Should girl’s sports’ coaches yell?

@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

From the first post in this thread is this paragraph.

... comes a point I never disputed: Bully coaches can win ballgames. So what? They're just ballgames! What a petty thing to sacrifice respect and civility for!

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@Thomas,

Thomas,

You are conveniently ignoring any part of the paragraph I posted that contradicts your presupposition. Let me cut out the first sentence.

Quote:

His players thrived on and off the court. He did a great job keeping his kids on the straight and narrow, and of the approximately 100 kids he coached all but a couple graduated from high school and a lot went to college. With not one complaint from a player or parent.

1 Reply

@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

Thomas,

You are conveniently ignoring any part of the paragraph I posted that contradicts your presupposition. Let me cut out the first sentence.

Quote:
His players thrived on and off the court. He did a great job keeping his kids on the straight and narrow, and of the approximately 100 kids he coached all but a couple graduated from high school and a lot went to college. With not one complaint from a player or parent.

I'm presuming that's because players who minded being ridiculed, disrespected, and intimidated didn't remain players under this coach for long. (I certainly wouldn't.) But that's not an achievement on the coach's part, just Social-Darwinist selection.

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Would like to beg everybody's pardon here. The coach I described never, ever yelled. But, he was tough., and one of those people that his students just knew he knew what he was doing. I saw him at a reunion few years after he retired. He said to me, "Your sister was the answer to a coach's dream."

I never knew a crazy yelling coach who actually got mad at the athletes, but when my kids played little league baseball a couple of the unpaid dads were just plain stupid.

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@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

I'm presuming that's because players who minded being ridiculed, disrespected, and intimidated didn't remain players under this coach for long. (I certainly wouldn't.) But that's not an achievement on the coach's part, just Social-Darwinist selection.

I agree with Thomas' presumption here. We can't know how many girls' sports experience was ruined, and how the team would have performed with a different coach. This is definitely elephant repelant thinking, to claim that this coach's wining record justified his behavior. (For the dull of wit--i have this foolproof elephant repeleant . . . well, you don't see any elephants around here, do you? i rest my case.)

Which takes me back to what CJ posted earlier:

CalamityJane wrote:

I don't like yelling coaches!! We used to have "father" coaches when my daughter was in elementary school, and some were just down right nasty. A few girls quit when it got too rough for them and a few were in tears after every practice.

That's so unnecessary and I always stressed that the team spirit is more important than winning. (emphasis added)

Who cares if he was a winning coach? That is not all that school athlectic programs are about.

1 Reply

@Fido,

Fido wrote -

Quote:

He was really teaching those girls to be mothers... If they do not throw the fear of God into them young they are on their way to prison or hell... You cannot respect them as equals... They are too stupid to learn except out of respect but smart enough to test their limits and if there are none, to become damned little tyrants... The guy was doing a public service apart from winning...

Haven't come across anything quite so crass in a long time. No, I must be wrong; you are trying to be funny! Well, I'd say you were 50% on the way to being a real wit.

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I realized I never really answered the question. My answer is in two parts:

1.) Should kids' coaches yell? No. I think that all other things being equal, it's better to have a calmer, more positive coach. (This goes for boys and girls.)

2.) Should coaches be fired for yelling? In and of itself, no. I think coaches can both yell and be generally good coaches. But they can yell and be bad coaches too. If so, they should be fired for being a bad coach rather than for yelling per se.

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The best coach is the one who teaches kids to love the game, whether they yell or not. If the kids love the game, they don't mind the yelling, for they know it's part of the coach's personality.

But if a coach is too macho and aggressive with their players, more often than not the result will be that the kids don't love the game. If they want to leave the team, the coach is bad. No matter if it's a winning team.

Famous soccer coach Menotti (who led Argentina to win a World Cup) said: The thing that parents should ask their kids after a game is not: "Did you score?" or "Did you win?", but "Did you have fun?".

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@fbaezer,

I feel I am repeating myself, and maybe I should stop, but I feel like this is my main point.

It really depends on the kid.

For some kids, competing to win is everything. They want to be pushed, goaded and prodded until they reach a remarkable level of excellence that will turn into results on the field. For some kids this is very healthy.

One of my kids expected me to ask about the score. That is what he cared about. That is what he wanted me to care about. His competitiveness was what drove him and what was fun for him. The other things he gained from sport; teamwork, responsibility, even dealing with failure were to him at the time, side issues.

It is the one side fits all approach that I am objecting to in this thread. The assumption seems to be that there is no place for the type of coach who drives kids to excel and to win with passion and even yelling.

My kid wanted an aggressive "macho" coach. That was one of the things that made him enjoy sports.

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If you read the article that was linked you'll see that not one girl has quit the team in his 10 years of coaching.

So it's not like the girls are humiliated and intimidated enough to stop playing for him.

And, yeah, maybe nobody will remember what a good player you were in high school but for some kids athletics is their entry into college (or even an exceptional private high school) and that is definately something that will be remembered by that particular kid.

I'm with Max. Some kids need and like that kind of coaching.

The baseball coach I hated wasn't a yeller and the team only lost two games -- they won the championship that year and it's a big league. My beef with him is that he only focused on pitching and batting and the kids missed out on a year of fielding fundamentals. He's already tried to recruit Mo for next year and we've said "no".

1 Reply

@fbaezer,

Yes to that. Wooden seems a quandary to me, as he wasn't a pusher for winning, per se, but performing well. Though as mentioned in my link, he hated to lose, I'm guessing because of the flub ups. I'm not sure he was any saint, but he was a superb college coach.

I only played neighborhood softball and a little basketball, a learning girl.
I agree with fbaezer's last line, re, did you have fun.

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@fbaezer,

fbaezer wrote:

The thing that parents should ask their kids after a game is not: "Did you score?" or "Did you win?", but "Did you have fun?".

That's the key - kids should have fun playing sports! Remember the French
team and their coach at the FIFA cup? That tells a perfect story!

1 Reply

@CalamityJane,

Quote:

Remember the French
team and their coach at the FIFA cup? That tells a perfect story!

It does? I don't get it....
Besides, everyone knows that soccer isn't a real sport! Rolling Eyes

1 Reply

@tsarstepan,

That's why I was specifically talking to fbaezer, as he knows exactly what I mean.

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Max continues to miss the point about having no point of comparison. He doesn't know that these girls would not have performed just as well for a coach with a different style of coaching. Without a point of comparison, there is not basis on which to say they could 0nly have performed this well for this coach.

More importantly, he misses the point that it's not all about winning--or he chooses to ignore that point.

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@boomerang,

boomerang wrote:

If you read the article that was linked you'll see that not one girl has quit the team in his 10 years of coaching.

Actually, I only see the article citing the coach claiming that. I don't see the article confirming it.

But thanks for making me read the whole article. There definitely seems to be some weird politicking going on beyond the immediate issue of coaching style. Who knows what really happened?

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@fbaezer,

fbaezer wrote:

What's the difference between girls' sports' coaches and boys' sports' coaches?

usually the plumbing

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@CalamityJane,

I am referring more to competitive teams - not the "instructional leagues". Instructional leagues are just that - to teach the children how to play. Those that want to progress and be competitive - varisty teams/college, etc. It seems and I honestly don't know why - that these coaches yell more. And the successful ones yell at all the kids when they screw up.

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@maxdancona,

As far as the gender thing - I agree - I think sometimes we baby girls more and the article was pointing out that this coach is similar to tactics used for boys high school coaches.

Well at this point - she is staying where she is. We also value that you stick out with your team until the end. So this fall AAU - in the spring we will re-visit.

She is super competitive and says she wants to be on a more competitive team. She loves basketball and you can tell she plays with her heart and works hard. I always ask her (she is probably getting sick of me asking) - if she loves playing. I don't want it to become so much work. In the winter she is playing for the city travel team and her school team - her school team is co-ed so she gets the opportunity to play against boys - making her tougher.

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@fbaezer,

That is one point of the article. They mentioned that if he were coaching a boys team, there would be no problem.

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Should girl’s sports’ coaches yell?

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