Structuring Youth Sports Leagues To Enhance Participation And Skill Development

Everyone loves to play, to move, to have fun, to be active. Sports are a form of play. Before children join organized sports leagues, they play unstructured, informal games. They chase each other around the school yard, play keep away or shoot hoops at a park. Nobody tells a child to participate; he chooses to play.

The Reasons that Kids Quit Sports

Practice is boring (too many drills)
Emotional stress from excessive performance demands (too focused on winning too early)
Feelings of constant failure, typically due to negative coaching
Not playing enough

With young children, coaches, parents and leagues often progress too quickly and ignore the playful and social aspects of sports that attract players originally. Rather than move immediately to a coach-driven, instruction-based, result-dominated environment, many young children may prefer activities of a less competitive nature that are focused more on learning, development and fun.

Organized League

Only five players per team play at a time
Best players play a majority of the minutes
Coaches criticize mistakes
Coaches coach to win
Coaches run plays
Coaches attack the opponent’s weakest players
Game stops for timeouts, free throws, etc.
Officials control the game
Game played for a pre-determined amount of time
Play with the assigned team as picked by  the coaches
Keep score and track winners

Children’s Pick-Up Games

Everyone plays
Players balance the teams to make them fair
Players try new moves
Players play for fun
Players’ movement is unrestricted
Players help the weaker players
Game never stops
Players control the game and resolve disputes
Players play as long as it’s fun
Play with friends
No performance demands

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Adults control organized leagues and impose their values, often ignoring the players’ feelings, beliefs or motivations. Competition, winning, standings and all-star teams dominate leagues. Children who dislike the environment drop out of the activity.

When kids play on their own, without adults, the score’s importance fades and winning or losing is a non-issue. In elementary school, we competed in soccer, basketball or football at every recess. We raced up and down the court and called our own fouls. We did not stop to shoot free throws, and we played the entire recess; no timeouts to set up strategy. We argued. We kept score. We fought. We imitated our professional heroes and used our imagination. We played freely, had fun and stayed active. Everyone played, nobody suffered from stress if he lost and nobody worried about failing. We created our game, used our imaginations and explored our environment. We gained confidence through trying new skills and moves and grew socially as we interacted with our peers.

In this generation, children often do not know how to start their own games because most of their childhood activities are adult-initiated. Therefore, youth leagues for younger players need to find a way to embrace the attributes of the pick-up games that engage young players.

Since players enjoy playing, not sitting on the bench, and engaging in the activity, not doing drills, leagues should find ways to keep more players active in game-like activities rather than standing in line waiting to do a drill or sitting on the bench waiting to play.

Playmakers Basketball Development Leagues are leagues based on finding ways to keep more players engaged and eliminate the performance pressure and negative coaching. The PBDL embraces the best parts of the pick-up games (fun, activity, playing, more touches, more activity) with the best parts of a structured league (some instruction, adult supervision, officials to prevent arguments, designated time frame).

Daniel Coyle’s The Talent Code explains the Brazilians’ advantage in soccer as futsal. As he writes: “Futsal players touch the ball far more often than soccer players – six times more often per minute, according to a Liverpool University study. The smaller, heavier ball demands and rewards more precise handling.”

As an introduction to soccer, futsal develops the important skills by rewarding the skills with success and providing more opportunities per minute to practice the important skills. Brazilian players develop by playing the game – often as pick-up games on the beach or in the street – rather than doing drills with a coach.

Futsal and the PBDLs are ways for young athletes to engage and develop sports skills while maintaining the fun and playfulness that attracted them to the sport. To develop better youth athletes, and to fight childhood obesity, we need to structure more leagues around these concepts to meet young athletes’ needs and motivations and to keep the game closer to children’s pick-up games and further from the professional atmosphere.