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Editor's Note
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AYSO’s edict to be seen, not heard You could actually hear the kids sweat, and for a coach, that is an awesome thing. Usually, what you hear at a typical youth game is the coach, the coach, and, the coach. A local AYSO league required a “Silent Saturday” recently, to give the soccer players – in my case, boys playing in an under-10 league – a chance to, as the league put it, “play totally on their own.” Coaches were only to give occasional instruction and parents were only to clap. “I was able to relax,” said one of my twins, Nathan, 9. If that isn’t an instruction from the source, I don’t know what is. For about half of the 50 minutes of play, besides an adult or two on the other side of the field, you only heard players running by, panting, and you heard them pleading for passes by saying, “Here, here.” You heard grunts and the sound of the ball off the foot. You heard things you don’t ever hear when your voice gets in the way. In the second half, it grew even quieter. “Taking one week off from any verbal interference may help adults gain perspective on just how loud they’ve been in the past,” the memo to coaches read. And as the Los Angeles Times reported in 2005 when a similar experiment was tried for a weekend in Glendale and La Crescenta: “(It is) part of a growing etiquette experiment that muzzles feisty adults and empowers children to play their sports with minimal interference.” Now…if we could only export this to Little League, where nearly every manager thinks he’s Tommy Lasorda. Sitting in a beach chair and taking notes with my assistant coach helped me plan an upcoming practice. “Need work on throw-ins,” I wrote during the first half. “Attack the ball!” I wrote in the margins later on. (Full disclosure: I still yell – some.) Odd as it may seem, I learned more about my team by being quiet and observing than had I directed and exhorted. Best thing about the day, I learned more about myself. That is, I’m not of much value on game day. I need to remind myself what I have already told my little team: Practices are to learn; games are to play. Make no mistake, that means to lead the warm-ups, make out a lineup that is fair, keep the kids focused with minimal comments, and give quick instructions during breaks in the action. Memo to all coaches: If you can’t get out of the way on game day, stay away from coaching. At long last, we need to learn that it is not about us, it’s about them. Craig Reem Executive Editor |
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