Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:At 11YO for a travel team? The Coach is right. You earn your playing time and if you miss a pass, you get benched.
Just to be clear - that’s stupid. It is also a fairly common thought from someone who has no clue about coaching youth. Thankfully, in most sports, you ditch those types at about 11. Ideally, you don’t have to deal with them at all. But, they end up hanging around until people realize: “yeah that guy is stupid.”
Kids (and adults) learn at different paces, and they are bound by their then existing physical abilities. Some kids learn quicker. Some kids are physically superior, some kids are both. Many are not. Yelling at a kid threatening negative action for failure to achieve some physical goal is ridiculous. If a kid is not paying attention, or appears to not be putting forth effort - encourage on the field of play if needed (“John I need you working hard out there.” “John, keep your positioning.” Or, more often, a quick discussion on the sideline. Guess what? Not every kid is at their best every day. Every coach knows that. But, along the same lines, — no youth coach has any particular understanding of a kid on a team. So they (if they have any sense at all) stay strictly with general motivational techniques and language.
Eventually - those kids who continue to progress are self-motivated to do the work necessary to achieve on-going improvements. None of that is done by yelling at a kid. Ever.
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Be more predictable, would you? Oh, right. You can't.