If You Are Losing, Apply More Power
Wednesday, September 26, 2007 at 12:56PM One the big goals for our team this year is for the girls to realize how many different options they have on the field and the ability to choose which option is right for each situation. I've often heard coaches and parents on the side lines of games where their team is losing, actually I hear it a lot when they are winning too, yelling out the phrases; "Come On! Play Harder!" or "Get Tougher! Don't let them push you around!" When I hear comments like this I can't help but laugh a little.
"You're not playing hard enough," is our simple answer to the problems that come up in games. "If you would just play harder you would win" is the message we send. This is a part of the culture we live in and our mentalities translate into sports. In Jaime Raser's book Raising Children You Can Live With He notes:
Children can draw parents into interactions that become Us (the children) against Them (authority figures), not Us against the realistic and logical consequences of rules. Us against Them becomes a war. "Getting tougher" can win battles, but it may also teach that winning is the most important goal and that force and power are the ways to win. Children then learn that, with enough power, they can also win and that this is how the world operates. If they feel they are losing, they simply apply more power.
It is an old American football idea. You don't lose because of lack of preparation. You don't lose because you have not learned what to do on the field. You don't lose because gasp! the other team is better than you. You lose because you didn't try hard enough. You didn't battle hard enough. That is a terrible message to send to our kids. Losing means you didn't try? Sure, it works out nicely for the coaches and parents because it was not their fault. It was the kids' fault for not trying hard enough.
If we equate losing with a lack of effort we are also building excuses for the kids and coaches. We are putting the blame on their lack of effort when, more than likely, there are aspects of your game that need to be improved.
We don't always have to "Get Tougher" to win the battles. We can be creative in our ways to get the ball out of our half and into their net. We don't always have to boot the ball up field. Force is not always the answer. We have to be strong enough as coaches and parents to not make each play and every game a zero sum game with only one winner and one loser. We need to be able to allow for the fact that sometimes the teams and players we are facing are better than us and when we run into this situation our solution should not be to simply "apply more force."
Are there consequences to this type of thinking? Sure there are. You are going to lose the ball and, especially if you are playing someone who is better than you, the ball may end up in the back of your net. It may end up there a lot. But what are the consequences to only subscribing to the "apply more force" type of thinking? Sure you might get a good result in today's game. But in the future you will probably run up against someone better than the team you just played and your one and only strategy may not work and you wont have an alternative.
Sometimes applying more force is the answer, but not all the time. If we, coaches and parents, can calmly look at each situation in a game and inspire our players to think outside the box to solve the problems they face on the field, then the players may start to believe in their abilities. And if we're lucky, along with self belief, they will be inspired and begin to work on new ways to solve problems.
