Adventures in Coaching Soccer

Last year, I coached the U10 soccer team my daughter Emma was part of. Working with these 8, 9, and 10 year old girls was very rewarding and fun. This year, I will be coaching the U8 boys team my son Pascal is on. More fun to look forward to, especially since my co-coach has experience coaching littler kids like these, so I can expect to learn much.

One thing that I learned last year is that coaching soccer is best done quietly. Especially, during actual games the kids need to learn how to make instantaneous decisions on the field. Soccer is a very spontaneous, creative game, without the structures and strictures of other popular American games like baseball or football. So, coaching loudly from the sidelines is really quite counter-productive. It was hard to refrain from yelling instructions, since certainly I knew what we had to do. But for the kids, it is useless and counter-productive. I also tried to encourage the parents to limit themselves to cheering (for good play by both teams) and not to try and yell instructions. The youth game is not a spectator sport but should be a space for kids to have healthy fun.

Only one time during the year did I have a problem. The parent I had a problem with wrote an essay about the experience which was just published in the Sunday Boston Globe: “In a new season, reflections of a soccer mom”. She starts with a nice compliment:

I was particularly proud of Ellie’s team and coach this year. He took a group of girls with abilities ranging from none to some and formed them into a cohesive unit that played well as a team. They were almost as proud of themselves when they lost as when they won. Playing on the teams has taught my daughters how to work together, how to play fair, be mutually dependent, welcome new players. It taught them to focus and pay attention and guided them through new social situations.

She goes on to describe the difficult circumstances in their family’s life last year (a dying mother). Watching the soccer games gave her a much needed escape. Then came the game against X-Town:

After a month of cold and rain, the girls were playing in 80-degree heat under a blazing sun during a holiday weekend when many families were away. Our team of 11 was down to six with no substitutes, against a team with at least 10 players. At halftime, the score was 1-0 in our opponents’ favor. Both teams had played hard. During the second half, the other team scored at least four more goals. Our girls played their hearts out, but their spirits and energy were flagging.

They got hit and they kept playing. Their coach made them drink water and poured it over them to keep them cool. But they were slowing down, while the other team, with waves of substitutes, plowed ahead. Parents were upset. When teams at this level of play get ahead by that many goals, coaches typically tell forwards they can’t score anymore. They have to play different positions or pass the ball a certain number of times before they can shoot on goal. But that didn’t happen in this case.

When the game was over, I watched our six players cross the field in tears. I marched across the field and informed the opposing coaches that I didn’t see the difference between winning 3 to 0 three to zero and winning 7 to 0. (Later, I was notified we had lost only 5 to 0.) “I don’t care about the score,” one coach said. “Do you think the kids do?” I snarled back. The coach said they had offered our team players, but our coach had turned them down. Who wants another team’s players helping out?

Ellie’s 13-year-old sister, Maggie, called her dad and said “Mom rocked” for standing up to the injustice. But I arrived home to discover an icy e-mail from my daughter’s coach, telling me I had been out of line and should have come to him first, that the league has a zero-tolerance policy toward parental interference on the field and takes it seriously.

That “icy” email was from me, of course, since I didn’t have a chance to talk to her at the game. She had left by the time I had finished packing up the equipment bags and talking to my players. Only then did I hear from the X-Town coach about her behavior.

What had happened is that she had completely misread the situation. A week earlier we had played the other X-Town team in our division and had played them to a tie. Now, that team was by far the best team in our division, and coached by a very confident — to the point of arrogance — coach. The other X-Town coach had watched the game and before the game we’re talking about, she approached me to congratulate me on our play the week before. She told me that she was proud of my girls and that she hoped her team could learn from us. So, they went into the game with the attitude that they were playing a much superior team and that they would do their best to keep up with us. When our girls got tired during the second half, they did offer us to give us a player or too, but my players would have none of that. The only thing that could have been construed as unfortunate was that their assistant coaches were yelling instructions from the sidelines throughout the game.

In any case, what Ellie’s mother should have done is to approach me with her concerns, instead of taking matters into her own hands. When the other coach told me what had happened, I smoothed things over. I told her (truthfully) that this had been the first time such a thing had happened and that I would make sure it wouldn’t happen again. Maybe, I shouldn’t have done that because our league has a zero-tolerance policy but I thought she should be given some slack. Nevertheless, my email told her in no uncertain terms that such behavior is unacceptable.

I called the coach, chagrined, like a kid apologizing to a parent or teacher for misbehaving. He was clearly angry, but polite. He said my daughter could be punished for my behavior — she could be kicked off the team. I lost my breath. I didn’t try to defend my actions. I sat in a dark room with my husband and cried. I cried for my mother, who had so much more grandmothering left to do, and for my daughter, who fought so hard to no avail, and for my own helplessness.

To clarify, when a parent behaves inappropriately, the only recourse that the league has is to suspend the player. And that might well have happened, if we hadn’t managed to address the situation “in house”. It would have been really sad if Ellie had been the one to suffer from her mother’s outburst. I was particularly proud of Ellie’s development over the year with my team and would have hated for that progress to be undermined.

The story concludes:

My mother died four weeks ago, and soccer is starting up again. I’m afraid of sitting on the sidelines, feeling the lack of control in my life and being judged by other parents and new coaches for my past behavior. I’m afraid soccer will remind me of how much I lost last year. But a new season holds the promise of giving me a chance to let go, and a glimpse of a future to feel optimistic about.

There is a lot of good material online about “sports rage” and tips for parents and coaches. One league even instituted a regular weekend of “silent games” where coaches and parents are not at all allowed to speak and shout — only clapping allowed. Check out some of the comments from kids in a brochure from Australia about sports rage:

“My dad is great — he just watches.”

“I don’t play anymore because mom used to yell too much. I got sick of it.”

“I play sports because it’s fun and you’ll be able to still move when you grow old.”

In other countries, much of kids’ sports occurs in unorganized pick-up games in parks and streets. I wish there was more of that here. In fact, I suspect that there is no way that US (men’s) soccer will ever reach the World Cup final until kids start playing soccer every day on their own without parental interference and coaching — the way I used to play when I was a kid in Germany.