MANIACAL SCREAMING COACHES AND PARENTS RUIN YOUTH SPORT FOR EVERYONE.

what is the purpose of youth sport?  really sit back and ask yourselves that question?  is it to produce Olympic Athletes?  is it to produce professional athletes?  athletes who get scholarships to colleges?  despite what many think the chances are very very slim that your child will end up playing professional sports or even obtaining a college scholarship?  I played soccer at a very high level with many high quality players who played on our Provincial teams and college/university teams and I don’t know one player who “made it” to the big leagues.  So why are we obsessed as a culture with the notion of grooming elite players at the expense of everyone else?  why are kids dropping out of sport at an alarming rate?  why are many kids crying after games and terrified to go to practice for fear of being screamed at and belittled by amateur coaches who do not have the training necessary to inspire?  why are parents allowed to go maniacal on the sidelines screaming and hurling insults consistently throughout the game?  and then these same parents drive home and critique their kids’ “poor play” and “lack of focus” and tell them that they need to “buck up” and “stop whining” and that they should “play harder” etc etc etc.
so, again, I ask “what is the purpose of youth sport?”  It should be a place where kids can gain confidence.  a place where kids can learn the notion of teamwork.  a place where hard work and effort get rewarded. a place where you can learn the notion of adversity.  a place where you can set goals and work towards achieving those goals.  it should also be a place where you have fun and meet other kids and learn sportsmanship.  and YES a place where you can learn specific skills and eventual mastery of a specific skill.  Which will breed confidence.
youth sport should offer up so much for our kids and yet by the age of fourteen (high school), seventy-five per cent of kids have dropped out.  THEY HAVE DROPPED OUT.  should this not alarm anyone?  alarm organizations?  alarm coaches?  alarm parents?  and yet, for most, it doesn’t.  they move on continuing to accept mediocre coaches.  mediocre organizations without a clear purpose.  they continue to accept excessive screaming by the coaches because they, themselves, are excessively screaming on the sidelines.  I remember my daughter playing house league soccer for the first time at the age of six and one of the parents , decked out in his English Football gear, going absolutely berserk because my daughter didn’t move up the field fast enough.  “MOVE UP!!!!  MOVE UP!!!!  WHAT ARE YOU DOING?????”  My wife had to walk over and calmly tell him to stop yelling at our daughter as she has never played before.  His response was, “I wasn’t yelling at her!!!”  But he was still yelling and YES he was yelling at her.  six years old.  house league soccer.  Orangeville house league soccer.  NOT WORLD CUP!!!  but this was and is not an isolated incident.  My daughter quit soccer shortly after and moved onto basketball.  she tried out for the rep team in Orangeville and through hard work and lack of numbers at the time,  she made it.  she was soooooooooo excited.  a huge smile on her face knowing that she was part of a team.  feeling that she belonged to a team.  but then the season started and she had to put up with the maniacal parents again.  screaming at the top of their lungs and taking an extremely fun experience and making it into an extremely stressful experience.  it was no longer about fun and growth but about winning at all costs but not having the proper coaching to inspire the kids.  nor to teach the kids.  a coach who would belittle the kids and demean the kids and never offer words of encouragement.  I once heard him tell the girls that he was going to bash his head against the wall if they missed many more shots!!!!!  INSPIRATION????  not quite.  but the response by the parents was even worse as they made excuses for such abhorrent behaviour. they insisted that that behaviour was good for the kids as it toughened them up.  they ONLY cared about winning some stupid medal at the end of the season.  in fact, they wished our girls would lose all their games during the regular season so we would drop down a division for the playoffs and play easier teams all in the hopes of winning that stupid medal.  No idea that the season was filled with negative and demeaning uninspiring coaching.  no idea that excessive screaming by coaches we entrust to build up our kids confidence was ruining our kids confidence.  ruining our kids fun. no idea that the excessive screaming and belittling was making OUR kid anxiety ridden and fearful to go to practices even for fear of being screamed at.  and this behaviour was acceptable???  what are we teaching our kids? 
I have sat back and witnessed our society fall apart due to complacent school systems, complacent teachers, complacent sports organizations filled with complacent coaches and complacent parents and my daughter is now without basketball.  she is crying as we discuss the problems and then I begin to cry as I realize that we have let her down.  we have let so many kids down.  we continue to go through our robotic lives robotically and then wonder why our kids get into trouble or get average jobs or get pregnant at an early age or end up in therapy with criminal records.  but this does not need to happen.  we need to hold organizations accountable for our kids well being while playing youth sports.  we need to hold coaches accountable and ask them why they want to volunteer their time to coach.  we need to have coaches take courses on motivation and working with kids.  we need to have parents ask themselves why they have put their kids in sport.  we need to have open communication on just what youth sport is about.
But most importantly we need to ask the kids what they LOVE about playing sports.
this should all be about the kids but we are letting our kids down.  and we only have ourselves to blame.
75% of kids drop out of youth sport by the time they enter high school. 
WHY???