Along with the obvious benefits of exercise and movement to our physical health, sport offers opportunities in terms of life lessons, teamwork and persistence, which can be invaluable to our development. Australian academics Young and Payne conducted a large-scale review of the research findings and found that community sports participation not only improves the physical health of young people but can also enhance their psychological and social health outcomes.
However, increasingly, I hear young people describing themselves as ‘not sporty’. This does not mean they don’t have an aptitude for sport – more often, it’s because they lack the competitiveness or the seriousness that most teenage sports activities require.
Shane Smith is a sports scientist and a primary school teacher and has coached at the underage and elite levels in Ireland. He ticks all the boxes for someone who can provide an insight into coaching philosophies. In a recent Twitter thread, he outlined a series of tips for coaching teenagers. I asked him about the foundations of his approach. He began by saying coaches should resist the temptation to get serious too soon when coaching teenagers. There is no need to change the coaching philosophy drastically, he said, when children turn from 12 to 13 years old. “A light switch doesn’t go off as a child goes from under-12 to under-13 where they suddenly require intense warm-ups, long team talks or excessive training.”
He said the main reasons for teenage drop-out from sports include change of coach, change of coaching philosophy and over-competitive environments.
We need to remember the value of fun games, particularly during warm-ups at training: “Just because children become teenagers does not mean they don’t welcome incorporating fun into training sessions.”
Smith recommended avoiding the temptation to get teenagers “super fit” via endless running. Instead, he said coaches should opt for conditioned games which replicate game movements, which are more effective in developing skills and encouraging ongoing engagement.
Smith stressed the need for patience and empathy. Teens are experiencing many changes and are often trying to find themselves, especially during the emotional transition from primary to secondary school. During this challenging time, sport and training can be a safe and consistent place for young people, especially given the developmental disruption they experienced during the pandemic. It is reasonable to assume that many may not be at the physical or emotional level of the same age cohort of pre-pandemic years. Again, empathy and understanding are required here instead of accelerated training regimens and drives to ‘make up ground’.
As the players get older, team sports such as GAA and soccer enter more competitive competitions. Here the number of players per team on match day generally increases. As a result, players will not get as many touches as they did in younger age groups. It might be tempting to replicate these larger team structures in training. But, despite it seeming somewhat counterintuitive, Smith suggested playing lots of small-sided games may be more helpful, giving players more opportunities to get more ball contact and develop their skill set. “As a coach, you can encourage qualities such as perseverance and resilience, which will stand the teenagers in good stead, not just for sport, but for the bigger picture of life,” he said.
Crucially, Smith highlighted the importance of “catching teenagers doing good”. Often coaching can be about problem identification, and it is easy to slip into continually pointing out what they are doing wrong. The motto around ‘on-field instruction’ should be if you can’t give it in one sentence, then don’t give it at all. Instead of problem identification, emphasizing what teenage players do well and regularly highlighting their strengths will pay more dividends than constant criticism and berating. As Smith succinctly says: “spot the good and encourage it”.
Smith is an advocate for removing the pressure to win. There is no denying that winning matters – all children enjoy winning more than losing. But for many, winning is not the sole motivator for playing a sport, and it may not even be a major one. Winning can often be far more important to coaches than it is for child players. Smith pointed out how one hour after a defeat in a match on a Saturday morning, the child is out playing on their bike, while the coach is often sitting at the kitchen table mulling over the game, trying to figure out what went wrong.
Some coaches fail to see that the factors that retain young people in sport involve spending time with friends, learning new skills and having fun. Of course, a small percentage of child players are driven and want to win at all costs, rack up the accolades and be the best. But not every child player shares that desire, which should be OK too. It certainly shouldn’t be a reason to ignore or retire children from what is, in essence, a leisure activity.
I have long believed that children should be divided according to their competitiveness as well as their age and ability because clashes in the seriousness of certain players’ approach to sport can be a significant contributor to why children leave a particular sport. Perhaps matching competitive coaches with competitive players might work better.
Retaining players may not be the objective of all sporting organisations. There are many scenarios where I have heard of children as young as ten being asked to leave a sports club because ‘there is no team for them’, a euphemism for not being deemed good enough. In his work, Smith warns coaches about this and reminds them of the ‘late developer’ concept. Children are like popcorn kernels in a microwave. Despite being exposed to the same conditions, they all don’t pop at once, and it is impossible to tell the early poppers from the late ones. He encourages coaches to be patient, inclusive and mindful that teenagers develop at different stages. Sport is littered with late developers who were positively influenced by a coach and a club that planned for long-term development instead of short-term success.
The culture of a sports organization or club is a critical factor. Each club needs to decide whether it is a club that serves the community or whether the community serves the club. This distinction is important because it informs the mission statement of the organization.
For example, if the community serves the club, then the club’s priorities will be trophies and accolades over inclusion and accommodation. If this is the case, clubs should own this goal and be explicit about it. However, if the club serves the community, the needs of the community as a whole must drive the culture. In this instance, trophies and accolades are not the success metrics; instead, the goal is to have more players playing for longer.
When a club serves the community, it can play a hugely important role and become the pillar of community culture. Smith concluded our conversation by saying the sports club can be that place where, no matter where young people have been, what other friendships they have formed or what other sports they’ve played, they are always welcomed back.
Given the disruption to young people’s social and emotional development during Covid-19, it has never been more critical to offer these spaces to them to make up for lost ground. Sports can offer these opportunities, but only if young people with mixed abilities and degrees of competitiveness are included. If teenage sport is only available to young people who commit to training twice a week and are willing to ‘give their all’ to the team, it follows that these criteria will automatically exclude many. The need for social sport for teenagers has never been more needed than it is now. We need initiatives to provide outlets for young people who don’t see themselves as ‘sporty’ or competitive enough to fit the current culture.
- Dr Colman Noctor is a child psychotherapist
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