in what amounts to boarding
school with a sports emphasis. The parents don't have to pay, and they
don't run them around to tournaments every weekend. The Europeans look
at our system and laugh. They're applalled that there are no pickup
games. Here, if kids are playing socccer, they're in uniforms and there
are cones and an adult reffing. It's not a casual game here, it's an
organized, formalized activity that costs money. 

Except in the Latino community. They play it as street ball and on
organized teams. And when their rec team goes to a tournament they kick
ass on the fancy club teams with the expensive personal trainers. In
fact, they're so good, clubs in Southern California tried to ban them
from their tournaments!
  

    
What surprised me, when my son started high school last year, was the
emphasis on competition in the performing arts! I knew the marching band
was a point of pride, and the kids sacrifice a big chunk of summer plus 
the whole fall, rehearse every day, etc. We knew that was not for Mark.

But the pile of trophies in the choir room knocked me for a loop. That
plus the strategy to create six "chamber choirs" and "show choirs" filled
with the best singers, then put the leftover kids in a mixed chorale with
almost no guys. The other choirs competed and sang in public, but the
chorale kids were told they weren't balanced enough to perform. (If they
didn't have a freshman show choir, they would have automatically had 12
more guys for the chorale.)

And the show choirs include choreography -- so guess where the heavy girls 
end up.
  

    
Regan slipped. We went to Chihuahua on a mission trip and our kids played
football with the orphans, who play with hand-me-down balls on a concrete
surface, barefoot. No cones, pinnies or whistles, just choose up sides and
play. And they kicked our kids' butts!
  

    
The Europeans look at our system and laugh. They're applalled that
there are no pickup
games. Here, if kids are playing socccer, they're in uniforms and
there
are cones and an adult reffing. It's not a casual game here, it's an
organized, formalized activity that costs money. <<<

This is the larger issue. The modern wave of parents fueled on milk
carton fear of their kids being stolen (more often than not, it's a
custody issue when I child is abducted) are loathe to let their kids
out of the house to just hang out and play. Something that was not only
natural for our generation but required --  who wasn't thrown out of
the house during the summer by their mom and told to go ride your bike
and find some friends to play with? Couple that with the tremendous
competition for and expense of a college education and you have a
perfect cocktail of parental over-management.  I see the club system of
sports as a symptom of the overall malaise of fear-parenting and
social management.
  

    
Yes!
  

    
<lisa>, I did marching band for 3.5 years, and it was great.  A lot of
hard work, and a lot of my summers, but I got a lot out of it.  It was
kinda like civilian JROTC -- I learned to work on a team, to be
managed, to manage, to take individual responsibility for my own
actions and to help others who were having problems.

Uniforms looked better, too.
  

    

   > fear-parenting

Except it's totally irrational if you can think quantitatively about risk.
I see parents who keep kids on a very short leash because of their fear of
that 1 in 1,000,000 chance of an abduction, yet don't seem to worry about
the 1 in 3 probability of obesity or diabetes.

It would be interesting to compare per-mile injury stats for driving v. 
walking to and from local activities. Parents may actually be exposing 
their kids to more risk by picking them up by car, independent of health 
and exercise issues.  
  

    

(NOTE: Offsite readers with questions or comments may have them added to
this thread by sending them to <inkwell@well.com> )
  

    
It would be interesting to compare per-mile injury stats for driving
v. 
walking to and from local activities. Parents may actually be exposing

their kids to more risk by picking them up by car, independent of
health 
and exercise issues. <<<

reason #4,227 that i love the WELL.
  

    
An answer to an unasked, but related question:


<http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07093/774604-51.stm>

Life Support: Let the children go on foot and on bike

Tuesday, April 03, 2007

One sunny afternoon as our children played nearby, I asked a neighbor
at what age she would allow her son to bicycle around the block by
himself.

"I don't think I would ever do that," she replied. "The world is a
very different place now than it was when we were growing up."

[...]

Meanwhile, as rates of child abduction and abuse move down, rates of
Type II diabetes, hypertension and other obesity-related ailments in
children move up. That means not all the candy is coming from
strangers. Which scenario should provoke more panic: the possibility
that your child might become one of the approximately 100 children who
are kidnapped by strangers each year, or one of the country's 58
million overweight adults?

In 1972, 87 percent of children who lived within a mile of school
walked or biked daily; today, just 13 percent of children get to
school under their own power, according to the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention. In a significant parallel, before 1980, only 5
percent of children were obese; today that figure has tripled, says
the CDC.
[...]
  

    
Jet, I agree that band -- like sports -- is a great activity that teaches
all kinds of useful life and social skills. My autistic 15-year-old would
hate it. Right now, the only thing he does voluntarily is play video
games, and all other activities including homework, exercise and
socializing merely impinge on gaming time. 
  

    
(Sorry, didn't know about the autism.   My bad.)