The Path Forward! (Part 2)

Here are more suggestions to shift the paradigm from an outcome driven nightmare to an excellence driven developmental model.

Youth Sports Organizations:

• You are the gatekeepers of youth sports. You set the philosophy and the tone; you make youth sports a place for development or simply a place to separate winners and losers. Please take a stand.

Do a better job with parent education. Parents love their kids, and they want to help, but no one teaches them how to help!

• So many of you pay homage to parent education by having them sign a worthless code of conduct, or by burying a page of do’s and don’ts on your website. So many well-paid coaching directors I know tell me they don’t have any money in their budget for parent education, but then tell me they spend half their time dealing with parent issues. “Uh, so what you are saying is that you actually do spend $40,000 on cleaning up the mess, but cannot find $2,000 to prevent it?”

Bring in the Changing the Game Project, or Positive Coaching Alliance, or Proactive Coaching, or Bob Bigelow, and start teaching parents how to help sports belong to their kids when they are young, and keep teaching them year after year. It works!

Do a better job supporting and educating your coaches, especially the volunteers. We have one preseason meeting, hand them an outdated PDF coaching manual, tell them how to watch for concussions and then throw them to the wolves. They need better ideas for practices.

• They need modern tools (check out my new venture TheDrillBook.com, its FREE).
• They need to know how to handle lopsided games.
• They need to know how to get rid of lines and lectures. (check out FUNdamental SOCCER).
• The more you do for them, the more of them will come back year after year because it will be an enjoyable experience.

The enemy of excellence in youth sports is the obsession with winning. It is driving children out of sports and toward sedentary lifestyles, and it is not preparing them to succeed in sport or in life. We need this to change.

You can be the change. You can help start this revolution, simply by sharing this article with one other person, or telling one person about this work.

We need you! Excellence need you!! Our kids need you!!!

Please share your thoughts and opinions (below) and if you have not already… Click here to join Changing the Game in 2020.

John O'Sullivan, Founder of the Changing the Game Project

____________________________________________________ Dear Reader: Coach O’Sullivan has given some rather intriguing suggestions for you to ponder. These suggestions will surely help in your efforts to improve your community’s soccer culture. His new book, "Every Moment Matters" will go live this Wednesday (December 11, 2019) on Amazon ... I think you will really enjoy it!

Surely you have additional suggestions to add to this 'theme'; please share them with us? Who knows your additional ideas may end up helping others improve soccer, at least, in their community… Priceless!!!

Your FUNdamental, Koach Karl

Karl Dewazien, Emeritus State Director of Coaching California Youth Soccer Association ... 1978 -2012

Author of the Internationally Published FUNdamental SOCCER Books Series

Producer of the highly acclaimed ‘9-Step Practice Routine’ DVD

Internet/Clinician at www.fundamentalsoccer.com