By Don Lafferty
My youth sports story has three parts.
It started in 1968 when I played my first organized baseball. My dad coached a little bit over the seven years I played baseball, but I can’t remember my mom attending a single game -- and that was okay, it wasn’t her thing and it didn’t hurt my feelings. Most moms didn’t come to games back then anyway.
My glove was permanently hung on the handlebars of my Schwinn, which by the age of eight, I rode to games and practices with strict instructions to check in with mom when the street lights came on.
Times were simpler, and the game was just a game. We won some, we lost some and while I don’t remember winning a championship, I remember I had a ton of fun.
Twenty-five years later I jumped back into the world of youth sports when my wife and I signed our five-year-old son up for T-ball. My little boy was the first of our youth athletes, followed over the next seven years by his three younger sisters.
Every one of our kids played baseball, softball, soccer, spring soccer, indoor soccer, basketball and summer league basketball. They were on the swim team, the diving team and just for fun, my son did a couple of seasons of roller hockey.
By the age of nine my oldest daughter was playing travel softball, into which each of her sisters followed, eventually spreading our family all over the MidAtlantic region on any given Saturday.
In the beginning I was pretty gung-ho.
I was a vocal sideline parent, who eventually became a vocal assistant coach and eventually a vocal head coach. Same thing for my wife. With no training or preparation for the job, we did what we thought was right. By observing the behavior around us and by following the examples of the other coaches, we adapted our own styles and philosophies within the context of the existing system of recognition, and we went on to make all kinds of mistakes along the way.
I tromped up and down the sidelines of my daughter’s soccer games giving her instruction so loud that by Sunday evening I would often lose my voice. I argued with umpires, cheered when opposing players didn’t execute, and used the letter of the rule to my advantage if it meant putting one in the win column—even when it didn’t feel right.
And then one afternoon I was chatting with the daughter of a friend.
She was entering college on an academic scholarship and joining their softball team as the number-one pitcher. I asked her to describe the most unpleasant part of her softball experience, and without a moment of hesitation she said it was hearing her father’s voice incessantly telling her what to do during games.
She loved her dad. He was a good friend of mine and a great person. I knew their relationship off the field was excellent, so hearing her say this hit me like a hammer, and I resolved to eliminate this behavior in my own sideline conduct.
Practically overnight I began to notice the unhealthy antics of other parents who coached from the sidelines. I paid close attention to their kids’ reactions and performances.
I talked to players, I talked to parents and I talked to coaches. Everybody seemed to carry some level of frustration and discontent away from their youth athletic experiences that just didn’t seem right. Everybody was working too hard—sacrificing too much to be left feeling this negative hangover.
Without me realizing it, the third part of my youth sports story had begun.
I’d become an advocate for change. I established a personal code of conduct and led by example. I sought like-minded coaches and talked about strategies for providing the highest quality youth athletic experience. I got input from officials, from administrators, from parents and from players.
And I realized how difficult and complicated it is to simply change the way people view youth athletics here in the United States. There really are no easy answers to unraveling a psyche that has its roots in the hopes and dreams of parents and grandparents who’ve been taught to believe that the final score is the only measure of success.
But we have to start somewhere, so for me, it was my son’s baseball team.
I’d coached them in a highly competitive league from the age of ten, but at twelve, I gave them back the game—literally, allowing them to set the batting lineup, the positions on the field and coach the bases. I even let my five-year-old daughter keep the book, which she did until the boys graduated high school and the team disbanded. That team, and its success on so many levels is a story for another time.
I’m now forty years into my youth sports story, still spending weekends on softball fields, soccer fields and in gyms all over Philadelphia, and I’m still witness to all manner of bad behavior—by parents, by coaches and by players.
And so that’s why I’m here, now, helping PCA get its message out to one coach at a time, one team at a time and one organization at a time, because positive change isn’t a sweeping change; when it comes right down to it, positive change starts with one person.
It starts with you. I hope you join me. I hope you join us.