The popularity of sport around the world has exploded in recent years and the reward for ‘making it’ is getting bigger and better all the time. Will your child be the next Rory McIlroy? Will the child you coach be the next David Beckham?
Unfortunately, many very talented children will fall victim to overzealous parents and ill-informed coaches and never get to find out the answers to those questions. Why? The problem begins with parents and coaches failing to know what drives kids to want to play sports. This very question has been heavily researched and the most popular answers children give are as follows:
- It’s fun
- Their friends are there too
- It helps them to fit in
- It feels good to do it
- They are good at it
The flip side has also been heavily researched. Here are some of the most popular reasons why kids do not want to play sports:
- It’s not fun
- They are forced
- They are teased
- It hurts
- They are not good at it
- They feel too much pressure to play
- The coaching is poor
- They are pushed to play too soon
- A fear of failing
So what are some strategies you as a parent or a coach can use? Let me give you an example from a junior golf camp I was involved in this past July. Every day of the camp the children did such things as play dodgeball, do push-ups, skip, jump, and throw footballs. Why do such activities at golf camp, you may ask? Simply put, golfers are athletes and they need to be developed as such from a young age. The better a child is at what are known as Fundamental Movement Skills, the better chance they have of excelling at a given sport such as golf. Consider the elite athletes of today – are they only good at one sport, the one at which they play professionally? Absolutely not. They are very accomplished all-around athletes. The fact that they are such great athletes is what has made them so good at their given sport.
When working with junior athletes it is important to work based on concepts from what is known as The Long Term Athletic Development model. The model breaks the mold of teaching all kids based on their chronological age because not all kids of the same age are created equal. The Long Term Athletic Development model focuses on biological age, which is the degree of physical, mental, cognitive, and emotional maturity of the child. As a parent and/or a coach of children, always think about what they need to be doing to succeed and not what you want them to be. Remember the five most popular reasons why they want to play and use that as your compass:
- It’s fun
- Their friends are there too
- It helps them to fit in
- It feels good to do it
- They are good at it
Chris Kendrick's Blog 