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Forum aims to coach coaches

Forum aims to coach coaches
By IAN GILLESPIE  , Free Press Columnist
Oct 2005

Nobody wants to criticize kids' sports. And nobody wants to criticize the amateur coaches who selflessly volunteer to train kids.

And nobody should.

But maybe it's time to start questioning how we coach our kids. Maybe it's time to step back and ask ourselves, "Is this system really working?"

That, at least, is the underlying message of next week's Western Coaches' Conference, a forum running Thursday and Friday at the University of Western Ontario that features 24 workshops and aims to bring varsity coaches and professors together with community coaches to study -- and perhaps change -- how we coach our kids.

"This is a major problem here in Canada because the kids are getting introduced to sport from non-experts," says Volker Nolte, a professor of biomechanics and coaching with Western's school of kinesiology who helped organize the conference. "Don't get me wrong -- they (kids' coaches) are people who obviously love the sport and love the kids, and I'm not diminishing this.

"But if the kids were brought up better in the beginning, we'd have healthier kids and they'd stay in the sport longer."

In fact, Nolte agrees I'm a perfect example of how we have things backwards.

A few years ago, I coached one of my sons' soccer teams. The squad desperately needed a coach and since I was going to be at the games anyway, I reluctantly volunteered.

And though my motives were good, my energy was misplaced. If anything, Nolte says, non-experts like me should coach older players who've already mastered the game's fundamentals, while trained experts should coach younger children.

"I think most coaches have a good understanding of the tactics and techniques of the sport," says Nolte. "The mistake is not knowing what kind of instruction a kid needs at a certain age."

Another mistake we make as coaches and parents, he says, is our emphasis on playing -- and winning -- full-blown games instead of developing skills.

As an example, Nolte cites the "beehive soccer" you'll see at most games with five- and six-year-old children, where players cluster around the ball like bees buzzing around a pot of honey.

The mistake, he says, is not with the kids -- who are too young to understand and implement concepts such as playing positions. Rather, the mistake is with the coaches.

"The game they let them play is wrong," he says.

Instead of mimicking a regular soccer match, Nolte says young children can best learn by playing two-on-two, or three-on-three, or even using multiple balls.

Nolte says in North America, children's sport programs tend to be short, intensive periods that quickly plunge kids into competition. He contrasts that with how, as a 13-year-old rower in Germany, he trained five days a week for one year before ever racing competitively.

And though North American parents hunger to see their kids compete, Nolte says the result is often failure. Kids and parents, following the hectic schedule of frequent games in far-flung locations, burn out and lose interest.

"Here in London, we have about 25,000 kids playing soccer every summer," says Nolte. "It's an enormous number and it sounds healthy. But from those 25,000 kids, only a handful will play soccer competitively when they're 19 or 20 (years old)."

Nolte cites a UWO study that measured the amount of time varsity soccer players had possession of the ball during a game. During a 20-minute period, Nolte says researchers observed a mid-fielder controlled the ball for about 15 seconds, an offensive player had it for nine seconds and a defender never touched the ball at all.

And he says that's no way to learn any sport.

"This message has to go out to parents so they understand it's more valuable . . . to get away from game, game, game and go more to a practice approach," he says, adding that our emphasis on out-of-town tournaments and flashy uniforms is a waste of time and money. "We are projecting the professional games we see on television onto our kids.

"But that's not what kids need."