Coaches can be the determining
factor in whether a kid continues to play a sport or quits. One hypothetical example is when a coach makes up his mind about a kid
before tryouts even began because he was bigger than most kids. You could tell
throughout the day that the coach would be extra harsh on the kid and not let
him get water when he wanted to just so he would give up and not tryout for the
team. Well, he succeeded in what he wanted to accomplish with that being the
last day the kid ever showed up to tryouts. There is a countrywide problem with
non-inclusion within developmental sports, and it needs to be changed.
Some
coaches may come from different backgrounds and have different ways of coaching.
Some believe winning helps the kids improve rather than practicing more to improve.
Brian McCormick talks about coaches of the next level not caring about previous
game records. McCormick states, “at what age should developmental basketball
transition to competitive basketball?” which brings great controversy to the
topic. Once you enter varsity sports, competition should be a goal to
focus on, while also maintaining the same amount of development. Some people
may disagree with this and say that winning makes people happy and want to improve
to make them win even more games. While winning does correlate to people’s
happiness, it should not be the focus when you are just starting to really get
into the sport.
Depending
on who the schools hire for the coaching staff, it could lead to nepotism. Anyone
can apply for a head coaching position, and if a kid is playing on a team that needs
a head coach, their parent may be more likely to take the position. Nepotism
could start with starting their kid a little more than the other kids, then
lead to only playing their kid and people they are friends with. Overall, this
could ruin some kids’ chances in playing their favorite sport. Stephen Borelli
wrote an article about his experience with favoritism in softball. He stated
that his daughter was ranked highly within the state and didn’t make the All-Star
team, but the coach’s daughter made it even though she was ranked lower. He
then went on to say, “Her dad is also this year’s newly elected president of
the league.” Showing possible signs of favoritism. Another example of hypothetical nepotism
is when playing basketball in 4th grade, there are four teams, and
each coach before the season started had to draft a team. One of the teams had
a coach and an assistant coach who ran the league. It was stated that the head
coach was able to have their kid on their team automatically. While this makes
sense, the assistant head coaches’ kid was also automatically on the team for
some reason even though it never stated anything about assistant coach’s kids
being on the team automatically. That same team went undefeated throughout the
season and won the championship. While this could be just a team that was good,
it was weird that one team was automatically able to have two kids on the team without
anyone’s say.
Inexperienced
coaches in sports can make kids feel un-included or make them not want to play.
Some coaches take the coaching position just for money. Depending on what level
of sports this is at, the school may not even care if they are good enough to
coach. Especially if a school can’t get someone for the position, they may just
hire anyone. Jonathan Brandin talks about how inexperience can lead to mental
health issues, non-development, and possible injuries. While this is all true, inexperience
could also lead to players having bad attitudes towards the coach and other
players and create an unsafe place for everyone there.
In
conclusion, non-inclusion is a big issue within developmental sports coaches. Coaches
need to start focusing on developing skills over winning, not based the team
around favoritism, and have experience coaching at an assistant level first. Fixing
these things would help everyone feel more included and develop the kids as a person.
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