. It becomes afull time job, complete with stress, guilt, and a truckload of pressure. Even long-standing familyholidays, such as Christmans and Thanksgiving, dissapate into long road trips and treks totournaments.Some parents are happy that sports fills up their childrens idle time. If theyre on thefield doing laps or shagging flies, they are not on the streets, doing drugs and chugging alcohol.But overbearing coaches and occasionally deranged parents occasionally mar the game for themost important people- the children. The military police had to be called in to stop a parentsbrawl at a tinymite football game in Repton, Ala., last October. That same year, an Okalahomaman was sentenced to twelve days in jail for attacking a fifteen year-old umpire. Im sorry, butwho exactly are the children here?Coaches are also a cause of some of the negativity found in youth sports. On the surface,coaches appear to be the salt of the earth. Men and women who work forty hours a week comehome and coach a Little League baseball, football, hockey team, etc. And since they are allvoulnteers, they get no money for their service. But a problem can arise. While most of thesefolks may know their respective sports very well, they do not know the proper way to get throughto a young and fragile little child. Its one of the largest volunteer forces in our country, saysRainer Martens PhD. Dr. Martens runs a coaching education program in Champaign, Ill. Yet wetrun our kids over to someone who we know nothing about, he adds. We think nothing aboutwhether this person knows how to protect the physical safety of the child, or can communicatethe values we think are important. Coaches, even the nicest, most supportive ones, caninadvertantly harm a child psychologically or physically, simply because they do not know theproper way to communicate. But this is a problem can may be quickly eradicated. Tom Crawford,a psychologist and motor-development expert who directs coachin...
