A Punishment for Losing a Game?

“I was very disappointed in your performance at the soccer game on Thursday. You were sluggish, unfocused and not trying your hardest. That was the worst game we have had in three years! Everyone – we are running today at practice – get going around the field.”

Do you think these were the words of a collegiate level soccer coach? They were, in fact, words of a coach, but not at the collegiate level, not even a high school level coach. These were spoken by the coach of a third grade Catholic school soccer team.

Should a team be “punished” for losing a game?

Consider the added example of a freshman football coach whose team lost their game. In response, when the team returned to their school, the coach immediately sent the team to the practice field and had them engage in a full force tackle drill which had some of the players crying out in pain.

Play Like A Champion Today™ asserts that sports are games that are meant to be played by kids to have fun, to learn new skills and to grow – physically, emotionally, morally and spiritually. Do kids grow in sport when they are punished when they don’t have an optimal performance? Athletes may get stronger physically from punishment drills, but they will not grow emotionally, morally or spiritually through this type of punitive activity.

We all know that running is an important activity for the overall development of an athlete. It helps kids build endurance, grow in coordination and get faster and stronger. However, when a coach makes running a punishment, does this encourage the young person to engage in this activity that is healthful and helpful for him/her as an athlete? In most cases, it does not. In fact, for many people, this will have the exact opposite effect and make them hate the activity that was assigned as punishment. Goals of Play Like A Champion Today™ coaches are to help their athletes love the game, to become better players and to grow as fuller Christian persons. Critical coaches who punish their athletes will not accomplish these ultimate goals in their totality. This is true not only for younger athletes, but also for high school age athletes and beyond.

Some may say, “Punishment is good for kids to toughen them up.” Play Like A Champion says, “Coaches should wisen-up.” No good will come out of punishing athletes when adults do not feel they have performed their best. In fact, it is often harmful. The Play Like A Champion approach is filled with effective techniques to be an “Life Coach” making a positive impact on young athlete’s lives.

Fall PLC Newsletter Released

The Fall PLC Newsletter was released today. You can find it and past newsletters at the PLC Newsletter page.

In this issue:

• 4th Annual PLC Leadership Conference
• Letter from the Director: Renewing the Vision of Bishop Sheil and the CYO
• Partner Profile: Fort Worth Christian Football League
• PLC Consultant's Book Loyal Sons Wins National Award
• Hot Issues in Sports: Preventing Post-Summer Vacation Injuries
• Upcoming Events: Cruise on the Chicago River

Preventing Post-Summer Vacation Injuries

By Dr. John Stavrakos, PLC Consultant and Sports Medicine Specialist

As we enter another school year, thousands of young athletes from grade school to high school are preparing for fall sports by participating in preseason workouts, and family doctors nationwide are swamped with filling out preparticipation sports physicals. This is a fun and exciting time of year for parents, coaches and students alike – but also a high time of year for sports related injuries. In this article, I wanted to touch on a few issues that invariably come up when kids go from vacation time fun to early school year training schedules, and how to best evaluate and treat them.

1) Strains, sprains & aches: It’s a safe bet that all sports doctors are going to see young athletes marching into their offices within the first three weeks of preseason camps from one of these. Most muscle strains and joint aches are a result of a rapid increase in demands on the musculoskeletal system – going from summer fun of getting a tan and throwing a frisbee around to two-a-day strength, speed and conditioning drills is going to produce some aches – so some of these pains are unavoidable. Teaching kids to keep with a summer conditioning program will usually lessen these issues. In children undergoing a growth spurt, keep in mind that that bones are growing faster than muscles, and this can lead to relative muscle weakness and inflexibility, as well as pain from traction of the muscle tendons at their insertion points on the bone, called an apophysitis. The 15 year old female track runner who had no problems last fall, for example, who now (one year later and 3 inches taller) is complaining of a sharp or achy pain in her anterior hips when running, may be suffering from this. Year round muscle conditioning (keep in mind that most active playtime activities are great conditioning) and stretching in growing kids can help to diminish these problems; if you have any questions or concerns, be sure and ask your physician.

2) Heat and overexposure: not long ago, the dangers of hyperthermia, or overheating, made national headlines when a college football player at a Division I school passed away in training camp from this condition. In humid areas of the country, the risk of hyperthermia is even greater, as humid air lessens the body’s ability to dissipate heat from the skin. Always keep in mind that children have a decreased tolerance to excessive heat and a diminished ability to cool off when compared to adults. If an athlete shows signs of listlessness, walking with a staggered gait, not focusing or not speaking intelligently, get them into shade/cool area, lay them down and elevate their legs and seek medical attention. Advise your athletes to drink well before and after practice (drinking until you’re no longer thirsty is a good rule of thumb), and to cool down afterwards. Drinking excessive amounts of water when exercising can be dangerous as well, and can lead to dilutional hyponatremia, an electrolyte imbalance where the sodium level in the blood gets “watered down” from too much water intake, and can present with symptoms similar to dehydration and hyperthermia. Kids should avoid caffeine (which causes dehydration), and most especially energy drinks – these beverages (e.g. Monster, Amp, Spike Shooter, etc.) not only carry much more caffeine than a 12 oz can of Coca Cola (up to 11 – 12.5 times more!), but have other substances in them that act as stimulants, which your kids don’t need in 90 degree heat when they’re running a 5K, doing push-ups and crunches or doing tackling drills.

3) Stress Fractures: another potential problem of ramping up activity level beyond what the bones can handle. Stress fractures (also called insufficiency fractures) are micro fractures, or “cracks” in the architecture of bones that happen when the forces exceed the shock absorbing ability of the bone and surrounding tissues, and overcome the bone’s ability to heal. Stress fractures tend to occur most commonly in the shins (“shin splints” are an early stage stress fracture) and in the midfoot (just past the ankle), and are more common in girls than boys. Typically they present as a achy pain that occurs with impact activity at a bony weight bearing area (foot, shin, hip, etc.), that is worse with impact and gets better with rest, and may progress to hurting with every day activities such as walking. These are most common when young athletes go to ‘the next level’ – i.e. 8th grade to high school, high school to a competitive college program. They usually require an xray and possibly further imaging, such as a CT or MRI, if the clinical suspicion is high, because many stress fractures do not show up on plain xrays. If your young athlete has a pain that will not go away when doing their sport, even with rest, and especially if it is present even when not in sport, you should seek medical attention.

Sports are an important and enjoyable aspect of returning to school, but as with every activity, as responsible adults who love and care for the children we are responsible for, we need to be vigilant for conditions that can adversely affect them. May all your young athletes have a healthy, successful season!

What Outliers Can Teach about Developing All-Stars

The five lessons below are taken from the book Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcom Gladwell. In this book Gladwell reveals how people become successful by looking at individuals that appear to be Outliers, abnormally successful people. These five lessons substitute the lessons about outliers with lessons about all-stars in sport.

1. Coaches choose all-stars. In Chapter 1 of his book, Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell points out that on elite 16-18 year old hockey teams the majority of players were born in the months of January, February or March. How could such a strange phenomenon occur? The cut-off date for Canadian hockey leagues is January 1st. When children try-out for hockey teams at early ages, a December-born player and a January-born player are compared to one another even though one is nearly a year older than the other. Coaches select the January – March players thinking they are more “gifted,” “skilled,” or “talented” when at this age they just happen to be older and more physically developed. These “talented” older players end up on select teams, practice more often, and play at a higher competitive level and are made into all-stars.

2. All-stars have to want to play and work hard. Teams win championships by working hard in practice. How do you get players to want to work hard in practice? Some coaches try to force it upon their players with fear and punishments. However, research does not show that this is effective. Players get better when they like practicing and when they love the sport. They would spend hours in the driveway shooting hoops. This is the edge they have over other players of similar gifts and talent.

3. All-stars are given opportunity to work hard. Not only are all-stars willing to work hard, but they are given the opportunity to learn and work hard in their sports. Children and adolescents, especially those living in cities with few fields and gyms, need the opportunity to play. It is the only way they can get better.

4. Effort is connected to reward. All-stars, like the outliers in Gladwell’s book, feel that there is a connection between their effort and a reward. For some all-stars this means winning, but winning is not directly connected to effort. No matter how hard you work are, the other team may be better, there may be some missed calls, the weather may not cooperate, etc. If winning is the only reward for effort, then players will not be as motivated to succeed nor will they want to work as hard as if they were intrinsically motivated (see lesson #2). This is connected to setting goals in PLC’s GROW Approach.

5. All-stars feel Autonomy. All-stars, like Outliers, become successful when they feel that they have some say in the direction of their lives. This is the third component of the GROW Approach: Ownership. Give athletes ownership over their play and they will take up the responsibility to succeed on their own. If coaches take away that autonomy, then athletes will feel that pleasing the coach is more important than playing the game well.

Malcom Gladwell hopes to convince his readers that Outliers aren’t really outliers at all. Coaches should be convinced that all-stars aren’t really all-stars at all. Or better yet, as a coach you determine who will become an all-star. Give everyone a chance.

The Passing of Senator Ted Kennedy

With the passing of Senator Kennedy after a year-long battle with brain cancer, the United States lost one of the most revered and influential Senators of our time. Having served almost 50 years in the Senate, he will be remembered for his legislative contributions to civil rights, economic justice, and to the ongoing struggle for healthcare reform. He was the driving force behind Title IX, which dramatically increased girls’ and women’s participation on all levels of sports. The Kennedy family was known for their spirited touch football games. Ted Kennedy may well have been the best player of them all. A tight end at Harvard, Senator Kennedy passed up a chance to try out for the Packers in order to go to Law School. At a time in country when political debate often degenerates into angry shouting, we would do well to remember Senator Kennedy’s gift for working across the aisle to advance the common good. We can do no better to say of Senator Kennedy what he said at the passing of his brother, Bobby, “He saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.” Hopefully when we pass, others can say that about us.

Little League World Series on ESPN

ABC, ESPN, and ESPN2 are currently airing the Little League World Series. Broadcasts began in 1963 with the final championship game, but this year 32 games will be aired showcasing teams from Staten Island, NY, Mercer Island, WA, Latin America, Mexico Asia-Pacific, Germany, and Japan just to name a few.

• Is this good or bad news for youth sports?


• What do children think about seeing their peers (11 to 13 years old) on television?


• If you have been watching, do the children look like they are having fun or feeling the pressure?


• How are the coaches behaving?


• Do they look like they are coaching kids or major leaguers?

Play Like A Champion Today wants to know what you think! Post your comments below and we will offer our own thoughts in response.

Celebrating Women's Equality: What About Sports?

August 26 is Women's Equality Day. On that day in 1920 the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was passed giving women the right to vote. Suffrage was a giant step toward equality in the United States, but just a step. The struggle for women’s equality continues today.

We can learn a great deal about gender equity and inequity in our society by taking a careful look at women’s sports. My Dad helped to start a C.Y.O. basketball program for girls as well as boys in our parish grade school in the late 1950s. We both played by the boys’ rules -- full-court. Yet the women’s game did not officially change to full-court until 1971. Women were competing in marathons all over the world, but the women’s marathon only became an Olympic sport in 1984.

The feminist movement and Title IX changed broke many of the barriers to women’s participation in sports. In 1972, at the time Title IX was passed, girls accounted for only seven percent of high school athletes. Today girls account for over 40%. In youth sport, the numbers are even more impressive. Today girls and boys between the ages of six and nine say that they are equally interested in sports. In the early elementary school years seventy-five percent of boys and sixty-nine percent of girls are actively involved in at least one sport. Yet as girls get older, their opportunities to participate decline more precipitously than boys’. The problem is worse in the cities with only 59% of the girls reporting they are involved in a sport compared to 80% of the boys. Some of barriers to girls’ participation are financial; others are structural and cultural. Urban programs’ typically run on scarce resources. Fears about safety as well as outmoded gender stereotypes contribute to an environment that prevents girls from experiencing same the physical and psychological benefits of sports participation as boys.

Shockingly, higher participation rates for female athletes have not translated into greater numbers of women in coaching. Before Title IX , over 90% of the coaches of collegiate women’s teams were women. Now that percentage is 42%, and it is still declining. In 1997 when the WNBA started, seven of its eight head coaches were women. The WNBA added five more teams but now only four headed coaches are women.

Girls deserve the best coaching that we can give them. Qualified males should not be discouraged from coaching women’s sports. Yet qualified women should not be discouraged from coaching men’s sports. Why aren’t we seeing more women coaching men’s sports? Why has the percentage (below two percent) remained constant when the percentage of women has been rising in other professions? The reasons aren’t too hard to find. Athletic Departments have been and continue to be largely made up of men and influenced by “old boy” attitudes, networks, and work structures. Moreover, too many of us view sports as an arena where “masculine” qualities are needed for competitive success.

Among Play Like A Champion Today’s ™ youth sport partners, male coaches outnumber females over three to one. In a revealing study of gender and youth sport coaching, Mike Messner reports an even smaller percentage of female coaches in the Pasedena area. That percentage declines as children get older youth sports programs are viewed as more competitive. Using interview and observational data, Messner argues persuasively that youth sport coaching “remains a highly sex-segregated activity” with little or no change in sight.

As we commemorate the progress we have made toward women’s equality in our country, we need to take a more critical look at sport organizations at all levels. Let’s invite qualified women to coach boys’ as well as girls’ sports at all competitive levels, and let’s make sure that we create and sustain a welcoming atmosphere for them. Let’s get more women involved in athletic administration and in high school and college coaching. Let’s reach out to girls and young women who are denied the opportunity to play sports because of where they are growing up or because their families are poor. Finally let’s set goals for the equality we would like to see in sports and begin to address the barriers we have all too long ignored. As a first step, I strongly recommend that sports leaders at all levels read the 2007 Tucker Center Research Report: Developing Physically Active Girls, which was co-edited by Nicole LaVoi, the Associate Director of the University of Minnesota’s Tucker Center for Research on Girls and Women in sport and a former research associate at Play Like a Champion Today™.

Clark Power Appears on Local NBC Broadcast

Play Like A Champion Today Program Director Clark Power recently appeared on WNDU's news spotlight titled "Focus on Faith." To view this interview visit the WNDU website or click on the video link below:

Focus on Faith: ND's Play Like A Champion Today program

Thank You Wives and Husbands

Coaches sacrifice an enormous amount of time to their sports and players. Their greatest sacrifice is their time away from their wives, husbands, and kids. A recent article in the Knoxville News Sentinal shared with us by Doug Abrams, "You can't coach dedication: Wives learn how to cope with challenging life" by Jesse Smithey, features a number of head football coaches' wives. The story clearly depicts the great dedication that both husband and wife share for each other during and in between seasons.

So what are some words to describe these wives? "Great Multi-taskers," "supportive crutch," or as Brad Taylor so nicely put it, "My wife is Superwoman." Thanks to these women, the football coaches all across Tennessee and the United States are able to make a difference in the lives of young people. Don't forget this fall when your under the friday night lights that behind those coaches sit women who have made great sacrifices for those men to be there.

Wives and husbands of coaches in all sports...thank you for your dedication, sacrifice, and love!

Building Team Relationships Overnight

The Play Like A Champion Today™ GROW approach helps coaches to understand that developing Relationships on their team is integral to building a successful team environment. Building relationships develops team unity and cohesion. According to the PLC Coach Manual (p.25), cohesion defined by Carron is a “dynamic process which is reflected in the tendency for a group to stick together and remain united in the pursuit of its goals and objectives. High levels of group cohesion affect team stability, performance, and athlete satisfaction.”

Recently, I had the opportunity as a sport parent to aid my daughter’s athletic team in building relationships. We hosted the high school cheerleading team at our home for an overnight team bonding experience. The evening was characterized by a shared experience which began with every team member contributing to the menu for the evening (from subs to cookies to lemonade). The captains set the tone by opening the evening’s activities with a team bonding round robin question and answer session of “What are your favorites?” (such as “What is your favorite stunt? What is your least favorite subject in school? What is the scariest movie you have seen? What do you want to do for a career?) Team mates became more acquainted with each other as individuals with likes and dislikes. Amidst the giggles, many found that they shared similar feelings and beliefs, beyond their common love for the sport of cheerleading. The evening went on to include swimming, a bonfire with s’mores, competitive games with girls rooting for each other and a late night movie ending with athletes all in sleeping bags throughout the family room floor with their coach in the middle (maintaining a watchful eye). The sleepy team reluctantly was roused the next morning to pile into cars and head to an 8am practice. Although tired, the practice felt different to the young women who had shared a common team-bonding experience and who knew each other at a deeper, more personal level. Team cohesiveness was built and team stability was cemented.

I encourage all coaches to create such a team bonding opportunity for their athletes to build their team’s cohesion and develop Relationships on their team. I encourage parents who are in a position to support and enable this process to become a resource to their child’s coach in this regard. I encourage athletes to open their hearts to this opportunity to become a stronger, more cohesive team. The result: a forever memory of a shared team experience.

- Kristin Sheehan, PLC Associate Director