Why Kiwi parents coach kids’ winter sports teams, no matter the skill level

Children who play team sports like football develop better communication and problem-solving skills. Photo / Getty Images

OPINION

Kids’ winter sport is a big commitment for parents who would rather be in bed with the newspaper, and an even bigger one for those who coach. Greg Bruce, now in his third year coaching his daughter’s football team, asks: Why do we do it?

For the past two years, on the first Saturday in May, I have found myself asking myself the same question: What am I doing here on this field at this ungodly hour, in the freezing cold, in these very wet socks?

And then the game starts, and the season is under way, and the adrenaline takes over, and if I think at all after that, it’s not the standard thoughts about the hopelessness, misery and disastrous future we’ve inflicted on ourselves, because there is no time for that. It is immediately washed away by the intensity, enthusiasm, logistical needs and big feelings of a group of small children.

Debates about kids’ sport in this country, which I sometimes accidentally overhear on talkback radio, seem to revolve around the boring dichotomy of winning vs having fun. But after two years coaching kids’ football — with its rich and life-affirming tapestry of big emotions and untied laces — I can say with confidence that reducing it to banalities such as “fun” and “winning” is to completely miss the point.

During a game two years ago, as the opposition team bore down on our goal, one of our players decided that, rather than engaging defensively, she would sit down cross-legged in the middle of the field, close her eyes and begin to meditate.

After getting over the initial shock, I realised I was watching something transcendent. It was, without doubt, the most powerful thing I’d ever seen on a sports field. What is the value of a defensive tackle, I thought, when compared with the possibility of achieving — even if only briefly — a state of eternal presence?

I imagined the usual suspects and talkback callers ranting about how our country is in such a state because of parents like me indulging behaviour like this. I took great pleasure in knowing that this child, at least, would remain calm in the face of such outrage because I had allowed her to practise meditation in the middle of this football game when she was 7.. This, I thought humbly, is how we change the world.

For what it’s worth, my team are technically good, strong on the ball and relentless off it. I’m always proud of them at the end of our games, because it’s hard to run around at high speed for 40 minutes, and I know that because they spend roughly 35 of those minutes telling me.

I encourage them to take breaks whenever they feel like it, which is often, so they can have a drink or a sit down, or an idle chat with their parents or siblings on the sidelines. This policy sometimes leaves us with only two or three players on the field, and it has undoubtedly cost us goals, but what am I supposed to say? No? Have you seen the emotional pain a child of 6, 7 or 8 can express with their eyes alone? I have, and I hope never to again.

It is already easy enough to make kids of this age cry. Just some of the ways I have achieved it over the past two seasons: Getting the order of throw-ins, kick-offs or goal kicks wrong; making the wrong person play on the other team to make up numbers; calling someone the wrong name; using the other team’s ball instead of ours; and failing to do a double knot.

With apologies to big-shot, highly paid premier league managers like AFC Richmond’s Ted Lasso, this is why coaching kids is harder than coaching ludicrously highly paid adult professionals.

An example: 75 minutes into this week’s Champions League semifinal, Real Madrid manager Carlo Ancelotti took star player Jude Bellingham off the field. While it’s possible Ancelotti was concerned about Bellingham’s feelings, he at least knew the player’s weekly wage of $465,000 would be enough for him to take his supermodel girlfriend out for dinner and still have enough left over to buy a nice supercar.

Compare this with the game last season when I gave the player of the day award to the wrong player, causing the proper recipient to burst into tears that would not abate, even long after everyone else had left the ground. It was not just heartbreaking to watch but will leave lifelong scars. It probably didn’t feel great for her either. I can’t say for sure that her mother didn’t buy her a choc-dipped ice cream from Mr Whippy to make up for it, but that’s not exactly a Lamborghini, is it?

But if the lows are lower, the highs are genuinely life-altering. Sure, winning a Champions League might be fun if you’re into that sort of thing, but it is as nothing when compared with watching a team of kids play with joy, freedom and a sense of the infinite. Anything can happen at any moment, and if that’s not the essence of life-affirming, I don’t know what is.

Professional coaches are relentlessly negative. They yell at wingbacks for failing to track back, at centre halves for failing to hold a sufficiently high line, and at the whole team for technicalities around shape, structure and movement. Coaching at this level, it seems, is 90 per cent yelling at people. Even if that approach was effective, and there’s no evidence to suggest it is, that’s no way to live a life.

Yes, Madrid’s Jude Bellingham earns $465,000 a week, while Eastern Suburbs under 9s’ Clara Bruce gets $1 each week day, if and only if she is ready for school before 8am. And yes, in many ways he is a better player than her. But they are both human beings, with feelings, dreams, anxieties, parents who love them and an interest in football, even if that interest is — in at least one of their cases — lukewarm at best.

I do not yell at Clara, nor at anyone else in our team, even when their actions are sub-optimal in a footballing sense, such as when they are performing cartwheels or engaging in conversations about upcoming birthday parties while the opposition is in the act of scoring. Yes, part of this is about not wanting to make anyone cry, but it’s bigger than that: It’s about asking what we’re doing here, what outcome we’re seeking not just from the game but from life, about the sort of people we want to be and the sort of people we want these kids to become. It’s the antithesis of the sort of short-term, results-oriented thinking that has been the defining feature of the modern world.

When we become parents, our time and thoughts become overwhelmed by house maintenance, the logistical demands of our kids’ endless extracurricular activities and the sorting of odd socks. The weight of responsibility wears us down, and it’s easy to see ourselves merely as functionaries, but we must fight against that because, otherwise, can we even be said to be alive?

When I follow my team on to the field each Saturday morning and I see in them all the joy and hope and richness of life, I find it both contagious and inspiring. They are pure possibility, and they are bursting to fulfil it. The score I’m keeping in my head during their games is not about goals, but about the rich social, imaginative, physical and creative possibilities the game gives them, including but not limited to running after the ball, running away from the ball, running off the field mid-game, high fives, cartwheels and celebratory dance moves. These are the things that really matter. This is why I coach.