Soccer - "The Un- American Activity"

[Pastor]

Boom, the very idea that everyone on the national team was some sort of mini-van driven child of luxury is not only lacking in evidence but insulting.

Ask Eddie Johnson what he was doing when he found the sport. What about the conditions of Dempsey growing up? Why don't we talk to Claudio Reyna. I'm sure he'll talk about his "luxury" life in Patterson, NJ. Or, we can go over what Tim Howard dealt with growing up with tourettes and then dealing with it again in England.

The idea of "everybody gets a trophy" didn't start with soccer.


Now, if you want to discuss the racial make-up of the team, we can dive in and discuss that. However, that doesn't seem to be where this wants to go. This was posted solely as an attempt to degrade what the author and yourself dislikes.

 

[poindexter]

I heard Bode Miller played soccer as a kid. His results in the Olympics speak for themselves.

 

[poindexter]

Boom, the very idea that everyone on the national team was some sort of mini-van driven child of luxury is not only lacking in evidence but insulting.

Ask Eddie Johnson what he was doing when he found the sport. What about the conditions of Dempsey growing up? Why don't we talk to Claudio Reyna. I'm sure he'll talk about his "luxury" life in Patterson, NJ. Or, we can go over what Tim Howard dealt with growing up with tourettes and then dealing with it again in England.

The idea of "everybody gets a trophy" didn't start with soccer.


Now, if you want to discuss the racial make-up of the team, we can dive in and discuss that. However, that doesn't seem to be where this wants to go. This was posted solely as an attempt to degrade what the author and yourself dislikes.

Crass, Boom is playing you like a fiddle. He doesn't believe any of the stuff he's writing... it's just his flavor of the month.

 

[Boom_70]

Boom, the very idea that everyone on the national team was some sort of mini-van driven child of luxury is not only lacking in evidence but insulting.

Ask Eddie Johnson what he was doing when he found the sport. What about the conditions of Dempsey growing up? Why don't we talk to Claudio Reyna. I'm sure he'll talk about his "luxury" life in Patterson, NJ. Or, we can go over what Tim Howard dealt with growing up with tourettes and then dealing with it again in England.

The idea of "everybody gets a trophy" didn't start with soccer.


Now, if you want to discuss the racial make-up of the team, we can dive in and discuss that. However, that doesn't seem to be where this wants to go. This was posted solely as an attempt to degrade what the author and yourself dislikes.

How am I degrading Jeffery Toobin? I think he is a tremendous writer and this piece is dead on. It's a story that does take a lot of directions and also fosters very solid debate in a number of areas. Hence the reason why thread has taken off in many directions.

Surely it must seem odd to you that there was not one latin american player on the US World Cup team.  

 

[Bob Cook]

2. The "everybody gets a trophy" thing is not so much to protect the kids' fragile egos. Believe me, they know when they've lost. When I coached my son's 6- and 7-year-old coed basketball team a few years' back, it was a no-score-kept league, but somehow my kids always knew what the score was. The "everybody gets a trophy" thing is to protect the fragile egos of the kids' parents.

Sorry man, but the idea of a "no-score-kept league," in and of itself, makes my earier point. Such a league would have been ridiculous when I was a kid. Why bother with a "no-score-kept league" if you aren't trying to protect your kids from losing? And what message are you sending them? You certainly aren't preparing them for the real world in which there ARE scoreboards in every walk of life, and there ARE winners and losers.  And the "everybody gets a trophy" thing may be to protect the fragile egos of the parents, but again, what is the message you are sending the kids? Again, I don't want to label a whole generation. But it was a definite observation I had about the early 20s kids I saw entering jobs at the magazines we were doing. Many of them had no competitive instinct when it came to their work, and many of them really seemed to think all the had to do was show up and they'd get patted on the back and promoted. My bet is that it had a lot to do with those "no-score-kept leagues," and all those "participation" trophies.

I'm guessing, though, that youth sports when you were a kid did not start as young as they do now. I don't have a problem with 6- and 7-year-olds just learning a sport playing in a no-score-kept league, because the whole purpose is instructional. In my league, for example, say the ref calls traveling. He or she then explains to the kid what the rule is, and why it was called. Yeah, we covered this stuff in practice, but there was only one practice per week, and there is no guarantee a 6- or 7-year-old will remember this stuff come gametime. (Then again, there are some pros who are the same way). There are a lot of coaches and adults who will stop worrying about instruction and worry more about the score if it's kept, which isn't conducive to teaching kids a sport when they're, say, five to eight years old. And you think kids innately don't care about winning and losing? Have you ever seen two toddlers fight over a toy?

By age 9 or 10, at least where I live, the no-score-kept leagues are gone. Believe me, there are plenty of opportunities then to learn that life stinks and that there are winners and losers. I don't remember trophies being handed out after my son's baseball and soccer teams were eliminated in their playoffs. If the twentysomethings in your office don't have the competitive drive or felt like all they had to do was show up, that's not the fault of their sports leagues -- it's the fault of their parents.

 

[Pastor]

Boom, the very idea that everyone on the national team was some sort of mini-van driven child of luxury is not only lacking in evidence but insulting.

Ask Eddie Johnson what he was doing when he found the sport. What about the conditions of Dempsey growing up? Why don't we talk to Claudio Reyna. I'm sure he'll talk about his "luxury" life in Patterson, NJ. Or, we can go over what Tim Howard dealt with growing up with tourettes and then dealing with it again in England.

The idea of "everybody gets a trophy" didn't start with soccer.


Now, if you want to discuss the racial make-up of the team, we can dive in and discuss that. However, that doesn't seem to be where this wants to go. This was posted solely as an attempt to degrade what the author and yourself dislikes.

How am I degrading Jeffery Toobin? I think he is a tremendous writer and this piece is dead on. It's a story that does take a lot of directions and also fosters very solid debate in a number of areas. Hence the reason why thread has taken off in many directions.

Surely it must seem odd to you that there was not one latin american player on the US World Cup team.

Not odd at all. Simple understanding tells you all you need to know.

 

[The Big Ragu]

Crass, I don't think this phenomenon applies to our World Cup team. You don't make it to that level, and compete successfully enough to make a team of the country's best players, without being driven and having lived with hellacious pressure to win. That is a fact of the highest levels of any competitive sport.

But I'm not looking at the handful of the best players in the U.S. I'm looking at the effect all of these youth soccer leagues have had on kids as a whole. The average kid, who may play in a "no score kept league," or who gets a "participation" trophy for every sport he plays, grows up thinking that is the way the world is. It's purely anecdotal, But I have noticed that many guys I know who grew up that way, lack certain ambitions and drive.

A great example... One night two or three years ago, I played basketball with a bunch of 24 and 25 year old guys I used to work with. I was 35, maybe 36 already; if I remember correctly I was the oldest guy there. The kid I was matched up with was a decade younger than me, had about 2 inches and 30 pounds on me and he was a better athlete than I am--by a lot. And I absolutely abused him. Put in that situation, my adrenaline begins to pump and I am going to do whatever it takes to hold my own. For him it was, "oh well." There is no way he shouldn't have made me look old and foolish. But it wasn't part of his make up.

I realize it is dangerous to use an isolated example like that to label a whole generation. But like I said, earlier, I've noticed LOTS of things like that with the generation that followed mine.

 

[Pastor]

But I'm not looking at the handful of the best players in the U.S. I'm looking at the effect all of these youth soccer leagues have had on kids as a whole. The average kid, who may play in a "no score kept league," or who gets a "participation" trophy for every sport he plays, grows up thinking that is the way the world is. It's purely anecdotal, But I have noticed that many guys I know who grew up that way, lack certain ambitions and drive.

And I'm stating that this didn't begin with soccer. It isn't confined to soccer. This is a youth league issue, not a specific sport issue.

I fall into that decade younger demo. I never played in a "no score kept league." Thus, I think this is some newer phenomenon or something that occurred in the more white-bread, wealthier towns.

 

[JR]

I'm older than most here so I can pretty much tell you that North American youth sports hasn't been "pussified" in the last twenty years, it's gone in the exact opposite direction.

I played hockey from about age 7 and right through  high school. House leage, travel team, high school team. I was a pretty good goalie but I would never be confused with Jacques Plante. I played at about the highest level at the time and although I sure wasn't junior hockey calibre, I never thought anything about it.

In all the  years I played my mother didn't come to a single game and my father would come if his shift work permitted. I didn't think anything of it--neither did my friends whose parents rarely showed up. We played the game, we'd go home, our moms would ask us how we did and that was it. We played, we won, we lost, we forgot about it.

Nowadays (and I was guilty of this) every parent thinks their  Gord and Doug playing is going to be drafted. The parents are ferocious and little Johnny, who doesn't give two ****s about hockey other than it's a chance to play with his buddies, drops out.

Tim Horton's hockey, one of the most successfull house league hockey programs in Canada for four to eight year olds is a "don't keep score" league to act as a counterbalance to the "win at all costs" mentality of the hockey universe. Trust me, put your kid in a AA or AAA hockey program when they're 12 and tell me sports is "pussified".

There's nothing wrong with "participation" medals at at certain age group and at a certain talent level.
Kids know that it's bull**** but they get to stick it on their bookshelves. I don't think for one minute it gives me the idea that t hey have any sense of entitlement.

 

[The Big Ragu]

But I'm not looking at the handful of the best players in the U.S. I'm looking at the effect all of these youth soccer leagues have had on kids as a whole. The average kid, who may play in a "no score kept league," or who gets a "participation" trophy for every sport he plays, grows up thinking that is the way the world is. It's purely anecdotal, But I have noticed that many guys I know who grew up that way, lack certain ambitions and drive.

And I'm stating that this didn't begin with soccer. It isn't confined to soccer. This is a youth league issue, not a specific sport issue.

I fall into that decade younger demo. I never played in a "no score kept league." Thus, I think this is some newer phenomenon or something that occurred in the more white-bread, wealthier towns.

It isn't that soccer is an inherently bad sport. It is that soccer became THE American "youth" sport (for the reasons mentioned earlier. Boys AND girls can play. It's easy to teach. Parents can understand it. You can turn any field into a soccer field, etc.), so soccer is where these negative trends played themselves out.

And I know I am speaking in extremes to make my general point. It is largely a white-bread, affluent, suburban phenomenon. And again, it is because everything kids do is so organized today, with the parents over-involved. I can speak from experience about this... There is no better way to develop a competitive instinct than to be one of a dozen 14-year-old kids playing football in the mud without any adults around--with whatever makeshift armor you can get to stay on your body. We'd beat the **** out of each other for three or four hours and althouh I remember it being fun as hell, it was also a definite, "figure out how to survive" experience at times. I actually think things like that helped me develop some good life skills. I know my 15-year-old nephew has not had those same kinds of experiences.

 

[Boom_70]

2. The "everybody gets a trophy" thing is not so much to protect the kids' fragile egos. Believe me, they know when they've lost. When I coached my son's 6- and 7-year-old coed basketball team a few years' back, it was a no-score-kept league, but somehow my kids always knew what the score was. The "everybody gets a trophy" thing is to protect the fragile egos of the kids' parents.

Sorry man, but the idea of a "no-score-kept league," in and of itself, makes my earier point. Such a league would have been ridiculous when I was a kid. Why bother with a "no-score-kept league" if you aren't trying to protect your kids from losing? And what message are you sending them? You certainly aren't preparing them for the real world in which there ARE scoreboards in every walk of life, and there ARE winners and losers.  And the "everybody gets a trophy" thing may be to protect the fragile egos of the parents, but again, what is the message you are sending the kids? Again, I don't want to label a whole generation. But it was a definite observation I had about the early 20s kids I saw entering jobs at the magazines we were doing. Many of them had no competitive instinct when it came to their work, and many of them really seemed to think all the had to do was show up and they'd get patted on the back and promoted. My bet is that it had a lot to do with those "no-score-kept leagues," and all those "participation" trophies.

I'm guessing, though, that youth sports when you were a kid did not start as young as they do now. I don't have a problem with 6- and 7-year-olds just learning a sport playing in a no-score-kept league, because the whole purpose is instructional. In my league, for example, say the ref calls traveling. He or she then explains to the kid what the rule is, and why it was called. Yeah, we covered this stuff in practice, but there was only one practice per week, and there is no guarantee a 6- or 7-year-old will remember this stuff come gametime. (Then again, there are some pros who are the same way). There are a lot of coaches and adults who will stop worrying about instruction and worry more about the score if it's kept, which isn't conducive to teaching kids a sport when they're, say, five to eight years old. And you think kids innately don't care about winning and losing? Have you ever seen two toddlers fight over a toy?

By age 9 or 10, at least where I live, the no-score-kept leagues are gone. Believe me, there are plenty of opportunities then to learn that life stinks and that there are winners and losers. I don't remember trophies being handed out after my son's baseball and soccer teams were eliminated in their playoffs. If the twentysomethings in your office don't have the competitive drive or felt like all they had to do was show up, that's not the fault of their sports leagues -- it's the fault of their parents.

Damien - what you wrote in your first post - you're either training your kid relentessly for greatness in something, or your kid is doomed to be a ****-shoveler.  hits the nail on the head of the parental dilema of the 21 century.

I spend a lot of time with my niece and nephew coaching their teams and every said on this thread is dead on when it comes to youth sports.

The problem I see is that their seems to be no middle ground anymore for the " average kid". The situation applies more to boys than to girls as the expectation is lower.

For most team sports unless the boy has started with the instuctional leagues at ages 6/7/8 there is no way from them to catch up at age 9 when things start getting serious. For hockey if a kid is not on skates by age 5 forget about them even trying to play at age 9 or 10. They will never catch up.

Part of problem is things move so fast coaches do not have enough time to work with kids on basics after the instructional leagues. Starting at age 9 its implied that boy should have a basic understanding of the sport.

The other part of problem is that many of the kids have such refined skills, the kids that do not, stand out and they are too embarrised to dig in an catch up.  

I grew with a "Chip Hilton" existiance playing 3 sports.  It's something I look back on and will always treasure.  In today's world said existance is pretty much impossible unless you have the skills of Bo Jackson.

 

[shotglass]

"*****ificiation" may not be the apt term for youth sports today after all.

But what I think HAS happened is that the gap has widened between the young athlete and the youngster who plays sports for something to do.

It's a decision that has to be made earlier than ever before, because if you don't, there's no catching up. Take basketball. If you're going to be a solid high school contributor, you'd better be working into the AAU programs by fourth grade. (Make exceptions here for tiny high schools; I think for this, we're talking more about the medium- to large-sized schools.)

And believe me, if you've ever seen AAU/travel team youth sports, there's no resemblance between that and touchy-feely, no-score-kept youth sports. In other words, you want your kids to learn the hard lessons about winning and losing? You have a clear route to travel. And if you DON'T want that for your kid, then you deal with the other end -- the "let's make every kid feel good" camp -- like Boom says.

I expect some to disagree with me, but I believe that the argument used for years against intense sports at a young age -- early burnout -- is being debunked to some extent. You can raise a happy, well-adjusted kid either way, with intense sports or without. The factors in a youth's maladjustment are more often based in something else.

I also think we're tougher on the intense sports family than most, because oft-times we're at odds with them in terms of coverage, how important it is in the big picture, etc.

 

[Madhavok]

Welp, I'm a member of the 1981 club and I can damn well remember keeping score all through my days in youth sports. However, youth soccer wasn't as popular and I opted to play pee wee and midget football over summer soccer anyway. Regardless, score was kept, kids were pissed, parents did some consoling, and coaches did some bitching at players.

I don't think I ever got a trophy for 'just participating. I believe we got a few 1st or 2nd place trophies, gameballs, etc..

 

[Boom_70]

I'm older than most here so I can pretty much tell you that North American youth sports hasn't been "pussified" in the last twenty years, it's gone in the exact opposite direction.

I played hockey from about age 7 and right through  high school. House leage, travel team, high school team. I was a pretty good goalie but I would never be confused with Jacques Plante. I played at about the highest level at the time and although I sure wasn't junior hockey calibre, I never thought anything about it.

In all the  years I played my mother didn't come to a single game and my father would come if his shift work permitted. I didn't think anything of it--neither did my friends whose parents rarely showed up. We played the game, we'd go home, our moms would ask us how we did and that was it. We played, we won, we lost, we forgot about it.

Nowadays (and I was guilty of this) every parent thinks their  Gord and Doug playing is going to be drafted. The parents are ferocious and little Johnny, who doesn't give two ****s about hockey other than it's a chance to play with his buddies, drops out.

Tim Horton's hockey, one of the most successfull house league hockey programs in Canada for four to eight year olds is a "don't keep score" league to act as a counterbalance to the "win at all costs" mentality of the hockey universe. Trust me, put your kid in a AA or AAA hockey program when they're 12 and tell me sports is "pussified".

There's nothing wrong with "participation" medals at at certain age group and at a certain talent level.
Kids know that it's bull**** but they get to stick it on their bookshelves. I don't think for one minute it gives me the idea that t hey have any sense of entitlement.

JR - Hockey is one of few sports that has not been "pussified". I think part of reason is that those getting into the sport understand the level of commitment that it takes.

Also think that those running youth level hockey programs are very solid hockey guys that will just not allow it to happen.

 

[DisembodiedOwlHead]

The U.S. started three African American players out of 11.
That's as large a percentage as you're getting in baseball now.
Fewer African American athletes are playing anything but basketball and football now.

That's true but there was not ever one latin american player on team. The largest minority with perhaps the greatest interest in the sport does not have one player on the team.

What ethnicity is Reyna if he is not Latin American ?

 

[The Big Ragu]

Welp, I'm a member of the 1981 club and I can damn well remember keeping score all through my days in youth sports. However, youth soccer wasn't as popular and I opted to play pee wee and midget football over summer soccer anyway. Regardless, score was kept, kids were pissed, parents did some consoling, and coaches did some bitching at players.

I don't think I ever got a trophy for 'just participating. I believe we got a few 1st or 2nd place trophies, gameballs, etc..

Madhovok, Youth football is a slight exception to this, because football is so physical and competitive by nature... But there are also far fewer kids playing football at the age of 10 than there are playing soccer in this country.

But even with youth football, there are people trying to take the competition out. The NFL's Youth Football department, has designed only "no scoreboard' types of programs. The guy behind it has written a book in which he espouses everything I am talking about--low-key competition in which winning isn't important, no scoreboards, only encouragement, etc. A lot of what they do is great--they are focused on fundamentals, which is often lacking in poorly-run youth football leagues. (It's a major focus. Every kid in their JPD program, which is run like a clinic, gets the chance to learn every posiition, which is great. A lot of times in youth football, the biggest kids get buried on the offensive line, when in fact, they are the ones who will end up growing up with quarterback physiques. I once talked to Boomer Esaison about this. It happened to him when he was a kid, and the only reason he ever got a chance to play QB is that his dad became the coach. If not, his career may not have every happened) They encourage participation by everyone. They only encourage, never disparage. They keep the parents far, far away.

Where I have a problem is that the guy who designed these programs thinks his way should be the ONLY way youth football is conducted in the country. He thinks competitive leagues are bad, scoreboards are bad, and he'd love to do away with them. That is where I think these ideas go overboard. Kids should learn how to compete. It teaches valuable life skills.

 

[21]

The saddest thing about this youth sports discussion--in soccer or otherwise--is that 99% of these kids are completely being set up for failure.

For years, the entire family revolves around Josh's schedule, practices, games, travel....the parents' identity is defined by the kid's level of achievement. 'Oh we have six travel games this weekend...' 'I know, we're all flying to (fill in far away city) for a tournament...'

Then Josh gets to high school, where you can't just 'try out' for some private league that takes everyone willing to fork over a grand or so for the 'fees,' and Josh isn't making it, and the parents have had their fill and move on to the next kid to obsess about.

And Josh is left wondering, what happened here?

 

[Herbert Anchovy]

There should be a congressional investigation into the proliferation of soccer. It's a nice sport for an 8-year-old kid but beyond that it teaches a lot of the worst values. Stand in a row and cover your jubblies on a penalty kick instead of laying them on the line, take a dive like a wussified European midfielder, cry about the weather and the fans.

 

[Pastor]

It isn't that soccer is an inherently bad sport. It is that soccer became THE American "youth" sport (for the reasons mentioned earlier. Boys AND girls can play. It's easy to teach. Parents can understand it. You can turn any field into a soccer field, etc.), so soccer is where these negative trends played themselves out.

I would say that it has become THE American youth sport in white-suburban areas somewhat for the reasons mentioned. It just doesn't apply to other areas.

I know what you are saying about structured, but this only applies to these lilly-white areas. Pick-up games still exist in my area. They are just at the soccer fields.

 

[Boom_70]

Welp, I'm a member of the 1981 club and I can damn well remember keeping score all through my days in youth sports. However, youth soccer wasn't as popular and I opted to play pee wee and midget football over summer soccer anyway. Regardless, score was kept, kids were pissed, parents did some consoling, and coaches did some bitching at players.

I don't think I ever got a trophy for 'just participating. I believe we got a few 1st or 2nd place trophies, gameballs, etc..

Madhovok, Youth football is a slight exception to this, because football is so physical and competitive by nature... But there are also far fewer kids playing football at the age of 10 than there are playing soccer in this country.

But even with youth football, there are people trying to take the competition out. The NFL's Youth Football department, has designed only "no scoreboard' types of programs. The guy behind it has written a book in which he espouses everything I am talking about--low-key competition in which winning isn't important, no scoreboards, only encouragement, etc. A lot of what they do is great--they are focused on fundamentals, which is often lacking in poorly-run youth football leagues. (It's a major focus. Every kid in their JPD program, which is run like a clinic, gets the chance to learn every posiition, which is great. A lot of times in youth football, the biggest kids get buried on the offensive line, when in fact, they are the ones who will end up growing up with quarterback physiques. I once talked to Boomer Esaison about this. It happened to him when he was a kid, and the only reason he ever got a chance to play QB is that his dad became the coach. If not, his career may not have every happened) They encourage participation by everyone. They only encourage, never disparage. They keep the parents far, far away.

Where I have a problem is that the guy who designed these programs thinks his way should be the ONLY way youth football is conducted in the country. He thinks competitive leagues are bad, scoreboards are bad, and he'd love to do away with them. That is where I think these ideas go overboard. Kids should learn how to compete. It teaches valuable life skills.

Kids work too hard in tackle football not to have a scoreboard. There are ways to control game so it does not get out of hand.

Youth Football in well run leagues with good coaching is one best sports a kid can play and learn from.