Player Safety - Part 3

This is the third in a multi-part series of blogs I am writing about player safety in youth sports, specifically football.  With the recent increase in awareness of concussions, parents seem to be more concerned – some to the point of being paranoid - than ever about player safety. 

As has been stated before, there is risk of injury in any sport and if there are ways to reduce the risks, then we owe it to our kids to do so.  In this blog, I will focus on coaching education. 

Most youth coaches are volunteers and as such, have jobs, families, and lives.  They simply do not have a lot of spare time on their hands.  They mean well, are trying to teach the kids how to play a sport, and most do very well at teaching.  There is a small portion who try to excel at coaching youth sports and invest time and money into their own personal development in each off-season.  These are the guys who go to youth clinics to better learn how to break the game down to the youth level and who focus on teaching good, sound fundamentals.  Then there is a portion of youth coaches who, to put it bluntly, do not need to be trying to teach kids.  These are the guys who either do not know good fundamentals or do not care, only care about winning, and who create unsafe players.

I have been to youth clinics the past couple of years and have learned something new each time I’ve gone.  I also have invested in coaching materials to study and have someone I consider a mentor in youth coaching.  That’s going overboard, you say?  Consider this:  If a youth coach coaches the same player each year (and that does happen), they will spend more time coaching that player than any other coach that player will have (barring going professional) in their life.  They have the opportunity to have more of an influence on that player than any other coach they will have.  They are coaching them during the formative years of their lives and are either teaching them sound fundamentals or bad habits.  Many Junior High coaches have lamented about having to unteach bad habits that their players have developed from playing youth football.  Other Junior High coaches have raved about how their kids have such good fundamentals that they developed from playing youth football.  What do you think made the difference in the kids these two Junior High coaches are talking about?

I believe that coaching youth sports is a privilege and if we’re going to sign up for it, then we need to do everything we can to do it the right way.  The mechanics of pitching a baseball, when taught incorrectly, can result in a teenager having Tommy John surgery or rotator cuff surgery.  Proper fundamentals translates into more safety.  It doesn’t guarantee that a kid will go injury-free, but it does guarantee that his or her risk of injury will be much lower because they have been taught the right way to do things.   

My belief is that at the very least, the head coach from any team should have gone through a youth coaching clinic for their sport.  They need to be a continuous student of how to teach the game to kids.  One of the most important things I’ve learned from clinics and study materials is that youth need to be taught step-by-step.  It is important to think of them as a toddler learning to walk.  They were not born playing the sport of choice and must be taught a step at a time until they master it. 

Many well-intentioned youth coaches understand their sport, but cannot teach it to youth.  They teach too advanced and the information often is too complicated for youth to understand.  When the same information is taught step-by-miniscule step, the youth not only understand it more, but they understand WHY they need to know it.  And I think we call can attest to the fact that if we understand why we need to know something, we are much more likely to learn.