rec league coaching -- OK to give the strongest players slightly more minutes than the weaker?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our Rec League requires each kid play 50% of the game. If you can play the strong players more, while still giving everyone else 50%, go for it.

It's Rec, how are other players going to develop if they aren't given the playing time?

And, it's Rec, it's supposed to be fun for everyone - don't be that jerk coach who only cares about winning and not player development, teamwork, fun, etc

OP. Each child on the team is getting way more than 50%. I've been giving the best players about 90% playing time, and the weaker players around 70%.

In practice, the weaker players get most of my attention.

In that case, many of the comments here don’t apply. 70% is a lot of time, probably more than some kids even care to play. On travel teams, plenty of top players get 70% or less play time, especially the midfielders who are running a lot.

The other dynamic that has been mentioned here is that 5th graders are intelligent. If you asked them to line up in order of skill level, they would be spot on. They are conscientious of being a good team member. For some kids with still developing skill levels, their least desirable outcome is for the team to lose when the coach puts them in for the sake of fairness, regardless of whether they contributed to the loss. Of course, this doesn’t mean coaches should not put in less skilled players at the end of the game. Players often rise to the occasion and all players should get to experience that end of the game urgency. But it’s just another thing to consider as a coach.

Thanks for coaching!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Do you feel that it's OK to focus 90% of the course material to the smartest kids in the class, and only spend 70% as much time on the middle kids and 40% on the dumbest kids?

How about paying attention to the best looking kids 90% of the time and only focusing on the average kids 70% of the time and barely looking at the ugliest 40% of the time?

Let's extrapolate this and many things like it across their entire lives and see what kind of society we get...

it’s Rec soccer and you are a volunteer
coach. You are doing great. Winning matters too bc it keeps everyone happy and engaged. If the less skilled kid’s parents cared that much they would work with their kid to help them improve. Ignore the socialists.

[Anonymous]

The vast majority of the weaker kids don't want to play an even amount of playing time if it means the team always loses because of goals they give up.

These aren't 5 year olds; they absolutely know that they're not as good. The best way to make a kid hate a team sport is to make them indisputably responsible for the team losing repeatedly.

Your strategy is absolutely the correct one and you shouldn't feel guilty at all. (Although I also agree with others that you can tweak a bit if you happen to be up big in one game.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Parents think games matter more than practice, when it is actually the complete opposite. Practice is how kids improve. No one would suggest that performing in piano recitals improves skills better than piano practice and lessons. Focusing on weaker players at practice and giving everyone at least 50% playing time in the games is a good compromise.

You sound better than 90% of rec coaches just from the fact that you are thinking about being fair and improving your players.

I don't agree with you analogy. You can't replicate game experience at practice most of the time, because you just don't have the number of players needed. So it's nothing like playing piano (which only requires a piano). Game experience is really valuable at this age. It's how you understand field position and off-ball movement.

But I will agree with your sentiment.

Games are important, not just for development, but also as a reward and a way to mark progress that results from all the practice. But I think games are way overemphasized in youth sports. When you practice piano, you practice scales, sight reading, chords, arpeggios etc. Performing in a recital without that muscle memory to master the musical piece will be rough. There is a reason kids don’t just practice their recital piece ad nauseum before a recital. All the building blocks have to be there to develop as a musician.

When you go to soccer practice, you practice footwork, dribbling, striking the ball, passing, field vision, etc. Playing in a game without the muscle memory of those skills will will be rough.

To look at it a different way, kids learn in soccer when they physically touch the ball AND have immediate feedback. Like all sports, watching people play around you isn’t enough. In an average 50 min game, a kid who plays the entire game might have the ball in their possession for 4 minutes. If they are a beginner who is not passed to very often, it could be as low as 2-3 minutes.

I agree that kids need to learn off ball movement and field position, but games are not the place where they learn this. The kids are excited, the coach can’t stop play to give instructions, and most of the kids can’t hear the coach anyway. Parents are also shouting instructions at the kids, so it’s just a confusing environment. If they do hear the coach shout “move up” or whatever, they just obey without having time to understand why. I saw a 10u team repeatedly throw in the ball incorrectly at a game last weekend. The ref made the “one foot off the ground” gesture and the coach shouted at the kids “keep both feet on the ground” but the error kept happening because the kids were in game mode, not learning mode. After the game, the coach did one demo, all the kids nodded and did the throw correctly. That 2 min lesson when all the kids were paying attention in learning mode was more effective than 6 bad throw ins with parents, refs, and a few frustrated siblings shouting at them.

In practice, kids will get closer to 10-20 min on the ball because there are multiple balls in play, kids pair up, there are smaller group drills etc. When they don’t have the ball, instead of standing around, the coach will instruct them how to defend, how to make runs, how to find open space, how to look for passes. When there is a teachable moment, the coach can stop the play, give feedback, and have the players repeat it correctly. Players who aren’t involved in the play can observe and learn.

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5c547615b2cf79cd8fe3363f/t/5dc1f85bf700e16c27b8b127/1572993118374/Games+vs.+Practice.pdf

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:10:54, you must be talking about soccer. An April baseball birthday is the youngest in the age group.

When OP listed the positions he plays his strongest players in, it became clear it wasn’t baseball.

[Anonymous]

One of my kids loves being a part of his teams, but is among the weakest players in each sport. He gets less playing time than the better players, but gets his fair share (minimum league rules, sometimes a bit more). And he has told us that it doesn't bother him that he doesn't play the best positions or that he plays less than other kids -- he knows he doesn't work on his sport at home, and in his words "I just play because it's fun and I like being with my friends." And he definitely likes it when they win, no matter if he played a big role in the win or not. So I wouldn't stress about it -- I'd guess most kids who are weaker players know their role on the team.