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

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=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. [/quote]

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.[/quote]

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