One year, when my sons were playing travel soccer, they had a coach who I will calll Nick. The season consisted of eight games, one every Saturday afternoon. The policy of the Massachusetts Youth Soccer Association was for every child to play a minimum of fifty percent of each game.
Seems fair enough, right? Think again. The way it worked on Nick's team was for six of the players (one of them his son) to play between seventy-five and one hundred percent of the game while the remaining twelve boys (including two of my sons) shared the remaining time. Sure, they all played fifty percent of each game, but thirty-five minutes, instead of the upwards of seventy the "favored" played each week.
One of the players seemed to get special consideration. Ricky was a strong, natural athlete: big, fast and tall. Yet, despite the fact that he had never played travel soccer, missed all but two of the team's sixteen weekday practices!! due to other sport team commitments, he never came out of the game! Ever!
The favoritism that Nick showed Ricky wasn't lost on the parents, many of who grumbled on the sidelines about how unfair it was that he was always playing.
It wasn't lost on the players either. Most players were essentially sharing a position with another boy and by the end of the season, each had played the equivalent of four full games, while the "lucky" six had played almost eight full games. Yet, each family paid the full price for their sons to be on the team.
Since it is generally agreed that the more one plays, the better one tends to get, not only did playing the less developed players less than the more skilled and experienced players make it harder for them to catch up to the other boys, but, worse, it made being on the team less fun and tended to build resentment among the "have nots" towards the full time players which was clearly destructive of team chemistry and cohesion.
Dr. Milton Fujita, a California-based child-adolescent psychiatrist, has seen plenty of children harmed by participation in sports. "Organizing games for children is fine as long as it's organized so all the kids who want to play actually get to play," he says. "When the whole issue of winning becomes primary, then participation suffers.. Winning is kind of inherent. You can't really de-emphasize it. But winning at all costs is something that needs to be looked at very seriously," says Fujita.
Playing the stronger players more isn't necessarily a surefire recipe for future success either. In Nick's case, it appeared he played Ricky 100% of the time at the expense of the other players in the hopes of developing him into a top-notch player for the town's soccer program. It didn't work out as he planned: The next year Ricky quit soccer to play football!
I have seen the same thing happen in other sports. One spring, a JV lacrosse coach used one player exclusively on the power play all season, presumably to groom him to play for the varsity the next year. He clearly was building the team around this boy's strength. Problem was, the player transferred to a private school the next fall and what could have been a stellar varsity lacrosse team fell apart. Too bad the coach hadn't given some of the players who were returning a chance to develop more as a powerful and cohesive team they had promised to be before a coach zapped their spirit.
Many high school freshman and junior varsity teams that adopt a win-at-all-costs approach may win more games but end up hurting the varsity in the long run. Those that put player development before winning end up doing what they are supposed to do: develop the largest possible player pool to "feed" the varsity.
How many times have you watched as a starting player suffer an injury during a tournament and is replaced by a player that hasn't had any playing time? Chances are the new player won't perform as well in such a pressure situation than had he had more playing time during the season.
To ensure equal playing time, your child's coach should:
Deciding on a substitution pattern in advance, and then following it during the game, creates a win-win situation for players, parents and the coach:
Don’t assume that your top players are always going to be there. At the sub-varsity level and below, developing all your players insures that someone will be able to step in if a player gets injured, becomes ineligible, switches to another sport, moves away or decides to enroll in a different school.
Players should remind the coach that if all kids got equal playing time, they all would have an equal chance to develop new skills and the team would be stronger for it!
Links:
[1] https://www.momsteam.com/successful-parenting/early-bloomers-late-bloomers-gifted-athlete-advantages-disadvantages
[2] https://www.momsteam.com/successful-parenting/having-fun-skill-development-as-important-as-winning-in-youth-sports
[3] https://www.momsteam.com/successful-parenting/talking-to-coach-taking-the-stress-out
[4] https://www.momsteam.com/health-safety/emotional-injuries/cut-from-the-team/cut-from-the-team
[5] https://www.momsteam.com/successful-parenting/pre-season-meetings-open-lines-of-communication-coaches-parents-athletes
[6] https://www.momsteam.com/successful-parenting/parent-coach-relationship/preseason-meeting-essential-topics-and-questions