Since the end of this latest youth soccer season I’ve been rethinking my approach to being a coach and to being the parent of an athlete. In some ways it is easier to be a dad to kids who have no athletic ability. I recognize how arrogant that sounds, but arrogance is not my intention. My concern is with doing what is best for the kid athletically as well as socially. It is the same problem I ran into when my mid-kid skipped Kindergarten and could have skipped first grade just as easily. The issue was not ability, but social misplacement. As a result of letting him skip ahead, I have a kid who is always the youngest in his grade and, at times, lacks the maturity of others at his grade level.
Lets ignore for a moment the question of how mature a 2nd grader can be anyway. Project this dilemma on to sports where the same kid is playing with much older kids. When we started the season he was 6 yrs old and his oldest teammate was 10. I’m stuck between this place of, do I let him play with other 6-7 year olds and watch his skill level remain constant (or at worse sink down to the level of the age group he is with), or do I put him up and force him to push his skills to that next level. This is what happened during soccer, and the boy was a constant starter–one of the top 6 on a 14 boy roster. Still, as the season wore on I could see the maturity gap. I could also see that I’d sacrificed the social side of the equation. A couple of his older classmates had moved up with him, but the bulk of his friendships remained at the 6-7 level. I asked him if he wanted to play 8-9 in the fall or go back to playing 6-7 and he struggled with a decision. Finally he asked to move back to play with his friends.
I see parents making this kind of choice every season. One of the players on my squad this year hadn’t turned 8 when the season began. Come fall his dad is moving him to the 10-12 team. While the child is talented, I wonder if parents like he and I are forgetting that youth league sports are as much about having fun and being a kid as they are about learning teamwork and basic skills. Once I recognized that I’d forgotten that I had to ask the boy what he wanted.
Now what he wants is to play tackle football–a passion he shares with his big brother. This may be the perfect time to put him in the game. Given his age and weight he will be at the top of the 5-7 bracket. That is a good a training ground as any to learn the fundamentals without fear of the bigger kids hurting you.
I just have to force that rationale past my wife…