Top 10 Tips for Sports Parents

 

Winning is great - but joyful, meaningful winning comes from a good team process.

First and Foremost, Teach Children the Purpose of Youth Sports:

1. Having fun. Win-at-all-cost parents and coaches spoil the fun for kids and cause many to drop out of sports entirely. Kids these days have lots of pressure on them to achieve. Sports should be something they look forward to and then feel good about.

2. Growing their skills. The serious part of sports is inspiring kids to grow their skills through mentoring and practice. It’s a good lesson for life—teaching them to work on weaknesses (and existing strengths) and pointing out how they’re progressing. This isn’t about just praising effort. It’s about guiding the development of high-level skills.

3. Becoming a great team member. On a win-at-all-cost team, it’s often every team member for themselves. Each one proving that they’re worthy. Yet, great teams have great “chemistry”-- team members support, root for, and help each other whenever possible. Parents and coaches should encourage and reward this.

What You Expect in a Game:

4. Full effort and commitment. As legendary coach John Wooden said, that’s a great game. Winning is secondary--but often follows from it.

What to Do when the Team Loses:

5. Analyze and learn. You can share the team’s disappointment but then get down to work. What happened? What did we learn from it? What will we try to do next time? No finger-pointing, no blaming, but no excuses either—just learning. Let as much as possible come from the kids.

What to Do when the Team Wins:

6. Analyze and learn. Often after a win, we just rest on our laurels. But wins can teach us a lot. What did we do that worked? How can we capitalize on that in the future? What were our weaknesses in the game? How can we overcome them? Again, let as much as possible come from the kids.