an interesting story from today’s Dominion Post. From http://www.stuff.co.nz/4072915a1823.html,  but I’ll paste it in below as it’ll disappear off the web soon.

I don’t think we have a big problem with this here in Ice Hockey – most parents are very supportive of players and contribute in positive ways. He has some interesting things to say about when kids develop into superstars etc and giving players a fair go. Michael Jordan couldn’t make his high school team? Crazy…

[quote:e5s99g9g][b:e5s99g9g]Parents need to shut up – sports expert[/b:e5s99g9g]

Visiting American sports expert Bob Bigelow has a simple message for parents readying themselves to bark instructions from the sidelines this morning: “shut up”.

Bigelow, a former basketball star brought to Wellington to speak at a coaching conference organised by Sport and Recreation New Zealand, says children playing sport have enough to think about without listening to their parents.

“They can’t hear you, they don’t want to hear you, they can’t process the advice.”

Bigelow has a similar piece of advice for coaches. It is encapsulated in the title of his book on children’s sport, Just Let the Kids Play.

Bigelow, a former Boston Celtic, wrote the book after becoming alarmed by the increasing involvement of adults in children’s sport.

As a kid growing up in Boston, he spent every available minute playing baseball and touch football, but the vast majority of it – he estimates 98 per cent – did not involve adults. It was all about “pick-up games” – playing in backyards, playgrounds and sandlots. That taught him how to make his own decisions, how to deal with other kids and how to play with kids of different ages.

Today he estimates his two sons have about one hundreth of the time he had to play pick-up games. That is a loss not just for them, but for sport.

Bigelow didn’t pick up a basketball till he was 14, but when he did his free-wheeling childhood had equipped him to make the most of his fast-growing limbs.

By the time he was 17 he had been voted one of the 50 best high school players in the United States.

He went on to become a first-round draft choice and played in the NBA for the Kansas City Kings and San Diego Clippers as well as the Celtics.

Today, at age 53, he reckons he’s still better than 85 per cent of high school players in the US, even though most of them have been coached from a young age.

That, he says, is because many are suffering burnout and because the US system, with its emphasis on winning, is screening out late bloomers.

Coaches who want to win will automatically figure out who their better players are and give them more game-time, Bigelow says.

The problem is that when kids are young there is no such thing as as better players. There are only what he calls “least worst”, “less than least worst” and “worst worst”.

Giving extra opportunity to the “least worst” players only discourages other kids.

“Athletic ability prior to puberty is a meaningless indicator of athletic ability after puberty,” he says.

“There are 13-year-old boys in New Zealand right now who look like 16-year-old boys. There are 13-year-old boys in New Zealand right now who look like 10-year-old boys.

“Who’s going to be the better athlete right now? I’ll put all my money on the 13-year-old with the little tuft of hair on his chin. Who’s going to be the better athlete in two, four, six years? Don’t try it. You’ll have far more misses than you will hits.”

As proof of his argument, he cites the cases of NBA stars Bill Russell and Michael Jordan. At 15 neither was good enough to make his high school team. If they’d been coming through the system today they’d have both been cut by coaches under pressure to produce winning teams at early ages. But because they grew up at a time when players were given time to develop they were able to become “the two greatest male basketball players in the history of the world”.

Bigelow has been in New Zealand only a few days but, having watched a game of hockey between two teams of young girls, he suspects coaches here are also too intent on winning.

What coaches and parents need to remember, he says, is that children’s sport is for children, not them.

“If you are on the sidelines as a parent, remember, above all, this is a child’s activity. You are a guest at your child’s activity. Behave as if you were a guest.

“Coaches you are enablers, facilitators, cheerleaders. This is a child’s game. Do not let your ego get involved.

“The No1 problem with organised youth sports across the world is too damn many adults want to compete through children. Children should be competing with children. I tell adults all the time go find yourself an over-35 league – netball, field hockey, soccer, I don’t care.

“Better yet, bring the children along and let them yell at you from the sidelines.”[/quote:e5s99g9g]