Blog

By Brian Gotta, President of Every Kid Comes Back

I was watching a Little League game recently. These were nine and ten-year-olds. The first baseman had pitched the first three innings. He was a head taller than anyone else on the field but, from what I could see, his playing skills were average. He was rolling balls to the other infielders while the new pitcher warmed up.

The third baseman made a low throw that he couldn’t handle. As it bounced past him to the dugout he lifted his hands above his head as if to say, “What was that?”

Next, the shortstop threw one at his feet. Instead of trying to catch or block it, he jumped out of the way so that it didn’t hit his shins. He said something to the shortstop. I couldn’t hear the words, but his body language told me that he wasn’t happy.

Not one of his coaches seemed to notice. If they did, they made no effort to address it.

Here is what I’d have done:

I’d have walked out to first base. Not after the inning. Not after the game. Immediately, so that the behavior was fresh in his mind. I would have put my arm around him and had the following conversation:

“Hey, Jackson. Have you ever made a bad throw?”

“Yes.”

“Have you ever walked a batter when you were pitching?”

“Yes.”

“And if you made a bad throw, or walked a batter, would you want your teammates yelling at you, saying, ‘What are you doing?!’”

“No.”

“What would you want them to say?”

“’It’s OK.’”

“Is that all?”

“Maybe, ‘get the next one?’”

“Right. So why aren’t you doing that for your teammates?”

(Embarrassed shrug while looking at his cleats).

“Jackson, I want you to be a leader on this team. Do you want to be a leader?”

“Yes.”

“Great. I thought so. Well, leaders don’t criticize their teammates. They encourage them. They build them up. They help each other so that the team succeeds. Does that make sense?”

“Yes.”

“If you help them, they’ll help you, and then we’ll all be better, right?”

“Right.” “OK. Let’s see that leadership from now on.”

In my experience, most kids (not all) are going to respond to this by turning over a new leaf. I’m going to observe them go out of their way to be vocally encouraging, making sure I hear it.

I don’t want to predict that this conversation will stick with this kid for a lifetime and that he will spend the rest of his life encouraging others and building people up instead of tearing them down, but you know what? It might. Maybe no one at home has ever explained to him that when you push people down, you go with them and when you lift people up—you go with them.

He’s going to remember that Coach came out and had that personal discussion with him. And I have to think that my belief in his potential as a leader will make him stand a little taller and feel more like the baseball field is a place he can excel. That will make him want to come back again next season. And all his teammates who are now being inspired after every mistake instead of reprimanded? They’ll be more likely to want to come back again also.

Coaching so that every kid comes back does not mean telling them all they did a great job, no matter what. Coaching so every kid comes back is about helping kids reach their potential—not just on the field—in fact that’s the least of it—but in their interactions with their peers and coaches.

Build up a player’s self-esteem, and even if they can’t catch or kick a ball, you’ll see them again every season.

Today, there is more noise than ever surrounding youth sports. We all recognize there is a problem.

Kids are burning out and quitting.

Parents are spending too much time and money.

Officials and coaches are dropping out because of abuse and harassment.

It’s not fun anymore.

We all see the problem.

Many well-intentioned individuals spend much time and effort elegantly describing it; conferences are being held. Politicians are getting involved. Lists of aspirations have been rolled out.

I have yet to hear a solution.

Maybe I have one. Or at least the closest thing to one.

When it comes to youth sports, I’ve heard it said that “structure drives culture.” The thought process behind this statement is that our broken sports structure encourages and rewards the culture we all know to be toxic.

But in reality, it’s the other way around: Culture drives structure.

Who are the two highest-paid employees at every large university? The head football and basketball coach. School athletic budgets dwarf budgets for science and liberal arts.

High School football stadiums are being built at the cost of sixty to as much as one hundred-twenty million dollars.

Why? Americans love their sports. Sports have an outsized place in our priorities.

Everything in our culture changed with ESPN.

In the early 1980’s ESPN tiptoed into the sports waters, broadcasting such obscure events as Australian rules football, college wrestling and slow-pitch softball. What did they learn? People watched. And people wanted more. In fact, people couldn’t get enough.

Fast forward from then, when having a live game on TV was a special event to now, when you can find ten games at any time of the day, seven days a week.

Sports quickly became the American identity. If you could play a sport, you were special. If you excelled, you were admired.

What does popularity mean in America? It means profit. And everyone started jumping on board.

Do you remember when sneakers were just sneakers? Then Nike came onto the scene. Suddenly, it was OK to spend a week’s pay on a pair of the right shoes.

Athletic apparel. Athletic equipment. Athletic events. Prices skyrocketed because they came with the word, “athletic.”

Premier athletes went from having to work a job in the off season to make ends meet, to earning salaries that made CEO’s blush.

Americans rushed enthusiastically into this brave new world, running as fast as they could in their $300 Reeboks waving their wallets in the air.

Of course, where there is money to be made, there is no line in the sand. People began making money off the professionals. People began making money off collegiate athletes. But that wasn’t enough. We learned we could make money off of high school, middle school and even grade school kids.

It used to be, you played at your community rec league until high school. Then, if you were so inclined, you played for your local high school with the friends you grew up with. Very few played beyond that. Only extreme outliers went on to play in college or the pros.

It used to be, you played all sports. You didn’t “specialize,” because you were just doing it for fun, not for some end goal. You certainly didn’t play anything year-round.

Parents didn’t attend youth games. They dropped their kids off and came back two hours later to pick them up. Now? Oh, they attend all right. Everyone, including the officials, know they’re there.

Now, if your parents have ambitions for you, you play for a travel team when you’re seven. You started taking private lessons when you were six. The rec league is no longer “cool” because if you want to make your high school team, you have to keep up with your peers and play travel or competitive sports. You may end up playing for your local high school, but you may also go to a private school, or a school farther away, for the right opportunity. Whatever it takes.

It has now reached a point where sports have become so important to our society, that when my eight-year-old is a little better athlete than your eight-year-old, I might feel like I’m a little better than you are.

And that feels good.

It’s worth a $400 bat. It’s worth $100/hour private lessons. It’s worth never taking a family vacation, driving eight hours on a Saturday and eight hours back on a Sunday to place fifth in a tournament that means nothing.

And we justify it all by saying, “It’s what they love to do.” Do you know what they’d also love if they didn’t know any better? A practice and couple of rec games per week. A season that ends a few months before another one begins so there’s time to recover, time to relax, time to be a kid.

It’s a matter of priorities. A child who is eight and a little better at reading or math than another eight-year-old might have an advantage that will actually pay dividends in the real world. But we don’t see read-offs on television. We don’t go out onto public fields in front of entire communities and compete in math.

I’ve heard that we need to do something about the age kids can begin playing travel sports. How will we do that exactly? Through legislation? Try to make it illegal to offer competitive sports before a certain age? We all know that isn’t feasible, nor should it be.

The pipe dream is that kids of all ability levels stay in rec sports until puberty. But I have yet to see anyone offer a real path to making this happen. Instead, we’re caught in this cycle, like an arms race, where the stakes keep getting higher at younger ages.

And, because of this intense, high-pressure, succeed-at-all-costs mentality, kids are opting for things they can do instead of sports, like video games, that let them just be kids. No pressure. No parental egos. No being measured unfavorably against their peers. They’re quitting sports at alarming rates.

The organizations that offer these sports have the real power here.

I’m not going to suggest we ask them to change their models. The for-profit clubs are focused on the bottom line. Many volunteer organizations have been operating the same way for so long that change comes slowly, if at all.

There is no training program, certification requirement, or national database that can realistically reach every volunteer coach in every rec league, travel program, and school sport across this country.

No, it needs to be a credo, a movement—a philosophy. It needs to be realistic rather than aspirational.

It needs to be simple.

We’re asking sports organizations to make a commitment that the overriding priority of every coach, whether they be volunteers or professionals is this:

Every Kid Comes Back

I’ll say it again: The primary, if not the sole goal of every coach should be to have every kid come back to play again next season.

It’s so straightforward, it almost seems too obvious. But see if you can shoot holes in it.

Well, Brian, we need to train the coaches so that they’re not just babysitters, but actually teach the game! We need kids to learn and develop!

If they don’t come back next year because they hated it, will they develop then? No, they’re out. We’ve lost them. However, if kids keep returning year-after-year, eventually they’re going to run into good coaching. And they’ll “develop” just by playing.

Organization leaders will make it known that this was mission one for all coaches. “We are rated by how many kids come back again. That’s your first and most important job.”

Organizations will want to be among the ones who made this commitment. Their reputations—maybe even funding—would be tied to it.

Coaches will change, knowing this was how they were evaluated for performance.

Parents will now have a better basis for deciding which club to choose. Some may even prefer high turnover…fine, but many if not most would gravitate toward the clubs that showed proven retention.

Kids will benefit from having coaches who care about the well-being of every kid, not just the four or five stars on the team.

When the focus is on keeping players in the organization, on reducing attrition, there won’t be as much “team-hopping” where kids bounce from one team to another in search of the perfect situation.

Now, the pressure shifts from players to perform, to coaches to retain.

Now, the emphasis is not championships but retention.

Now the dream of kids playing with their friends, building bonds with teammates, having fun in a stable, non-cutthroat environment and playing beyond grade school becomes a reality.

Help Kids Play is launching Every Kid Comes Back (everykidcomesback.org) to begin providing organizations with the tools and motivation they need to spread this message throughout their ranks. We have designed the Every Kid Comes Back pledge which cleanly and simply promotes standards of behavior and philosophy for every head coach, every assistant coach—everyone who touches these children’s lives.

We will have much more to announce in the coming weeks. For now, I hope you’ll all join me in supporting this initiative, because if 100% of our youth coaches try their best to ensure 100% of their players come back again next season, we’ll have nearly 100% of our problems solved.