Does Success in Youth Sports = Success in Life

As parents, we want our children to succeed in all of their endeavors. As a coach and parent of athletes participating in youth sports, defining how the team, or your child, measure success is key to making their participation a learning experience. Should success be measured completely based on wins and losses? Should kids on a losing team feel like failures? 

Youth sports are an amazing provider of life lessons. Great lessons on the benefits of hard work, dedication, teamwork, and respect for authority are all transferrable to many aspects of life. Difficult lessons like learning humility, overcoming challenges, facing adversity, and handling defeat are also taught in this environment. Sports also provide an opportunity to teach kids about owning their definitions of success by creating goals. The challenge with teaching this to 7 year old children is the immediate goal is always measured by a scoreboard, creating the perception that winning is the only goal. Letting the scoreboard be the sole determination of success takes away valuable opportunities to learn all that sports can teach, and it takes away the opportunity to let the kids own their success. 

Coaches who collaborate with their team’s parents on establishing individual goals for the athletes, and team goals for the group have a great opportunity to make a lasting impact on a child’s future. These volunteers have similar influence on children as school teachers often do. It is common for children to look at them as role models and mentors. When the coach sets the example that winning is the only goal, the coach is failing half of the kids out there, because in every game there is a winner and loser. However, if the coach celebrates effort, attitude, and growth, if the coach sets goals around successes measured by anything other than a scoreboard or a win/loss record, he is teaching kids to develop their own definitions of success.

If success in youth sports is about championships, wins and losses, or winning records, then the athletes participating are really missing the biggest opportunities these activities provide. Youth athletes, no matter their skill level, and no matter their win/loss record, all have the opportunity to learn and develop essential skills and core values they can take with them the rest of their lives. As children grow up, athleticism will fade and opportunities to participate will go away, but the values and lessons learned by creating definitions of success around work ethic, teamwork, and compassion will shape the adults that they become.