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This is an epidemic we don’t like to see, but we admit its prevalence — young athletes who, if they don’t get their way, or feel they are being treated unfairly, choose to pack up and move on to what appears to be the next best thing, or they complain and mope around like toddlers who have been told they can’t have another cookie. Enough already.
Back in the day, if a kid felt that he or she was being mistreated in some way, parents commonly used the occasion as a life-learning, character-building opportunity. It was old school learned the hard way from their parents. The last generation of athletes, with fewer choices than today, were forced to tackle their problems head on and deal with the consequences. There was no crying in sports, period. Kids either played through the hard times or quit, and in most cases quitting was a stigma nobody wanted to be saddled with for years to come.
Today, it’s more likely a family will become incensed by the coach and skeedattle with a cursory, “Let’s get outta here,” all the while ignoring the longer term consequences to their kid. Honestly, this shoot-from-the-hip thinking is not a responsible solution regardless of the era. It’s a cruise vacation from reality which can cause irreparable harm to the athlete.
It’s the Me Syndrome and no one is the better for it. We like the old way better and call for parents of budding, young athletes to reconsider how they handle the egos of kids whose lives will benefit more from dealing with tough situations and making hard decisions than being protected from the cruel, cruel world.
No one can dodge crisis. Everybody encounters it. The boss gets mad, a co-worker gets jealous, equipment breaks down, supplies run out — these are all things which will happen to everyone sooner than later. In sports it’s usually much sooner. Learning various ways to cope with and overcome problems, or crisis managment, allows kids to develop valuable life skills. Pulling them out of the bull ring too early never allows them to look real fear in the eye, to experience their own vulnerabilities. They don’t learn to make courageous choices.
Choices are a part of life. Choosing to cope with difficult people and learning to thrive in challenging circumstances is far better than throwing up one’s hands as if working with authority figures or insensitive coaches is out of the question. Better to face the music now and practice how to deal with it than to run into a buzz saw of a boss ten years down the road and not have a clue how to survive.
We see the unsettling results too often as pampered youngsters go on to believe that when life’s obstacles are encountered running away is a more viable option than constructively working through them. How on earth did we get to this absurd point?
Every athlete eventually faces his or her share of dilemmas in athletics. From disagreements about playing time to how they are spoken to or disciplined, these are age-old conundrums. As a high school athlete in rural Virginia, I vividly recall having to deal with a tough-as-nails coach who seemed determined to break me down. He was succeeding, too. When I had had enough and went to my parents for help, my father said, “Son, this is something you need to handle. We are not there every day. You are. We do not know the coach well enough to criticize his decisions from our point of view. If you want the situation to change, you’ll have to figure it out.”
That very evening I called the coach and asked for a one-on-one meeting. We met in his office at the school that night and I poured my heart out to him. This was not your warm and fuzzy guy, to say the least, so looking him in the eye and pushing myself into uncharted waters was the most uncomfortable thing I had experienced to that point in my life. There were known risks involved and my parents were unflagging in both their encouragement and determination that I go it alone.
Regardless of the outcome, I wanted him to know what affect this was having on me and what I was willing to do to make things right. More hustle. Less taking my role for granted. More leadership. Less moping. And, after three years of playing for him, he finally opened up and told me his story and why he had made the decisions he had. It was a revelation. Even if I never played a minute of basketball for him again, I got it. It wasn’t all about me.
That conversation changed my life. I learned nothing about basketball that night, but what I took away with me imbedded in my character. My father was a wise, wise man. He knew that this particular encounter and experience would be a watershed moment for me, and it was. Watershed moments are good. Kids today need more of that same sort of dousing. It’s hard, but critically necessary.
Athletics are all about learning life’s lessons. Yes, athletes remember the practices, the locker room banter along with the gratifying wins and devastating losses. But, more than anything, athletes learn how about real life issues such as how to cohesively work with others toward a common goal, how to support one another in disappointing times, how to win with class and lose with grace, and how to work through problems with tough authoritarians.
If we, as parents and coaches, coddle and protect our kids too much from crises, they miss out on those invaluable lessons which carry them through life, instead thinking that the answers will always be given to them. We can do better.
National Scouting Report is dedicated to finding scholarship opportunities for athletes who possess the talent, desire, and motivation to compete at the collegiate level. We’ve helped connect thousands of athletes with their perfect college.