Nuts For Balls

Nuts For Balls is about the author's experiences coaching youth soccer.

Over three million children between the ages of six and eighteen played on organized youth soccer teams in the United States last year. Most of them, by far, played in the novice and beginning divisions. Teams need coaches to guide them, especially at those levels. With an average of two coaches per team that meant that approximately one hundred thousand coaches coached those kids last season. Very few leagues have an overabundance of youth coaches at their disposal. It is quite common for many leagues to beg and plead with parents to coach. Far too often, leagues pose the threat to parents that their sons or daughters might not be able to play that season, unless a parent of a player on the team without a coach, steps up and decides to coach. If they don’t coach, their children’s seasons may be over before they begin. The amount of teams in an age group of each level of each league is always based on the number of kids that are signed up to play in those age groups and levels, and how many kids will play on each team in them. The teams are often put together before coaches are found for those teams. Some parents heed the call and step up so that their kids can play, even though they might not know anything about the game, coaching soccer, or want to learn about it. Some of them think negatively about the situation right when they sign up to coach. They go in thinking that they will do the minimum amount necessary. Who wants a coach that acts like he doesn’t want to be there, doesn’t care about the kids, or teaching them the game? When this happens the league loses credibility for having bad coaches. The coach looks bad because he doesn’t care. The kids don’t learn anything about the sport. Unfortunately, that’s what you get a lot of times when a league threatens parents with not allowing children to play unless one of their parents coaches their team. Who could blame the league for employing these drastic measures? What other choices do they have to get parents to coach? They definitely don’t have enough money to pay the coaches. The problem of leagues not having enough parents to coach has been going on since soccer leagues began. It is a problem that is not easily fixed. Luckily, after begging and pleading with parents, most teams end up with at least one coach. When a parent coaches when he didn’t really want to, it is usually a bad situation for everyone involved. Many of the players on these teams might have been better off with no coach at all, especially if they had bad experiences that turned them off to the sport, and possibly all sports. Who would want to be the coach that made a player stop playing a sport? Luckily, the majority of parents that coach because the league begged them to, go in with a positive mindset. Even though they know nothing about the sport they still learn about it and how to coach, so the kids on their teams have a great experience. Of course, sometimes a parent who knows a lot about coaching other sports, or who has never coached, but knows a lot about the game of soccer, will step up.

Before I started coaching soccer I had played the sport for many years. I loved the sport, but I had never thought about coaching a team. My mom got a phone call from the league telling her that unless one of the parents of the kids on my sister’s team volunteered to coach, the girls on the team that my sister was on wouldn’t be able to play. It was my sister’s first year of organized soccer. She was in the lowest level of the youngest age group. My mom urged me to coach the team. After my mom nagged me for weeks I decided to give coaching a shot. I went into the season thinking negative thoughts, but I came out thinking it was one of the best experiences of my life. Most of all I had fun, more fun than I dreamed I could have.