The Edge with Sean Engmann

Youth Sports: Softness over Honor and Victory

When I was flying back from Las Vegas the other day, I came across an article in Sports Illustrated by Rick Reilly, which discusses an incident that occured in a recent 9-10 year old PONY baseball game.  For the record, I do not like Reilly's commentary, though generally well-written and interesting, because to me, Reilly comes across as being very pompous, arrogant and judgmental.  In a recent story, he villified a high school football officiating crew for refusing to allow a legless player to play, without taking into consideration the impact of bringing negative national attention onto a high school referee or taking into account the safety and liability issues that the crew faced that night.  In that case, had the kid gotten hurt, Reilly would've written an article about how stupid the coaches and officials were for letting a legless player play.  My problem with Reilly is that he's a very hypocritical individual who is quick to an opinion which is not very well thought out.  It is true in the PONY case and the football one, and in my opinion, the press that he gets is a contributing factor to the decline of the traditional values of youth and high school sports and the increasing softness being associated with them.

To summarize, the Reilly article focused on a situation in Utah during a PONY league championship game.  It was the bottom of the last inning with the defensive team up a run with a runner on 3rd and two outs with the best hitter up, a slugger capable of hitting a homerun.  On deck was a tiny cancer survivor with a shunt in his brain.  The coaching staff of the defensive team chose to intentionally walk the best hitter on the team, and, supposedly with tears in his eyes, the cancer survivor struck out to end the game.  Reilly contends that this was a travesty, an example of extremely poor sportsmanship, quoting the cancer survivor's father as saying, "It's like going after the weakest chick in the flock."  I disagree, I think it was absolutely the right move, and more so, the morally correct decision by the coaching staff.

As a high school baseball coach, my philosophy first in coaching players is to develop people and to be a leader.  I demand effort from my players, and the players have a right to demand of their coach, at any level, that they are put in the best position to succeed, both as individuals and as a team.  In my opinion, it would have been a disservice to the players who played all season for me, came to the practices and worked hard to make it to the championship game, for me to put their season in jeopardy by deciding that they had to face the best hitter instead of one who is likely to be an easy out. 

The more prudent question in this PONY is why was the cancer where he was to begin with?  Clearly his position in the lineup did not take into account his best interests given his physical condition.  Should he even have been playing?  In regards to the kid's position in the lineup, it was very irresponsible for the coach to put the worst hitter behind the best hitter simply because having to protect the best hitter is a tough spot.  Clearly, the kid was not able physically, or mentally, to handle it.  There's always talk about why the worst player gets "hidden" in right field in Little League, and that's simply because that's the best spot for him to have a chance to succeed.  Put the kid at shortstop, he physically couldn't handle the failure, and probably couldn't deal with it mentally, so the kid would quit in all likelyhood. 

Our current society has placed a premium value on participation, and has instituted participation rules, and while there's some logic to it at the lowest levels, it does not take into account what's best for the kids involved all the time.  The problem with mandatory participation rules is that they discourage hard work, foster a sense of entitlement and they put kids in a position to fail.  It's no fun to sit on the bench, but it's less fun to consistently fail and be unable to compete and to consistently let your teammates down.  I fully believe in the concept of throwing people into the fire, but they have to at least possess some of the tools as well as the mental ability to compete.  Today's mentality is more like, "My Jimmy is gonna play and play where he wants because we paid to be a part of this league/to go to this school."  When a kid like this cancer survivor plays, yeah, it might be an inspiration to his parents, but the kid could not handle the game, so it really isn't fair to either him or his team for him to be out there.

Youth sports are about fun and sportsmanship, but there is also a very significant value that we are losing, and that's the ability to compete.  Any time, no matter how young the kids, there is a league set up and a championship game, winning the championship should be the team's goal, and winning games should be a top priority.  To say winning and losing at this level isn't important is wrong, wins and losses are always important, and only get more important as athletes climb the ladder to high school, then college and eventually the pros.  Competition is a key value in life, and winning as a goal should not be set aside by anyone.  Anyone who says that it's about the fun and not about winning is not a winner.  Sure you can have fun on a losing team, but those experiences are more about being a part of a team, and really have nothing to do with the games themselves.  One of the worst things I think you can do as a kid is coddle them with entitlements and teach them to ignore, rather than to address failure.  Participation rules punish the talented players and prevent the weaker players from growing as players and people, depriving them of valuable tools to succeed because they teach kids that feeling good is more important than competing and winning.

Finally, as coaches, our role is to further the kids and the game.  Villifying coaches for wanting to win is wrong.  Kids will remember when they win championships their entire lives, and the coach has an obligation to, within the rules, do his best to allow that to happen.  Coaches need to be role models and prepare players for the next level, and life in general in exactly the same way that teachers in the classroom do.  The sad thing in America is that 60 percent of the country polled side with Rick Reilly, saying that the kid should never have been walked.  One of the great things about sports in general and especially baseball is that you cannot hide, you will be tested and everyone who plays the game will be humbled at some time.  If any player, at any level can't handle the challenge of being "picked on" either mentally or physically, that player should not be in the game.  The player was set up to fail. Period.  Because to not walk the star would mean that the weak player can hide behind the star and skirt by under the radar.  That is not a good quality or value for an individual in life, and kids who are instilled with such values will have many more problems later in life than just striking out with the championship on the line in a 9-10 year old baseball game.

The Ongoing Steroids Saga

Well for the last year it seems like the only story in sports, particularly baseball and the Olympic sports has been the use of steroids and performance enhancing drugs.  The prevalence of performance enhancers has really been evident for a long time and I generally consider them to have been a part of sports for a long time.  The fact is that with sports nutrition alone and the advances in kiniesiology and weight training alone that the athletes of today are in much better physical shape than they ever were before.  In baseball, Lou Gehrig was considered uncommonly strong because he carried heavy equipment in the offseason.  Now, everybody is training all day seven days a week to maintain shape.  With scientific advances and the amount of money at stake in athletics nowadays, suggesting that there should be a way to link athletes from one era to another is a fallacy as todays worst athletes would outperform the best of the past.  Essentially what the prevalence of steroids and performance enhancers have done over the past decade is raise the bar of athletic excellence and produce some of the most exciting moments and the highest level of competition that has ever been seen.

The sport in the harsh glare of the steroids controversy is baseball, where the shroud of secrecy has been removed and the public now is being bombarded with how steroid use saturated the game.  It has been no secret though that since way back in the 1950s and 60s professional baseball players have been using amphetemines or "greenies" to improve their competitive edge.  Jim Bouton in his book Ball Four detailed greenies as being readily and visibly available in the clubhouse, and that he and others popped them regularly prior to games and his book chronicled the 1969 season.  The other point that has not been mentioned is that steroids literally saved baseball.  The power surge of the mid to late 90s, particularly the homerun chase between Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire in 1998 brought millions of Americans bitter about the 1994 strike back to the game.  The power numbers now being put up captivated fans and it was very exciting baseball to watch, an elevated form of baseball with players routinely doing superhuman things almost on a nightly basis.  Steroids in baseball were essentially the goose that laid the golden egg.

The man now at the center of the steroids controversy is Barry Bonds, who has never admitted nor been proven to use steroids, but a mountain of evidence suggests that he has.  Bonds, at a very late stage in his career catapulted his Hall of Fame career into a legendary one, by obliterating the single season homerun record and now chasing Hank Aaron for the all-time career mark.  Throughout the 1990s Barry Bonds and Ken Griffey Jr. were considered as being head and shoulders above everyone else.  In 1998 the spotlight shifted to Sosa and McGwire, both obviously using performance enhancers, and two inferior players were now getting the endorsements and adulation, threatening Bonds's stature.  The result?  Bonds decided that he's a better ballplayer and proved it by using performance enhancers himself and transformed himself into far and away the best player in the history of baseball at the end of his career.  The contrast is Griffey, who seemingly has not used and his career has been marred by injuries as nature has taken its natural toll on his body.

Bonds and the top sluggers were not the only users, in fact most of baseball used performance enhancers.  Relief pitchers were now able to recover faster from their outings, and middling players used and turned into legitimate starters.  The game of baseball, in my opinion, from 1997-2004 was played at the highest level it has ever been played because of steroids, and I'm grateful to have seen many games from that era.  Going to a game now is an exercise in the routine, and I can see a noticible difference in the quality of play from just 3-4 years ago.  What has happened, though, is that the competitive balance of the game has been restored (see the Detroit Tigers this year, the White Sox last year and the '03 Marlins for proof) as teams with young talent can now compete.  Teams with huge payrolls before were the only ones who could afford the huge salaries that the goliaths of the game commanded.

From an athlete's perspective, I do not fault them at all for using performance enhancers, especially considering how effective and prevalent they were.  I do not blame Bonds for using to restore and secure his place in history.  I also do not blame that relief pitcher for using to extend his career and his earnings for a couple more seasons.  Those couple of seasons meant the world for securing financial stability for him and his family.  For the minor leaguer who used to get to the majors, it meant the ability to have the security of a Major League pension.  In terms of the quality of the game, and the history of the game, the quality was never better than during the steroid era and from a historic perspective, it is really impossible to compare teams and players from different eras.  Baseball is a game meant to be played by living people against each other, not to be compared across eras.

The bottom line on this story is that baseball needs to go in one direction and stick with it.  They need to be intolerant on any use of performance enhancers or to allow them.  Lifetime ban or allow their use, no middle ground.  It's much like the drug war that we're experiencing in America, where half measures have served only to overcrowd our prisons and have done nothing to combat the drug use.  Additionally, the federal government should step in with very harsh mandatory penalties against anyone who is a provider of performance enhancers to athletes (the Victor Contes and Greg Andersons of the world).  There's so much money involved that anything less amounts to a slap on the wrist.  The other alternative is to seek out performance enhancers that are safe and just as potent as steroids, HGH, etc and to legalize them, and allowing athletes to compete at the highest possible level.  Additionally, baseball should stop any investigations into the past and focus squarely on the future as looking into the past will only open wounds and hurt the game.

The Recruiting Rat Race

I just returned from Las Vegas, where I officiated basketball in two of the three major recruiting tournaments (the Adidas Super 64 and the Nike Main Event).  In total, I worked three of these major recruiting tournaments this year, including the Easter Classic in April, all in Las Vegas, as well as a major AAU tournament over Memorial Day weekend in Reno, so I think I have a good perspective on the rat race that is summer basketball.  Summer basketball is a cutthroat world, a world where big money is at stake for a lot of people, many of whom have nothing to do with the athletes and a larger number who couldn't care less about the players.  Athletics in general has become much more cutthroat and it involves many people beyond simply athletes and coaches.  For all the bad that surrounds it though, the new world has generated better athletes and creates opportunities for many players to get a chance at a college scholarship, the question is whether or not the opportunity outweighs the atmosphere of arrogance and opportunism that prevails now in all high level club sports.

Today I opened two sports magazines, ESPN and The Sporting News and each magazine contained articles featuring summer basketball.  ESPN featured the "Top Rated 6th Grader in the Country."  It discussed how parents pay top dollar to send their grammar school and middle school age kids to top flight camps to be seen and to be rated.  Discussions also took place about kids not growing to be as big as they need to be and seeing their dreams of the NBA thus being shattered.  The Sporting News article featured a player from Southern California by the name of Taylor King who's going to Duke.  I worked one of his games in the Spring and didn't think he was even the best player on his team, and the article essentially said the same thing, saying that his stock has plummeted.  Here's a guy who's barely 18 and having to do media damage control.

The atmosphere that surrounds summer basketball is not positive and it rubs off on the players, particularly the top players.  The AAU coaches of some teams are paid up to six figures to assemble a team of prospects, scouts for the internet bilk parents out of money by creating these ratings going as low as 4th grade, and come up with deals to send the kids to training camps.  Professional agents are buttering up parents, as are college coaches, because they need to to maintain a program. 

With all this attention, the level of arrogance on the court is very high, and often the players don't have much of a sense of reality, rather, they have a sense of entitlement.  I worked the Houston Hoops team, whose owner runs the Vision Sports tournaments and I had never seen that level of arrogance toward us as officials as well as the other team (not exactly humble, they were the Cuttino Mobley All Stars from Philly, who were overmatched).  Working that game, I had to resort to cussing at the players, calling technicals and getting in the faces of players just to gain respect and control the game.  Basically I had to be a total prick to gain their respect. 

The reality though is that most of those players will play D1 college, but the attitude of that team was not of the hard work and responsibility needed for a student-athlete to succeed.  Because they have been pampered and been given a sense of entitlement, the players in this game clearly do not understand what a gift their talent will give them: a free college education.  Most likely the college scholarship their incredible talent will get them will be squandered because these individuals lack responsibility and perspective to understand what type of opportunity they were afforded.  They will view their classes as a waste of time and struggle to succeed.  It is a major shame, and the reason is that so many people are making big money off of them and their dreams now that they're filled with delusions, babied and they lose sight of the big picture.

On the other hand, summer basketball gives opportunities to those who might have been overlooked.  The teammates of big name players may get looks from schools, and these are the hard workers who understand the type of gift a free college education is and will take advantage of the exposure.

As a high school baseball coach and basketball referee, I have a unique perspective on the whole "club sports" game.  Unfortunately there are a lot of bad people involved who will ruin lives to make an extra buck and who don't care for the athletes at all.  There are also good people too, and the system is what it is.  Sport specialization is a reality of the day, and I was even more convinced when I was e-mailed about a job opportunity for "talent scouts" who conduct tests on 10-12 year olds to determine what sport they have the best opportunity to succeed in.  In baseball, a typical way athletes get identified for top teams is to pay for private instruction from local coaches and they play on travel teams, sometimes for coaches who don't have the well-being of the athlete in mind.  In hockey, junior hockey is very similar to the basketball circuit.  Club soccer, particularly for girls can be very competitive to get into.  The result in all these sports though tends to be that the most dedicated, hard-working, sacrificing athletes succeed.  The difference between these sports and basketball though is that there is far more perspective in other sports.

The reality of the day is that club sports and specialization are here to stay, and they are big money enterprises.  The system enables the best players in each sport to have the best possible shot to succeed and provides a mechanism for hard work, determination and dedication to pay off.  It gives many people the opportunity to earn a college education, and in general, I have no problem with the system.  But in basketball, there are problems, stemming from a sense of entitlement and popularity and a lack of perspective.  Ranking players in grade school is absurd, and it's this type of absurdity that threatens amateur sports from youth leagues through college.