I totally agree with the clean play mentality of coaching. I have also
noticed the rough play increasing and along with that the increasing
tolerance by the refs. Of course, teams notice that and will try to get
away with what they can. To what expense, that someone is going to get
seriously injured. Some of those people forget, they have kids playing and
would be the first to scream if their child was roughed over. Not to
mention that some of the injuries sustained, are long lasting and can affect
the child's physical level in any sport, right through their adult years. I
can certainly attest to that.

I play on a women's team and I cannot believe what goes on with some of the
teams. On the same note, I am certainly impressed when they are apologetic
for running into you, or will give a helping hand to get you up.

If I were you I would consistently pass along the message and that under no
condition is rough play going to be tolerated. Along with that, I would
think you would also have to carry through with consequences, if you witness
them conducting unconstitutional type of play. There will come a time when
these kids, as adults, may have an opportunity to coach and hopefully will
remember these proper coaching/playing values. We need to get the kids to
understand this and hopefully the chain of this type of coaching will be
broken. Good luck!

-----Original Message-----
From: Davidoff, Gary N. [mailto:gdavidoff@...]
Sent: Wednesday, July 05, 2000 12:54 PM
To: 'Good-Bad-Ugly@egroups.com'
Subject: [Good, Bad and Ugly (about Soccer)] Rough Play in Travelling
Soccer


Hi. My name is Gary Davidoff and I'm an assistant coach on a girl's U10
travelling soccer team. We've been teaching our girls to play a clean
game of soccer. The use of the body is ok when playing the ball, but
you can't use your body to play the other play (no pushing, holding,
tripping, etc.) However, the refs don't seem to ever call anything
short of violence. We just played in a tournament and our girls were
essentially beaten up by several teams. When we questioned the refs
after the game, their answers were basically noncommittal. Are we
supposed to teach our girls that anything goes. That they should test
the ref and it's ok, as long as the ref isn't calling it. This is
opposite to the beliefs of the coaches on our team. We don't have a
"win at all cost" mentality and believe we should be teaching our girls
to play well, but cleanly. Are we wrong? How do we protect the girls?

Thanks.

Gary Davidoff
gdavidoff@...
United States

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