November 25, 2008

Dear AYSO,

Hey Coach! is published every Tuesday for all AYSO coaches. Send questions, story ideas or comments to HeyCoach@....

Thanks!
John Ouellette
AYSO National Coach

Ask The Coach...
Everything You Wanted To Know But Were Afraid To Ask
 

Coaches have to deal with all sorts of scenarios week in and week out. Each week John will address a question that has been sent in by an AYSO coach. In the upcoming week's, John is going to be answering follow-up questions to questions he's already answered. This week's question is:

"How do you get U-13 girls to listen and practice when they just refuse to?"

Click here to the audio link for John's answer.

Why A Good Experience is Important
Here Is A letter That We Received From A Parent Recently

We can't stress enough how important a good coaching experience is for a young player. Here is an example of a player playing soccer for four years, and a bad experience with a coach caused him to not only leave AYSO, but also the sport.

Dear Hey Coach,

My son played three years of AYSO (U-6 and U-8) and then decided to try flag football. That didn't work out so well. So, the next year, my 10-year-old son went back to play AYSO. We thought it would be good for him to play with other boys from neighborhoods nearby.  At the first practice, we thought the coach looked energetic, interested and knowledgeable about soccer. Wrong.
 
During the soccer season, this coach would scream and yell at the boys while they were playing their game. Early in the games, he would call a player over to him on the sideline and while the game was still going on he would order the 10 or 11-year-old boy to get down and do 10 sit-ups or 10 push-ups as punishment for how he were playing! This happened multiple times. This same coach would be cautioned repeatedly by the line referee to back off the field and to stop complaining to the center referee. At one point, he finally did get red carded and was ordered to leave the field. Finally.
 
As a former AYSO coach, I found my son's AYSO coach to be verbally abusive. And more. This coach took my young son by the jersey and literally flung him a distance of approximately 5 feet in order for the sideline referee to view his jersey number as a sub. There's more.  My son and a select few other boys would be subbed out half of the game while other players never came off the field. Near the end of the season with only two games left to play, I emailed the coach suggesting he sub equally since the team was in 13th place out of 14.
 
I had been informed most of the boys picked by the coach had been baseball players who had played baseball for him for a couple of years. Those parents had become friends. Maybe these other parents were use to this type of treatment from this man, but I wasn't. I had attended AYSO Intermediate & Advanced Coach, Safe Haven, Referee Training and this behavior went against AYSO philosophies. 
 
After that year, my son lost all interest and desire to play organized soccer.

If you see this type of behavior from a coach, please contact your Coach Administer or Child and Volunteer Protection Advocate (CVPA). This behavior is exactly what the AYSO philosophies are meant to protect children from, is a form of child abuse and should not be tolerated.