To date, the National Alliance for Youth Sports has trained more than 3 million volunteer adults who act as coaches in youth sports programs across America through the National Youth Sports Coaches Association. The overwhelming majority of these individuals are parents who get roped into coaching by their local league. The leagues cry out to these people with the plea that "if you don't coach, we just might not have a league this year!"
Coaches in kids' sports are made up of all kinds of people -- good and bad. The "good" people are the ones who understand that it's all about kids having fun and leave it at that.
The "bad" ones get on the field for the first time and swear that they were born to be coaching in the pros. It doesn't matter what sport it is. They just forget where they are and in turn, you see some of the most bizarre behavior you could imagine. And it's not good!
Having directed a league of close to 15,000 kids, I saw my share of the "bad" coaches and decided that something had to be done. Eventually, what was created in 1981 was a nonprofit organization called the National Youth Sports Coaches Association. The first thing the organization did was to create a training program on video whereby leagues could encourage their coaches to attend the training program in order to get their coaches on the right track.
The idea for the training program was to include information on safety, first aid and a basic understanding on the coaching aspects of specific sports. The final part was a session called "the psychology of coaching youth sports." In this session we had a sports psychologist who came on the screen and presented a variety of topics aimed at getting the coaches into a discussion by asking questions, like what role winning plays in kids' sports, why they thought kids came out for sports, and finally, why they thought kids dropped out of sports.
When the sports psychologist came on the screen, he gave his views of the topic and then the video was turned off while the coaches discussed the topics. To my delight, in the very first session held, the coaches got into some heated discussion with most of it positive about the role they should play in coaching kids.
During the break, one of the attending coaches walked up to me and said, "I've got to ask you a question."
Thinking he was going to ask why his league made him come to the program, I was stunned when he blurted out, "Do you think I should be a coach?"
I said, "Why do you ask me that?"
He then proceeded to say that after listening to all the things the coaches said in the discussion that he felt he had been doing it all wrong. I told him that he had just told me that the program worked in that it made him think about the important role he played in coaching kids in sports.
As he walked away, he suddenly turned around and came back to me to say "I've got to tell you something."
"What's that?" I said.
He replied, "I've damaged a lot of kids up until now."
I hope out of the 3 million coaches who have gone through the National Youth Sports Coaches Association training program, we have gotten to them like we did to this guy.