Thirty Million children are involved in youth sports in North America, under the direction of 4.5 million coaches and 1.5 million administrators. When these programs place an inordinate emphasis on competition and winning they become detrimental. Most youth sport coach's lack even rudimentary knowledge of the emotional, psychological and social needs of children or young adults. Some of the rules that are emphasized sound good - teamwork, sacrifice for the common good, never giving up, giving 110 percent of yourself - and in the hands of sensitive, knowledgeable, well-trained coaches they can be used to teach youth valuable habits. But such coaches are far from the rule. Examples abound of coaches teaching youth the wrong things, in many cases without even knowing it, to the point of being a serious social problem.

Instead of focusing on enjoying sports, reaping physical benefits, and instilling a lifelong involvement in athletics, too many of our sports programs are geared exclusively toward winning (and coincidentally destroying bodies and missing out on the fun). Something has been lost in youth sports. There has been a dramatic shift in youth sports away from a sense of enjoyment, physical fitness and sportsmanship to intense competition. In our attempts to create a better program for our youth, we‚ve used an 'adult' or 'professional' model for these programs, creating a winning-isn‚t-everything-it‚s-the-only-thing' attitude. Am I wrong in these assumptions? Our sport has certainly grown to the point where more girls are participating in club softball than ever before. I hear many parents and coaches praising the fact there are more travel teams than ever. Yes there are more teams, but how many of these teams have only 9 ˆ 10 girls on the team. How many use the same pitcher all day, the same catcher all day, regardless of the number of games, the temperature or humidity? A large portion of these girls are playing travel ball because their park district program has been destroyed by travel teams. The largest increase in travel teams has come from dads running around chasing kids to play on his travel team for the sole purpose of showcasing his "star daughter and two or three of her friends. So many of these girls just want to play a couple of times a weeks during the summer and have fun. Even if they play park district, they must travel to other towns to find another park district team to play. Sometime they end up playing the same two or three teams over and over again. Can somebody tell me what is wrong with playing softball just for the fun of it? Why does everyone have to be „all they can be? Will they ever make it through college without the almighty scholarship? Please, there is nothing wrong with being competitive or doing what is needed to play at the highest level. I coached at that level for 15 years and had a wonderful experience doing it. Problem is I think we forgot not everyone wants to play at that level. In our effort to create the best programs we could we destroyed the lesser programs who‚s only offer was to have fun and make friends. We looked down our noses at rules requiring everyone to play in every game. We emphatically stated playing time is earned, not given. While that policy drove good players to work harder, it also destroyed as many who didn‚t have talent to compete. We require our players sacrifice their entire summer for travel ball. No big deal when you love the sport. Tournaments now start in April or early May and go through September. Teams have practices indoors during the winter months. Most of my players enjoyed this and worked hard. Most of them lived their dream of playing college softball. But what if you don‚t want to play college softball? Think about this. Did you think that kids would say "winning is everything"? Think again. Most kids don‚t think winning is all that important. Only 7% of girls said coaches should be most concerned with winning. It sounds like kids think too much importance is given to winning at all costs. Some adults are starting to think that changes are needed in youth sports. Why? Because as youth sports have become more intense and competitive, it has put a lot of pressure on kids. When sports become really competitive, kids who are just average but like to play might not make the team, or they might spend all the games on the bench. That's no fun. Ninty Three per cent of girls participating don‚t think winning is that important. If this is true, why are they playing on club teams? Why can‚t they just play and have fun? Why do they need $500 titanium bats, $400 worth of uniforms and jackets, year round training? Travel teams were started for those who wanted to play at a higher level and play in college. When I started coaching, there were four travel teams in the general suburban area we lived in. At last check, there were over 30 teams drawing from the same area. Our town had four park district teams for ages 13 ˆ 15.They now have none. Where are those girls suppose to play? There about ten association governing bodies for softball. We have the almighty ASA, NFA, AFA, USSSA, and ISF and so on and so on. These organizations need to address this problem if they are truly there for the benefit of the girl‚s and not for the dollar. They should all get together and take a look at the Class „B‰ team classification. As I understand (I could be wrong) this division was started for teams that did not compete at such a competitive level as the A level or the Gold level. If this is truly their intent the following rules could be instituted and strictly enforced: 1. All players must be from the same town. The only allowable exception would be for girls living in a bordering town that does not have a team. Each team must roster at least 13 ˆ 15 players. 2. Each team submits an official roster to all governing bodies. No player can change teams during the season, which should be June and July, unless the team she is roster to folds. This would eliminate higher level travel teams from recruiting player from the team for that season. 3. Pitchers would be allowed to pitch no more than four innings per game, no exceptions. Same for catchers. All players must play at least two innings and have at least one at-bat. Younger age levels could allow only one time through the line-up per inning to keep games moving. 4. No national championship, regional championship or any other governing body money- grabbing championship, just an end-of-the-season friendship tournament for all teams registered in the same district wanting to participate. Maybe there could be control over limiting travel to regional tournaments and limit the participation in weekend excursions to two or three. There could also be a limit on registration fee amount to allow for families that don‚t have $1,000.00 plus in disposable funds for softball. Any additional fund raising for uniforms, equipment bags, team jackets and other truly unnecessary thing could only be done by the governing body or coaches, not the players families. I think the girls would survive just fine with t-shirts or one uniform instead of three ˆ four combination uniforms, jackets seldom worn when it‚s 90 degrees or travel bags that are so big they need to have wheels. The focus for these kids should be instructional and fun, not drill sergeant competitiveness. That is what Gold or A is all about. I would like to see more kids participate and move away from sitting in front of the computer or X-box. We are all aware of the obesity problem plaguing the young people of today. A part this from eating the wrong food, the other is from sitting on their rear-end too much. Make it fun and they will look forward to doing it. The video game and the internet became popular because it is more enjoyable than what they were doing before. Youth sports can be fun if we allow it to be. A good rule of thumb for deciding the best level for your child is to listen to them. If getting them to go to practices, another game, or tournament is a constant conflict, they are telling you something. If they complain about not seeing non-sports friends, missing a lot of social or family events, they are telling you something. If they would rather sit on the bench and say nothing or quit playing at a young age for no clear reason, they are telling you something. Ask them if they would rather play in the environment I have suggested and see what their response is. They may say they don‚t want to play anymore or they might just tell you they would rather play and just have fun. Not everyone needs dust-collecting trophies or medals to tell them how much fun they had playing. Let them make the choice, but the choice must be available to them. I don‚t think it really is right now. Starting writing letter and make your concerns or feeling known. Maybe the governing bodies will listen. If they don‚t listen, maybe enough people will start a new governing body to accommodate the demand. If you have this desire to push your kid to be the best they can be, do it in education, not athletics. It will serve them better through the rest of their lives. Take the computer out of the bedroom and sometime try telling them to shut it off and go outside and find something to do. Kids should not have to be taught how to have fun. They also do not need to be told something is fun. Their face will tell you what is fun and what is not. Let‚s provide a good program for everyone who wants to play, no matter the level of intensity or competition. All of us will be better off if we can do that. Our goal should be to let the kids be kids and enjoy as much of their youth as possible. It goes by fast.

Just my opinion, Wargo!