Who are we, anyway?

Ok, you've made it through the new team's first meeting, volunteered to bring cupcakes at birthdays, perhaps for the first time wrote a check for some overpriced clothes for your child to wear (typically called 'gear') that you didn't pick out yourself, met a bunch of parents of kids who your child has played against at all sorts of rec sports during the years, reworked your evening schedule around practices, kind of checked your weekend agenda for the next month or two to check for conflicts with tournaments and friendlies,... Now what?

Well, pretty soon you'll find yourself out on the practice field with a bunch of other parents with the same apprehension... The kids will be all bunched up around the coach, as he starts to mold them into a team. You watch them run, you watch them touch the ball, you watch them struggle to follow instructions, you watch the coach drop balls between them and have them crash to the ball first, you watch them run because someone was talking while the coach was talking, you watch them run because someone else was talking, again, and again... What is going on, what did we get into...? This seems awful serious stuff for kids... Oh well, the kids do seem to be having fun...

Pretty soon, it will be bumped up to the next level – your new team's first game. Gosh, look at where the coach has my munchkin playing – they've never played there before. They're going to look terrible – no wait, they're doing ok...!

It's happening, and you probably just missed it. "They" are evolving from a rug rat, to a random gaggle of energetic individuals into a "they" a team. As with any newborn, pretty soon parents with little to do on the sidelines will awake to the new challenge of assigning an appropriate identity for this new "THEY" -- this new team.

Are THEY world beaters? Get real, they can barely keep their shoes tied, or remember to bring a full water bottle to practice, and they lost their ball a week ago, for the fourth time...

Are THEY winners? Maybe yes, maybe no... I don't want them to be losers... Better come up with a positive plan to deal with driving home after the ups and downs of play...

Who are THEY anyway? Just as a decade or more ago when "they" were some rug rat crawling around the family room, THEY, your new team, is likely to have an elusive ever changing identity. THEY will be constantly evolving for the next few months through this and that phase of practice skills and game experiences. While the coach and parents surely have some role in who THEY are to become, THEY individually and collectively will ultimately determine who THEY are...

While it's easy for parents to meddle in THEIR evolution and identity, parents must also be very careful how this is done. All too often, parent meddling is akin to too many cooks spoiling the broth. Some learn this sooner, some later than others. Some never pick it up. Most healthy teams have parents who've learned to keep a hands off approach to THEIR team's identity and instead work to be positive around their own child's interaction with the coach, team and teammates... They (the parents) start to act as a another 'team', a group of fans with a vested interest in positively supporting THEM, the team on the field.

Would that this be the boundary of how they, the parents/adults, act. Nope... There's a dark side to how they can behave. All too frequently, they skip over molding THEIR team's identity (finding out how that's not healthy from first or second hand experience) in favor of assigning various identities to this or that team that THEY play or might play. All too often, they assign identities that aren't deserved, perhaps based upon some parent's own life struggles, perhaps just good old trash talk. They (the parents) have lost sight of how these other teams are made up of collectives of other kids and parents, who are going through about the same team identity thing. What goes around comes around, many times kids on other teams eventually find out about the negative identities other team's parents have assigned to them – some kids. While positive identities typically result in positive competitive interactions, negatives can result in responses that fall all over the map of good and bad behavior, depending in large upon the maturity THEY (the team, the kids) have developed.

So who are we anyway? Uh, we are supposed to be the adults, role models for the kids, the source of nurturing advice and consult ... Take care, have a good season, have some fun, watch the kids grow, watch them play, watch them mature, pick them up when they are down, keep their energy properly managed when they hit a high, most of all -- be adult about it all... This is about THEM, not us.

Fred Chittenden

WPS Soccer would like to say thanks Fred for submitting a very thoughtful and very true article in so many ways. It's hard not to live soccer thru your children.......