Perhaps you saw the recent story in the Wall Street Journal about kids playing fewer teams sports. My alter ego, Da Ole Coach, certainly did and here’s my report on what he had to say about the matter, after snorting and slowly shaking his head from side to side:
Team sports worked well until too many parents got into the act.
Get off your butt and be a better example. Even better, get some parents together and storm the board of education.
I began my coaching career when I was 16. A high school football teammate asked me to help with a Pop Warner team. The two of us, both the same age, took the team all the way from Southern California to the final game in Yale Bowl in New Haven, CT. We lost the national championship on Thanksgiving Day 1954 to an all-star team from Pennsylvania.
Not understanding the implications, we named the team the Redondo Christian Crusaders. Our quarterback's name was Jesus Rodriguez. We called him Chuey for short. We beat teams from all over the west coast. Our standard interview line when asked to explain the success of a team with two such inexperienced coaches was, "Hey with a team called the Christian Crusaders and a QB named Jesus, how can we lose?"
We were eventually asked to stop explaining our success in this manner because “it might created some animosity." However, even at our tender age, we knew it would help raise the money we needed to get 35 kids and two coaches all the way to and from the Yale Bowl.
If I were king, I would stop most of the organized youth sports and get back to the playgrounds, open fields and choosing up sides. Kids need to play, not be drilled, yelled at, or put on display in front of anxious parents who are re-living their fantasies. Not to mention the dime store Knute Rocknes who badger, shove kids, and sometimes belittle them because of the natural fear of being knocked down and stepped on.
Throw out the ball, choose up teams (whatever the sport) and let 'em play. Break up the fights, see to it they follow the rules and hand out band-aids as needed. That's it. When there is a dispute, make a ruling, explain why and get back to play.
But Da Ole Coach does worry about the extent to which video games and various digital devices have become such a rage. Today kids can sit on their butts playing all kinds of digital junk and never raise a sweat. Same goes for adults, of course, but we are a culture that likes to fix our kids even though as adults we don't practice what we preach.
So what would I recommend parents do to help their offspring be more active?
Get off your butt and be a better example. Even better, get some parents together and storm the board of education. Physical education is an essential subject. If we ignore that simple truth, we all lose and so does America.