Reply to "Ball-Hogging" in Basketball - where do you side on this?

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Reply to ""Ball-Hogging" in Basketball - where do you side on this?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My son's soccer team (rec) has a ball hog kid.  The most enjoyable season for everyone was the season he wasn't on the team.  Everyone got a chance to play and the team's passing made a tremendous improvement without him.  The next season, he came back (he plays travel and rec) and I've notcied the boys have gone back downhill in terms of willingness to pass - they have two tremendous players, one the ball hog and one not.  When the ball hog is there no one passes, ever.  If he misses a game, even if the far superior other player is there, the boys pass.  The only thing I can think of is that the other excellent player passes back.[/quote]

We went through this. At the highest levels, soccer, like basketball, is all about passing and teamwork. When you watch a professional soccer match, it's all about those long passes between players. These are skills OP's son needs to develop if he wants to advance, including in basketball.

I get the frustration about passing to kids who might turn the ball over. OP has some choices. She can teach her son that it's not just about winning, it's also about teamwork, and this is a great learning opportunity re teamwork so just be patient. Or, move to a better team.

The coaches may help - or not, if they're invested in winning over everything else. We were also the parents of a #2 or #3 kid on a team with a coach who was invested in winning and was looking to cultivate "stars" to advance his own standing. The #1 kid was allowed to hog the ball constantly (and even to knock other kids on the team down). The various parents who mentioned to the coach that it would be nice for other kids to develop their skills were always told that their own kids should be more aggressive. Yeah, we had that talk with DC, but kids that age don't always get it. It's a shame, because 7-8 years later I can tell you that several non-favored kids dropped out early on, and the #1 kid never did get recruited, lost ground relative to other players (never had much of a growth spurt), and changed sports by senior year. Nobody benefited. Age 11, even age 13, is way too early for a coach to make decisions about who gets all the opportunities and who doesn't, because growing bodies, genetics and changing interests will overturn things every time. But, there are lots of coaches like this. [/quote]

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