What's Ahead
Parents:
   Overcorrecting
Coaches:
   The Importance of Regular Team    Meetings
Players:
  Using Your Teammates

Maine Youth Sports
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P.O. Box 442
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As much as coaches want to help individual players, their overall responsibility is to the team. Youth coaches often seek compromises that try to reconcile player desires with team needs. However, when there are conflicts, most coaches have to put team needs above player desires. At the youth level, this can be as simple as rotating players to allow equal playing time over a player’s desire to play the entire game. Sometimes these conflicts can be more complex. Areas that often trigger conflict are:

• Playing time
• Position assignments
• Recognitions and reprimands
• Teammate assignments

These issues always have two perspectives - from that of the player (or parent) and from that of the team. The older the players, the more likely it is the coach only focuses on team needs. Parents don’t always like the decisions that coaches make but parents have to understand the different perspectives that motivate these decisions.

When What Parents Say Isn’t What They Want

A typical parent interaction with a coach after a game or practice usually goes something like this:

• Great win!
• You really worked them!
• You annihilated them!
• Your star player is incredible!
• They really got their exercise today!
• Tough loss!
• We’ll get them next time!

If these are the only comments coaches hear, then over time it is easy to understand why youth coaches come to believe that it is all about having tough practices and winning. However, if coaches act to these comments, they are likely to become the object of parent and player frustration. Many parent don’t always know what to say to coaches. Their inexperience with the sport, shyness or fear of causing problems for their child can lead them to make only the most basic and obvious statements. More heartfelt comments such as:

• My child is really enjoying his season.
• My child is bonding with his teammates.
• I really appreciate the sportsmanship my child is learning.
• My child has become a better leader in his classroom based on your coaching.
• Thank you.

are seldom made. Although they are often parents themselves, coaches may have a difficult time judging other parents’ desires from hallway or field conversations. When in doubt, coaches need to seek out parents for more lengthy and heartfelt feedback.

Handling a Loss

If players play long enough they are going to lose their share of games and sometimes lose badly. Handling these losses is actually a more important lesson than learning to handle wins. Players’ reactions to a loss have a huge impact on long term success.

As painful as a loss can be, after a loss players should:

• Focus on their own contribution to the effort and the things they can improve.
• Not blame teammates. Blaming teammates is a sure way to create team dissension which can poison the remainder of a season.
• Learn from the other team. Steal their best ideas and approaches.
• Lose with class. Sportsmanship is easy after a win, but more accurately reflects the person after a loss.
• Not blame coaches or officials. Blaming those in authority implies a lack of power on the part of the players. Yet, coaches and officials weren’t the ones playing the game.
• Ask what they can do to support the team. The more players focus on themselves and the less they focus on the team, the more likely problems will get worse and not better.
• Ask what they can do to support lesser skilled players. By definition, half the players on every team are less talented than the other half.Those players with better skills have a great incentive to see those with lesser skills improve.
• Rally teammates who take the loss harder. On certain teams, positions such as goalie or defensemen may feel they have more responsibility for a loss. Yet every game is a combination of preventing points and getting points. If teams prevent but don’t get, they lose just as surely as the reverse.

Losing a game is a chance for players to work on the things they can control while also trying to positively influence the things they do not control. A positive attitude directed toward each gives a player the best chance of turning a loss into a future win.

Replacing Basketball Shoes Frequently Can Decrease Overuse Injuries Says Sports Medicine President

The average high school basketball player can greatly decrease his incidence of overuse injury by simply replacing his basketball shoes frequently, said Michael Lowe, DPM, President of the American Academy of Podiatric Sports Medicine and team Podiatrist of the Utah Jazz National Basketball Association team for 18 years.

Dr. Lowe made his remarks at a meeting of the American Academy of Podiatric Sports Medicine in Kansas City, Missouri October 11-13-2003.

Dr. Lowe presented a study which showed that the average high school basketball player will utilize only one pair of new basketball shoes per season. The average runner will replace their running shoes every 350-500 miles (or equivalent to 66 hours running). The average high school or college player will easily work out 72 hours per month. The shoes are made of equivalent materials, i.e. sole, and "eva" midsole material which has a deformation fatigue factor that when exceeded, greatly increases stress to the foot, leg and related soft tissue and bone structures. In time, the stress to a certain soft tissue or bone structure will create a fatigue injury which then renders the player unable to participate in his or her sport.

Dr. Lowe recommended that the basketball shoe be changed monthly during the season in practice and during games. This has been found to greatly decrease the rate of injury to professional players, to the point that they will often replace shoe gear every two to three days or games.

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