Times have changed

Playing football in high school, I can remember many times wanting to quit and go home. Going through two a day practices in the heat, running, doing hitting drills, wanting to puke, and wanting just to be sleeping like the rest of the school kids were doing. Getting yelled at by coaches, (I will not be repeating what was yelled at to me), and getting in fights with your teammates during certain drills. Being sore, you did have headaches, giving up all your time after school everyday to practice. Giving up your summer by going to weights in the morning, lineman workouts, 7 on 7, camps, and fundraising for your team. Giving up your Saturday morning and afternoon to watch film, do walk throughs, and go over a scouting report of the other team. All that hard work, even if you didn’t have a winning season that year, or won the state championship, I wouldn’t have traded it for anything.

Today, the game has changed, and I have watched it change over time. The way my coaches use to be able to coach us has changed. The way you can practice has changed. The rules have changed, and this isn’t in just high school, you see it in college and the NFL. There are more safety rules and you can keep up with because every year they change. Even the way parents handle their kids sports and coaches has changed over time. Even how you can talk to “yell” at a player has changed.

Here in Illinois, you cannot even have real two a day practices anymore. You use to be able to have an early morning practice at 6 or 7 in the morning and practice until around 9 or 930. Then the next practice would be at 1 and go until around 330. You would have almost a month of those before the first scrimmage game. My senior year in high school is when you could see the times where starting to change. The rules changed with the first day practice could be held, and it went from having a month for a few weeks of two a day practices to only 4 days of them. Now, as a player you loved it because you didn’t have to go through hell, but as a coach you hated it because you got less time to work on things before the season. Now in Illinois, you don’t get those same two a day practices anymore. You are only allowed about 2 and a half to 3 hours with the players a day. You can split up the practices to an hour and half in the morning and an hour and half in the afternoon. But, there are only so many days of that before school starts, and some coaches just prefer to go the full time so they can get use to the practice schedules they will have when school starts. The kids today, here in Illinois, don’t know how good they have it with practices.

The “softness” of the game has changed as well. I remember when each player on the team wanted to take your head off. When had it drilled in our head, when we lined up across from someone that they were going to pay for just lining up there. We needed to put them into the ground, then help them up and say better not line up there again. You didn’t have to worry about tackling, because we were able to practice it all the time and know what we were doing. Now, with all the safety rules and changing how to tackle has made kids worry a little bit when the go hit someone. When a kid has the chance to get a big hit on a player, they slow it down and think about it too much because they don’t want to get a flag and hurt their team.

Now, I am not saying that putting your head down and hitting someone is right. Kids need to learn on how to keep their head and eyes up when they tackle and hit so they won’t get hurt. But, in certain situations when the game is going really fast, and they need to make a hit, and the hit just happens to be at the chest or chin, that’s just a hit. That shouldn’t be a penalty, that is making it harder to play defense, and it is making the kids and game softer. Concussions is a big issue, and it is a serious issue, but it happens in every sport with contact, so why is football the big target? Soccer players get a ton of concussions, as well as basketball players, so why are they still keeping their same rules to their game and practice schedules?

I remember if you came off the sideline, and you had a headache, the coach would tell you to get water and walk around for a few minutes then would get put back in the game. Then it changed to going over to talk to the trainer, but the trainer would basically wait to see if you had symptoms of a concussion. If you didn’t, then you got sent back in as long as it was the head coaches call. Most of the time, we went back in because it would only take us breaking our leg to keep us out. Now, if player goes up to a trainer and says the words “I have a headache”, they have to keep them out of practice. No matter if they really have symptoms of a concussion or not. The kids, knowing this information, will use this as a way to get out of practice and not run or do a certain drill. Not all kids do this, but some will and take advantage of the rules. I am all for keeping kids safe, and making sure that they don’t get a concussion, but some of the rules and the way things are done, are making the kids soft and our game soft.

A big thing that has started to be a real pain is the parents and every kid gets a trophy mentality. Yes, I might get a lot of backlash from this, but from my own experiences this is not a good trend that is going on. When I was growing up, you would get 1^st place trophy if you won your tournament in whatever sport you were playing. And yes, I was also apart of getting a trophy for being on the team. But, back then, our parents didn’t care if we got those or not. And us as players, we didn’t really care either because we enjoyed playing the game, but we also knew that we didn’t need those because we didn’t win it all.

Today, kids think that they should just be able to play because they showed up to the practice or workout, and parents think their kid should play because of those same reasons. Just because you or your kid showed up to a work out or practice, doesn’t mean they will play. They need to show up and actually work hard, do what the coach says, study the plays, have a good attitude, or I am sorry but they wont play. This type of mentality needs to start around middle school in my opinion. Because they need to start seeing what will happen in high school. If you as a coach send the kids into high school thinking that they will play no matter what, its going to ruin them and the program. The players need to see that they need to work hard, do what is asked of them, and they will be able to see themselves get better and see more time on that field or court.

Parents need to realize a few things as well. If your child is not playing that much, you need to make it their responsibility to go up to the coach and ask them in private what they need to do or fix to get more playing time. If they do that, I guarantee 9/10 times it can be solved right then and there. The coach can have that conversation with the player and make it the players responsibility to fix it. There will always be that 1 time that it will not get solved. You as a parent, should not be calling the coach, or emailing them, or whatever asking why their child is not playing more, and how unfair it is. Or to say that because you as a coach are not playing everyone, that you are doing a horrible job. Or calling administration with all these complaints about the coach, when it all comes from just your kid not getting the playing time you think they deserve.

Parents, sometimes you just need to let the coaches do their job. Coaches do not show up, call, or email you are your job and tell you how to do this or that. You also need to realize that its someone else time to coach your kid, not you. The kids need to realize that when they get to middle school and high school, its no longer daddy ball. And some parents need to realize that if they see their kid not playing, that means their own child isn’t working hard enough in practice. And they need to realize that maybe their kid isn’t as perfect as they think they are. Once they can realize that, they can talk to their child at home and help the coach out by changing their attitude or getting them to work harder. I can remember anytime coming home, and if I started to complain about the coach or this or that in the sport I was in, they would tell me to shut my mouth, walk back outside and come back in to talk about something else. They said it was my decision to play, so they didn’t want to hear complaining about this or that. And if I was unhappy with my playing time, I had to ask the coach and then I had to work harder. My parents always believed that you just work harder to get more out of what you are doing.

Last thing with parents, yes, your kid will get yelled at in practice or a game. I am sorry, but its just a fact of the sports life. I will never repeat what I got yelled at when I played football, but even those times have changed. Coaches cannot yell or say some of the things they use to be able to. Now, this isn’t such a big problem, but your kid will still get a butt chewing every so often. Everyone who has ever played a sport had a few butt chewing’s individually or as a whole team. But, parents will complain or get upset when coaches yell at their kids. I am sorry, but those kids need to get use to those type of things. For one, if you have a child that will go on to play a college sport, but they can’t handle a high school coach yelling at them, how in the world can they handle a college coach? If they get their big boy job, and the screw something up at work, you don’t think that the boss is going to chew them? It’s a part of life, its going to happen, yes us coaches cannot say what the coaches from the past said, but those players still need to get a few stern yells or talks to every so often.  

Times are changing. Things are not what they use to be.