Quote:
Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop
The current wisdom is that the kids who do better in the long run are those who get to play in a unstructured way -- pick-up soccer, where they can be creative and try things out -- rather than those who spend lots of time being drilled by adults. Not sure that all that coaching is really helping the kids that much, relative to just finding a way to play. Obviously, it's better than nothing, but the middle-class need to take childhood activities and structure them under adult supervision is not the most positive thing. But in our area, all the fields have been taken over by organized activities, so I'm not sure where the kids would be able to go to play pick-up if they wanted to.
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I think is
somewhat true. My daughter's foot skills, goalie technique, and understanding of the game are so beyond what she would have learned playing in an unstructured way that this is not really true. But coaching the creativity out of these kids is definitely a problem.
Every coach who is not personally involved in these travel programs says that they want kids who have played multiple sports--better footwork, more creativity, different muscles and skills developed, etc.
For basketball, I try to get my daughter out on city courts in the summer. She needs to play pick-up with kids who will foul her to keep her from winning, call bullshit fouls, and embarrass her with moves she's never seen.
We recently visited my old undergrad and the school was hosting an all-star game for MN high school kids. One of the players on my school's team (who was running the clock) told us that the girls we were watching were almost all going to Division I schools. Insanity. All of them were form shooters. ZERO creativity. 400 three point attempts. Those girls are in for a rude awakening, because we also went to an AAU tournament for HS girls* and the talent levels on some of those courts were absolutely fantastic. You can tell the best kids are the ones who learned on city courts who were scooped up into excellent AAU programs.
TM
*It's just absolutely amazing that girls have these opportunities now. It was breathtaking to see so many young women playing at such highly competitive levels and coaches scouting them.
