By Michael Clapier

Recently I stood behind the dugout watching a little league baseball game.

A young athlete committed an error—something that happens all the time but this one allowed the game-winning run to score. She dropped a fly ball. What appeared to be a routine catch, hit her glove and tumbled to the ground.

When the inning was over, her coach met her at the third base line and unloaded his frustration. Yelling, screaming and red-faced intensity greeted a child who missed a fly ball during a little league game.

The angry coach is not the remarkable revelation of this moment. Most coaches keep their calm and verbal abuse is never justified. He was making a more critical error than she, but it was her reaction that astounded me.

The player looked at the coach, waited for him to finish and then walked to the team bench and sat down.

I then heard a most unbelievable dialog between two little league players.

A second player commented. “Wow, coach was ticked.”

The scolded player looked at her friend and simply replied, “What?”

During the moment of reprimand, when the coach was upset and embarrassing himself, this child turned off his noise. The waiting drink of water at the team bench carried more meaning for her than the coach’s intended instruction. This young player shut the coach out so successfully that she failed to even notice his anger even though her teammate and I worried for her well-being.

I was astounded because I still reel from Little league mistakes that I made.  Even though I never had a coach effectively teach me how to handle errors or defeat, a coach getting upset with me would have devastated me.

How this child was affected is yet to be seen, but the astounding element of the moment for me was how she reacted. It was another indication of the way that today’s child is different and we must coach them in new ways in order to be effective.

Here was a child so accomplished at shutting out noise that she simply flipped a switch and turned off this unpleasant encounter. I started thinking of all the ways that our children differ and how that difference impacts the youth sports experience.

Let me suggest five measurements of team play, regardless of the sport, that is capable of creating a meaningful experience for your child. A great program will:

Encourage and Allow Play for Fun’s Sake
While watching my boys compete in a wrestling tournament, I read a surprising sign on the wall of a local high school gymnasium. It simply read, “No Unsupervised Play”.

A number of factors are at work here; we over schedule our children, leaving them little free time. We deny creative play, we fear for their safety and finding safe places is often difficult unless under adult supervision. The threat of injury and litigation makes schools, churches and neighborhood open spaces unavailable, and video games, computers, texting, and other electronics devices compete for their attention. While the reasons differ the reality remains the same. Today's young athlete usually engages in sports only under the supervision of adults.

Sand lot baseball and pickup basketball games are disappearing faster than analog televisions.

Design Workouts that Engage Every Child
Every child is different. Working with a dozen kids with a single plan or one way of doing is problematic. Kids labeled with attention deficit disorder (ADD)—and there are many—challenge coaches to function with that condition. Parents can quickly blame a child’s lack of enjoyment on the coach’s absence of skill. The design of a workout must embrace every child regardless of physical or emotional levels.

Teach and Expect Work
A young person who stays on task and can work for an extended period of time is the exception rather than the rule. A young athlete’s capacity for work comes from the quality of coaching rather than from the child. Coach cannot assume that a child knows how to work. It must be taught and expected.

Reject Quick Fixes and Easy Solutions
Instant fame, quick cash and “everyone gets in for free” is the culture our kids worship. The acquisition of competent athletic skill takes time and effort. Does your program teach the development of skills knowing most kids will miss kicks, drop passes or fall short thousand of times before becoming athletically excellent?  

Define Winning
Youth sport programs give children a laboratory to investigate life’s experience. Through youth sports, children develop more than physicality, learn social skills that allow them to work with others, personally experience the value of working toward a simple goal, undergo loss while staying connected to personal issues of character and honor, learn the disappearing art of winning with class or losing with grace and the importance of being active now and for the rest of their lives. No one disagrees that these are important issues. The coach and program are the guardians of the gate, the keepers of the keys, the dispensers of wisdom and insight.

Coach is not just the guy or gal who yells when things go wrong.

I suggest that it is a new day and those of us engaged in the mentoring and coaching of young people need to look for solutions other than the ones we experienced during our own little league experience.

Old school is out.

The challenge for every parent with a child involved in little league sports or a coach of young athletes is to admit that the book for the new school of coaching thought and development practice is just beginning written.Michael Clapier is a coach, sports official, media producer and author. In "Coaching Young Couch Potatoes, The Mentor’s Guide to Little league and Youth Sports" he explores the challenges of today's young athlete and offers effective methods to coach kids. His current blog http://www.wrestlingtrainingmedia.com introduces foundational messages for the development of core muscles groups in young athletes.