Rec league sport, 15 min in, kid didn’t play?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's hard to tell what is going on from OP's scenario. Did your kid get to play at all or were they benched the whole time? What 15 minutes are your referring to?

Not all rec leagues have "equal" playing time rules. Most have minimum playing time rules. Before I talked to the coach, I'd read up on this. Different coaches and different leagues have different approaches to setting this up. Just because your kid didn't play in the first 15 minutes doesn't mean they didn't get minimum or equal playing time.

+1, I'm not clear on what happened. OP says they'd been through 5 "rotations" and that the other kids on the team had all played 3-4 times. In 15 minutes? Usually by 2nd grade kids are getting to play for at least 5 minutes at a time, how long were these rotations.

A half is generally 20 or 25 minutes. I'm guessing if they were short players, they were just playing 20 minute halves. Did OP say something during the break?

I agree the advice to never bring this stuff up during the game is good. Even if my kid was looking miserable and frustrated at not getting to play, I'd keep my mouth shut until the game was over. And then afterwards I'd talk to him to ask what was going on, if he knew why he hadn't played. And then I'd talk to the coach. To not play a kid at all during a game at that level is incredibly rude -- the kid suited up, the family trucked to the field, that's a family's whole morning sometimes. I would expect an explanation and no I would not observe a "24 hour rule." It's not about being an intense sports parent who thinks my kid is David Beckham, it's about treating the kids fairly and ensuring they are all getting equal opportunities in an entry level sport that is about kids learning the basics, getting exercise, and developing teamwork.

If OP was hassling the coach in the middle of the game, that's annoying and he/she should have held back and waited until it was over (perhaps the kid was about to go in). But if the kid sat the whole game and the coach was rude about it when they asked, or if there was other context indicating the coach was just being a jerk, I get it. I would be pretty irritated to be time, effort, and money into signing my kid up for a team only to have them sit their twiddling their thumbs for now reason.

I've never volunteer coached but have done lots of other thankless volunteer jobs (backstage at the ballet recital, timer at swim tournaments, chaperoning field trips, manning merch tables at school fairs, etc. etc.). I get it. You are donating your time and people aren't always very appreciative. But you don't take it out on the kids. They are the whole point.

[Anonymous]

These games are not very long
Maybe 15min is too soon to ask, but not by much
These games are over before you know it

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Rex coaches have to play everyone. This is why people leave for travel.

They have to play everyone, but not necessarily everyone in the first 15 minutes, right?

I want to know what OP means when she says the coach was upset.

They have to play everyone but they can’t necessarily split the time up evenly.

I have 3 kids - 2 very athletic boys and 1 not so athletic girl. Both my boys always played 90% of the time. My daughter probably played 10-20%. They all got put on the game.

Even if it is rec, coaches still want to win. They put in the better players and often rotate the bad players.

I think that’s really uncool. How will players like your daughter ever improve if they aren’t allowed more than 20% game time in a rec league?

[Anonymous]

Of course I would say something if all the children played 3-4 times and my kid didn't. I'm sure it was an overnight.

[Anonymous]

We had one kid on my sons team who always didn't feel well or his foot hurt or something was wrong. The kid didn't want to play but the parents wanted him there. The Coach didn't play the kid and the parents finally dropped the sport after 2 years.

In baseball, we had a kid on the team who clearly didn't want to play but Mom swore he loved it. The kid got into it with another kid on a regular basis, we had to separate the kids. He would walk up to bat and swing the bat with one hand. He would walk to the base. Zero interest in playing.

There are kids whose parents really want them to be active or involved in a team sport and place their kids in rec sports. The kid doesn't want to be there and the Coaches and other parents all realize that but the parents just don't want to hear it.

There are parents who register their kid to play a rec sport for the first time in MS and expect that the coach is going to teach their kid how to play the sport and get them up to speed on the skills. These are also parents who wonder why their kid doesn't get as much playing time. Yes, rec sports are for kids to learn and have fun but most MS kids want to win and giving equal playing time to the kid who cannot dribble the soccer ball and doesn't know where to be on defense hurts the team. The parents, and the kid, need to understand that they are behind and it will take time to catch up. The Coach will get them playing time but it might not be equal at the beginning because no one on the team wants to lose so that DC gets equal playing time when while not having the skills or knowing the game.

On the other side of things, there are the coaches hell bent on winning at every level of rec sports who don't do a good job rotating kids and don't care if every kid plays. Those are equally frustrating if for different reasons.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Rex coaches have to play everyone. This is why people leave for travel.

I seriously doubt people's kids are talented enough to make a travel team, and also the rec coach is sitting them out for 75% of the game and letting other kids play 100% of the game. Lol.

Travel teams have B and C teams for a reason. The parents of kids who are average players who either think their kid is great and those rec kids are holding them back or the parents who want their kid to get more playing time or better coaching to improve their game and get more exercise. My nephew played on a C team for a couple of years, I thought my brother was crazy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We had one kid on my sons team who always didn't feel well or his foot hurt or something was wrong. The kid didn't want to play but the parents wanted him there. The Coach didn't play the kid and the parents finally dropped the sport after 2 years.

In baseball, we had a kid on the team who clearly didn't want to play but Mom swore he loved it. The kid got into it with another kid on a regular basis, we had to separate the kids. He would walk up to bat and swing the bat with one hand. He would walk to the base. Zero interest in playing.

There are kids whose parents really want them to be active or involved in a team sport and place their kids in rec sports. The kid doesn't want to be there and the Coaches and other parents all realize that but the parents just don't want to hear it.

There are parents who register their kid to play a rec sport for the first time in MS and expect that the coach is going to teach their kid how to play the sport and get them up to speed on the skills. These are also parents who wonder why their kid doesn't get as much playing time. Yes, rec sports are for kids to learn and have fun but most MS kids want to win and giving equal playing time to the kid who cannot dribble the soccer ball and doesn't know where to be on defense hurts the team. The parents, and the kid, need to understand that they are behind and it will take time to catch up. The Coach will get them playing time but it might not be equal at the beginning because no one on the team wants to lose so that DC gets equal playing time when while not having the skills or knowing the game.

On the other side of things, there are the coaches hell bent on winning at every level of rec sports who don't do a good job rotating kids and don't care if every kid plays. Those are equally frustrating if for different reasons.

Side note: there should 100% be sports leagues for MS kids who are learning a sport for the first time. Think about what we are teaching children if it's hard to find a way to learn a sport past the age of 10. Especially a team sport like soccer that can be a recreational sport people play casually into adulthood.

As to the rest of your comment, that's why coaches and parents should have good communication. If you're coaching a kid who clearly doesn't want to be there, always asks not to play, always has mysterious illnesses that clear up after the game... reach out to the parents and tell them that. Yes some people are crazy and will disregard it, but actually most people are not crazy and will take the input of a coach, especially if it's clearly intended with kindness and concern for the kid.

My kid did one year of soccer. She did not like it. We did not put her in it again. But for that one season, we did in fact "force" her to go. We told her that if she wanted to sit and watch instead of play, that was fine. But then she had to practice good sportsmanship (cheering for teammates, being polite to the coach and helping out on the sidelines if the coach asked, etc.). We discussed all of this with the coach, who understood we were just trying to give a shy kid a chance to warm to a sport in case it clicked one day. It didn't, but I still think it was a good experience and at the end of the year she had friends on that team and had actually come to enjoy some of the practice drills they did, even if she didn't like actually playing soccer. This was 6U soccer. If there were parents on that team pissed off that my kid wasn't helping the team win or felt she was dragging it down, I feel ZERO empathy for them. If you need your 6 yr old to have the ultimate competitive soccer experience, go find a travel team for other insane parents like yourself. Rec should be for everyone. Even the kids who are figuring out they don't like that sport.

[Anonymous]

Managing playing time is trickier than you think. And rec sports are not about winning.

That said, OP should definitely get their kid's take. And wait to talk with the coach until the next practice or before the next game.

[Anonymous]

OP you were wrong to go up to the coach 15 minutes into a game. You needed to at least wait until half time to check in with your child to make sure they are okay and wanted to play. And have waited until after the game to talk to the coach.

Was it basketball? So 5 on the court and only 2 subs. Maybe your child was going to play more the second half.

Is your child the worse kid on the team?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Managing playing time is trickier than you think. And rec sports are not about winning.

That said, OP should definitely get their kid's take. And wait to talk with the coach until the next practice or before the next game.

Not really. Just use Google Sheets and track the times.

[Anonymous]

Some coaches do screw up rotations. Some coaches do get hung up on little things and decide players should not play.

I kid you not, we had a Coach bench a player for wearing the wrong color socks for a U11 soccer game. That coach, while trying to instill leadership lessons on 10 year old girls, was too arrogant and had too big of an ego to not see how he damaged a young player by doing that.

-This was an experienced coach too. Some coaches just don't understand how the brains of adolescents work and apply adult rules when allocating playing time.

I would have asked also!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Some coaches do screw up rotations. Some coaches do get hung up on little things and decide players should not play.

I kid you not, we had a Coach bench a player for wearing the wrong color socks for a U11 soccer game. That coach, while trying to instill leadership lessons on 10 year old girls, was too arrogant and had too big of an ego to not see how he damaged a young player by doing that.

-This was an experienced coach too. Some coaches just don't understand how the brains of adolescents work and apply adult rules when allocating playing time.

I would have asked also!

Nah, that was just an excuse because the player just wasn’t that good. There are different rules for good players.

[Anonymous]

Do the kids look similar?

If it is a homogeneous group with similar ability or similar bad ability, the coach may not have kept good track. I mean it is only fifteen minutes.

Bad move to go up to coach in the middle of a game. If anything, it should be at the end of a game or after a pattern of several games.

And rec teams don’t play all the kids the same amount of time. Some may but definitely not all or even most.

Our friend coached a basketball team and one of the parents called him racist. The team was half black and half white and the best kids on the team were black plus the coach’s white child. Coach often played the best kids who happened to be black and I guess he gave his own child more playing time than benched child who was black. Coach said he often played 4 black kids at a time so how could he be racist. If anything, he didn’t play the white kids as much. Our friend stopped coaching after that and his white son is often the only white starter on the teams he plays on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Do the kids look similar?

If it is a homogeneous group with similar ability or similar bad ability, the coach may not have kept good track. I mean it is only fifteen minutes.

Bad move to go up to coach in the middle of a game. If anything, it should be at the end of a game or after a pattern of several games.

And rec teams don’t play all the kids the same amount of time. Some may but definitely not all or even most.

Our friend coached a basketball team and one of the parents called him racist. The team was half black and half white and the best kids on the team were black plus the coach’s white child. Coach often played the best kids who happened to be black and I guess he gave his own child more playing time than benched child who was black. Coach said he often played 4 black kids at a time so how could he be racist. If anything, he didn’t play the white kids as much. Our friend stopped coaching after that and his white son is often the only white starter on the teams he plays on.

But rec leagues do have minimums for all players. If the coach isn't doing that then they shouldn't coach. This is why America- for all of its size and population- doesn't really have more standout kids. We do development all wrong.
Our league requires all kids play at least 2 full quarters. In the first few games, it is more difficult because most kids dont have the stamina to last 12 minutes straight. I started with half field practices for the first few weeks and then slowly increased to 3/4 and then full field scrimmages for almost 1/2 of my practice time. All of this with 8u kids. My kids ran circles around other teams but it also took almost the whole season for all of them to be able to last the 12 minutes.
Kids need acclimation to load for running and distance. Our games werent even on full size fields but because they had acclimated to scrimmage on a larger area maintaining wasnt a problem towards the end of the season. Most coaches either wont train the endurance, even for young kids, or go too hard too fast.

I had 3 practices a week. First practice of the week focused on what I saw missing in the weekend game. Second practice was full scrimmage to start break for drills then scrimmage working on X concept like cant score unless you pass three times or practice throw-ins from both the defensive or offensive position. Third practice was fun/sprints and then scrimmage.
I did animal sprints. I had them dribble sprint pass. I did 2v2. 3v3. I punted the ball down the field for 1v1 and made them sprint to it and then whoever got it had to score with the other person trying to defend only.

I took it pretty seriously, not because of winning, but because the kids should have fun and also learn something. I wanted all the kids to look forward to practice and I had a few kids who had a)played soccer or b)played a soccer with a team. Imagine if their first experience was riding the bench or not having their coach believe in them! Who didnt explain that when a goalie misses a ball the ball didnt go past just the goalie, it got past the 6 other kids on the field too. Or who didnt get a positive note about their attitude- hustle, teamwork, sportsmanship- at least once during the season.

The win-at-all-costs puts too much pressure on the kids and its all so the Coach can feed their egos. We did win the league btw

[Anonymous]

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