The Cross Over Movement Blog

I started this as one of my columns for a Los Angeles-area magazine, but events of the past week prompted me to write for a wider audience.

My season ended without a play-off appearance. Did we deserve to make the play-offs? By our record, it would be had to argue we were a play-off team. However, considering we beat five play-off teams and all but three games during our season were against play-off teams (including 5 games against play-off teams in higher divisions), it was tough to understand the reasoning. In the final week of the season, we beat a play-off team on the road by 18 points. Nobody ever gave me an answer why we did not make the play-offs, as the Athletic Director gave me several different answers, none of which made sense.

Despite not making the play-offs, I think the girls enjoyed their season. In the previous year, they had a much better record, but every time they started to speak about the previous season, nothing good was said. At the beginning of the season, coaching this team was difficult for me. I make my livng through basketball, while these girls approach it as a hobby, as just another extracurricular activity. We had girls on the varsity, upper classmen, who had not played basketball on a team since middle school. It was such a different environment then my upbringing or previous coaching jobs.

After the season, I spoke to a Boys & Girls Club about its Middle School program. In the meeting, the Athletic Director spoke about “competition,” “cutting players” and “winning.” I left the meeting thinking there was something wrong with the picture. If middle school sports at a Boys & Girls Club are that cutthroat, where can a recreational player play for fun? He talked effusively of a kid who played in the Boys & Girls Club as an 8th grader who had earned a Division I scholarship and said that was the goal. Is that the mission of the B&GC’s now? To produce Division I athletes?

After the meeting, I realized the girls I coached had the right attitude toward sports. They played hard on the floor. We always started practice on time and I never questioned their effort. However, they were not consumed by results. They enjoyed their teammates - I have never been associated with a team where every player got along with one another - they enjoyed the challenge of improving, they enjoyed the competition and I think they liked the break from their stressful school schedules to just play. Isn’t that why we as a society started sports in the first place?

The B&GC experience started me questioing the purpose of youth sports. However, several emails and experiences over the last two weeks made me question it even further. I have spoken to several players I have trained over the years and almost unanimously, the players could not wait for the season to be over because they did not like the coach, their teammates or the experience. Scholarship players wanting to transfer; non-scholarship players wanting to quit; hopeful scholarship recipients just waiting for high school to end so AAU can start, even though they complained about their AAU experience all summer last year; young kids avoiding AAU because of the coaches or lack of practice time. It seems like nobody even enjoys playing anymore. And, if nobody enjoys it, what is the point? Why even have youth sports?

The NY Times has an article which interviews a soccer family from back East who has one son on scholarship at Villanova and one son who got cut at his university:

Their father, Chris Taylor, said he once calculated what he spent on the boys’ soccer careers.

“Ten thousand per kid per year is not an unreasonable estimate,” he said. “But we never looked at it as a financial transaction. You are misguided if you do it for that reason. You cannot recoup what you put in if you think of it that way. It was their passion — still is — and we wanted to indulge that.

“So what if we didn’t take vacations for a few years.”

Pat Taylor, who started playing soccer at 4, said it took him about a month to accept that his dream of playing varsity soccer on scholarship in college would not happen. He looks back fondly on his youth career but also wishes he knew at the start what he knows now about the process.

“The whole thing really is a crapshoot, but no one ever says that out loud,” he said. “On every team I played on, every single person there thought for sure that they would play in college. I thought so, too. Just by the numbers, it’s completely unrealistic.

“And if I had it to do over, I would have skipped a practice every now and then to go to a concert or a movie with my friends. I missed out on a lot of things for soccer. I wish I could have some of that time back.”

Basketball is no different. I did a research paper on AAU in 2004 and most of the parents I interviewed said they spent anywhere from $2000 - $15,000 a year on their daughter’s basketball experience, depending on whether you count the travel, the parent’s travel as chaperones, gas, mileage driving to practice and games, etc.

All this time and money to pursue a scholarship that may or may not be there in an environment which many do not enjoy. Why?

When the high school season started, I thought something was wrong with my team because they did not live and die with basketball. But, I’ve realized, they are just more well-adjusted than most.

After every play-off game, parents flooded the message boards to complain about their coaches. I get emails from parents complaining about coaches and asking me what to do. Now, in California, the popular public vs. private dominates the discussion. Since Joe Public School lost to Peter Private School, we need to separate the two. However, for every dominant private school program like Mater Dei or Archbishop Mitty, there is a public school program like Long Beach Poly or Dominguez. Sacramento High School is a public school, but few of its players reside in its immediate district. But, everyone has to complain about something, so people jump at the easy stats which say that 14 of 20 schools competing for CIF State Championships are private schools, even though 8 of those schools are DIV and DV schools which have such small enrollments very few public schools participate in these divisions. I believe DV in San Diego has one public school.

I spoke at length with Jerry Powell of Basketball Results and he talked about trainers and their egos. It’s true. Most basketball trainers are about the money. They name drop like no other. I remember watching some trainers in Los Angeles circa 2001. One guy was literally laying down on the court as he “worked out” a kid. Another guy had three kids going at once, different ages and abilities, and he completely ignored two of the kids and spent half the time on his cell phone. There are guys who say they train NBA guys and they are glorified rebounders. But, because a kid has to get ahead, mom or dad signs up for the hottest trainer in town.

Coaches are the same. I missed the league meeting at the end of the year because of a work commitment. I emailed my all-league nominations four days in advance of the meeting. The coaches in the league omitted my team. The AD in charge said there was nobody to defend my players. Are we that petty? I had one player who was a definite 1st Team All-League performer. She was arguably the 2nd best player in the league. Nobody in the league was asked to do more for her team and nobody played harder. Somehow the other teams could not remember her? In our final league game, we nearly shut out an opponent for the entire first half, while playing everyone on my roster, yet that team, which did not win a game in league all season, gets a representative on the all-league team? These coaches and the entire process is a joke.

I know college coaches who basically don’t care anymore and are just occupying their job until they can comfortably retire. They don’t care that they wear out their players (in one instance, I saw two players who I hadn’t seen in four years. I cannot believe how much worse they have gotten since they got to the college level. Unbelievable). They don’t care if their players hate their experience. They only care that they last long enough to retire comfortably. This is what awaits the player who succeeds in the youth system and earns the college scholarship. I got an email from a parent today complaining about his daughter’s high school coach; the last line was, “She’s going to love her college coach.” My response was, “Um, don’t be so sure.” As the NY Times article says:

The chase for a scholarship has another side that is rarely discussed. Although those athletes who receive athletic aid are viewed as the ultimate winners, they typically find the demands on their time, minds and bodies in college even more taxing than the long journey to get there.

There are 6 a.m. weight-lifting sessions, exhausting practices, team meetings, study halls and long trips to games. Their varsity commitments often limit the courses they can take. Athletes also share a frustrating feeling of estrangement from the rest of the student body, which views them as the privileged ones. In this setting, it is not uncommon for first- and second-year athletes to relinquish their scholarships.

“Kids who have worked their whole life trying to get a scholarship think the hard part is over when they get the college money,” said Tim Poydenis, a senior at Villanova receiving $3,000 a year to play baseball. “They don’t know that it’s a whole new monster when you get here. Yes, all the hard work paid off. And now you have to work harder.”

Last week, a junior college I know had two teams in a row forfeit games. One junior college team did not want to drive two hours for a game because it knew it was going to lose. The other did not have enough players eligible (I have watched this coach for five years and have never seen her out recruiting and she has a total ambivalence toward her program; another coach just cashing the checks).

When did sports get so competitive that it stopped being about the sport? When did it stop being about the kids? Youth sports is run by adults for adults. Kids are like real life fantasy players for adult coaches and parents. I saw part of Kicking and Screaming last night. The grandpa dumps his own grandson to improve his chances of winning. It seems ridiculous, but is it? He says to his son, “For kids between the age of 10 and 11 who live between X Street and Y Street and who are free on Tuesdays and Saturdays, this is the Big Time!”

And, that’s the attitude that prevails. Coaches want to win so bad, it does not matter who they hurt. Parents want their kids to be successful, so they buy into the system, hire the trainers, transfer high schools, find a better AAU team, etc. Why? Just so they can play in college, where many players dislike their experience, want to transfer and just hope the season ends soon. I heard one team had a fight last week because one player told his roommate he hoped they lost in the first round because he’d rather go out on Friday night than have to play another game! And, this is from a play-off team.

What has gone wrong to create this environment? How can we fix it? Is it wrong for players to play a sport just to play the sport? Are there avenues open to these players? How can we make sports more about the players playing them, and less about the parents and coaches? Is it wrong for a child to want to enjoy his or her playing experience? Is that too much to ask?