Breaking the Line: The ECNL Podcast
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Breaking the Line: The ECNL Podcast
The Realities of Coaching Youth Soccer in America | Ep. 117
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The ECNL's Breaking the Line team is back another episode, expanding on a topic introduced when discussing the ECNL Pyramid.
ECNL President Christian Lavers and ECNL Vice President Doug Bracken discuss what it is like being a youth soccer coach in American today. The pair touch on a variety of topics in the episode: the sacrifices coaches make in their personal lives, how much influence do coaches really have on results, the differences in coaching younger age groups to older, and is there a true coaching career path in the youth realm today?
It's a fascinating peek behind the curtain from two coaches who have spent decades on the sidelines of soccer pitches across the country. Plus, a Bracken Brain Buster that wraps up the episode perfectly.
As always, if you have any questions or podcast topic suggestions for the Breaking the Line podcast, send them to us at https://ecnl.info/BTL-Questions. And please, follow the ECNL on all social channels, subscribe to Breaking the Line, and don't miss all the exciting content being published on the ECNL's YouTube page!
This is the April 30 edition of Breaking the Line, the ECNL podcast, featuring ECNL President and CEO, christian Labors, and ECNL Vice President and Chief of Staff, doug Bracken. The ECNL podcast is all about you and for you, so if you have questions, please submit them to info at theecnlcom. With assistance from our podcast production lead, jacob Bourne, and our producer, colin Thrash, I'm Dean Linke. Today, christian and Doug talk about coaching, specifically the reality of coaching youth soccer in America, the challenges, the rewards, the expectations and knowing the most important job of coaching is to know what your job is. Of course, we can't end without a bracken brain buster and he keeps this week's question also focused on coaching. It's another great addition of Breaking the Line, the ECNL podcast, and it starts right now with Christian Lavers. Thank you, dean.
Speaker 2:Douglas. Hello Christian, how are you? I'm good. It's getting towards the end of the season. There's a lot going on.
Speaker 3:A lot of events coming up for us. Playoffs always fun.
Speaker 2:Just finished the Texas event, texas boys event, which went well, and then I think, between the May events we have out in the East coast, and then four regionally playoffs and then two ECNL playoffs, the next eight weeks are the definition of insane, I think.
Speaker 3:No question, we get through it Thanks to our staff and all their efforts. So we'd be remiss if we didn't you know, give them a plug for all they do to make those things happen. So yeah, I look forward to it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so what are we talking about today?
Speaker 3:I think this goes off of what kind of you touched on this in the last podcast was just about the American coaching experience at the youth level. Obviously, the both of us have been at that for you know, 25 plus years, seen it from club level, entry, starting out level, all the way up to, you know, being involved in this league, and so I think that also gives us an interesting perspective, maybe more global perspective, on the youth game in this country. So I mean, if you had to define the American coaching experience, so you know what I would say, what this popped up.
Speaker 2:The first thing is we always use this term. He's a soccer guy, right? And what does that mean? And because there's people who love soccer, who work in soccer, that are not don't meet the definition of what is referred to as soccer guy, right, and I think my take on that is a soccer guy is somebody who has coached a team, multiple teams, probably been in some leadership role in a club where they have had to deal with some of the friction and conflict in the youth sporting experience. And so what are those two experiences together?
Speaker 2:Coaching and then being in some leadership role mean it means they've had to release a player or cut a player. They've had to make really hard decisions on playing time. Do I make this change when it's not going to help me win, or do I not make the change and hope that the team wins and maybe sometimes the team winning is really helpful for the environment and for some of the pressures or stresses that people are feeling? And obviously take away any age issues on this. Just assume we're talking about older on that. Has been yelled at, has been criticized, has been responsible for the wins and losses, has some great experiences with parents and players, has some not great experiences. That, to me, is the stereotypical soccer guy. What do you say to that?
Speaker 3:I say are you a soccer guy?
Speaker 2:I hope. I think I certainly have the wounds to show that.
Speaker 3:The way you said, it kind of carried a little bit of a negative connotation. No, no, actually I hope not, I think.
Speaker 2:The way I described it in terms of some of the wounds yeah, I think there is some. You know there's some callousing, that happens. But what I mean by that is when we normally say, hey, he's a soccer guy. I think we use that as a positive and saying, hey, he understands, he or she understands, they've been in the trenches, they've gone through tryouts and dealt with. The kid who says yes, the kid that says no, that says yes, then no, the kid that waits for five offers to make one. You know all that sort of stuff.
Speaker 2:To me, when we say, hey, man, that person's a soccer guy, soccer girl, we're talking about somebody who's not just they don't just like soccer, they didn't just play soccer, they're not just in a sports business. There's somebody who's been in the trenches in the youth game and have all the lessons and learnings that come from that. And I think we talk about that a lot because those people are the essence of our league. They're the people on our board, they're the people that we talk to the most about what does the game need and what should we do. And they're the people, I think, most in touch with what is happening in American youth soccer. They're fully vested in it.
Speaker 3:And how do you become a soccer guy or girl? Whenever we say guy, we also mean girl or girl. Whenever we say guy, we also mean girl. There we go yeah.
Speaker 2:I think most people have the same starting point, which is they finish playing at some point.
Speaker 3:It's hard finishing playing.
Speaker 2:A lot of them it's post-college, Some people it's prior to that because they don't play in college. Some people it's after that because they play beyond college. But I think the most common entry point to becoming the soccer guy, soccer girl and then getting into the trenches is you finish playing, you love the sport, you want to stay involved. Maybe you want to make a living in it. I don't think that's always necessarily the case, but you definitely want to stay in it and you say well, I'm just going to the sidelines, I'm the coach. You take a team and then a long, twisted path begins.
Speaker 3:Yes, we're. We're going to talk about every part of that. How important is it to have played?
Speaker 2:It's important. I think I don't think you need to have been an excellent player, a great player, and I do think that there are people that haven't played that have done a great job coaching. I mean, you can look and say Bruce Serena played lacrosse right and he did a heck of a job with the men's national team for a long time. I think having played helps you understand some things.
Speaker 2:But you know, I had a conversation the other day where somebody was saying when you're dealing with five, six, seven year olds, that you might want a parent, you know, who knows how to deal with kids, who can be as effective or more effective in coaching sometimes than you know your former pro, who can juggle 7,000 times and bend a ball into the corner of the goal in dealing with six and seven-year-olds. So I think it depends. But you know, I think having the background of a player gives you at least some in theory understanding of the sport. That doesn't come from reading a book, watching it on TV or whatever. It gives you a feel for some things. Do I think you have to be a great player? No, and then I think there's also you know, there's anecdotal stories anyway about being a really, really good player sometimes can make it harder in coaching, especially when coaching you know youth players that you have to teach something to.
Speaker 3:How often have you, in your coaching experience, harkened back to when you were a player? When you were a player, how often do you go and say, do you like, take a step back and say, let me look at this through the lens of the player that I'm giving this information to, or having this conflict with, or trying to coach, or whatever.
Speaker 2:You hit on two different things there, cause I think trying to put yourself in the place of the player and having that empathy, you know, or understanding, is something we all in coaching probably need to be doing on a regular basis and, if we're all honest, we probably should be doing it more than we are. That's different than hearkening back or thinking back to your playing, and if I go back, you know we go back to that entry point of the soccer guy or soccer girl when you first start coaching and maybe tying into your second question, your playing background is the only thing that you feel like qualifies you to coach and so it probably is in your mind a lot. You know, I remember the first training sessions I ever probably did. I probably just did what I did as a player because I didn't know any differently. I tried to adapt it to whoever the level was. But I think the longer you coach, if you're still referring to your playing background in year 20 of your coaching career, I think you probably have a problem in your coaching career.
Speaker 3:And, of course, the farther you get away from your playing career, the less those experience necessarily can influence you, because you have more thinking about how I would deal with or whatever it is, how I would teach this particular thing or how I would deal with this situation or whatever. So I feel like maybe you're already kind of formulating those things, not just necessarily like leaning on what your coaches did with you although that's a big part of it but also thinking in those things not just necessarily like leaning on what your coaches did with you, although that's a big part of it but also thinking in those moments like okay, like how would I and I think that's how you get kind of drawn to coaching is if that's how you think like, oh I, I now am thinking, while I'm experiencing this as a player, how I would deal with it as a coach, or you know what I would do to teach this or what path I would take these, these players on.
Speaker 2:That's probably the hardest thing in the transition from player to coach is going from having a direct impact on the game, cause you're a player, you get to do everything Right and if you want, you know and, and as a coach, all you really can do is put people on the field and hopefully they listen to you or hopefully you can impact their thinking. But to me, that was one of the hardest transitions is understanding that, ok, well, execute things and directly impact the game, versus now it's being a step removed from that and understanding to your point of you know this is now not just my opinion. I have to influence the minds of 18 other people to try and make it their opinion or their perspective or their perception, to try and make it their opinion or their perspective or their perception.
Speaker 3:What was your first kind of experience? Coaching, wise age, all that kind of all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2:First camps. I mean, I think we all did college soccer camps in the summer.
Speaker 3:I did soccer plus goalkeeper school. A lot of people, a lot of people did that.
Speaker 2:That's right. That was like a bonding thing for all. Lot of people did that. That's right.
Speaker 3:That was like a bonding thing for all those people that did that shout out to tony, to chico you, you would be surprised how many people out there in coaching were were in those.
Speaker 2:Oh no, I'm not anymore, man, because I was surprised and you just kept running every single goalkeeper coach in the country where it was at soccer plus at some point, I think, 100, 100 and a lot of them, you know, have really leaned into that part of the game.
Speaker 3:A lot of friends and people I worked with, but also a lot of us have taken that and gone and coached teams and gone that route. So, yeah, crazy Legacy, talk about legacy. I mean, yeah, big legacy, talk about legacy. I mean, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Big, big one. I'll take your question, go a little more general is because we're talking about the American coaching experience. You know that I think when we touched on this last week and we were talking with Chris Leahy about how all of us are you, me, chris, a lot of others, jason Cutney and our league are coaching less than we used to. I remember having conversations with a lot of people, you included, when nobody could ever imagine the day they weren't coaching on the sidelines seven days a week, whatever it may be.
Speaker 2:As you get older in this, there become more and more people that do step off the sidelines, more people that do step off the sidelines more, and we saw, we sort of asked the question of you know, why is that, and is that a good thing? Is it an inevitable thing? It doesn't seem to be the type of thing that you don't hear. I think, as we said, you don't hear kindergarten teachers saying I can't wait to get out of the classroom, but you do hear soccer coaches say, hey, I don't want to be on the field as much, and maybe there are teachers that you get to the point where they want to be less in the classroom.
Speaker 3:I think, to do anything really well, and I and I I can only relate to coaching. You put a really a lot into it and it, it, it takes a lot of energy and I and we'll touch on this but when you're coaching more than likely multiple teams and there were times when I was coaching three teams, four teams, at at one time, which is silly, but it's a fact, at least at one point.
Speaker 3:You might've been doing more than that, just because you're, that's you're trying to get in it, which I will. You know we'll talk about that requires a lot of energy and it's so different because every group is different, they have different personalities and different things that every group takes this unique energy that you need to give. That doesn't even talk about the things that you think about, of how you need to teach them or what you need to teach them, where they are in their process and how you need to keep them going, but I think that's the biggest thing you know, for for me, it's that, that level of energy that you have to give and being able to do that effectively over a long period of time with multiple different groups. When it comes to youth coaching, most of the time although it's changed a little bit- If you can talk about energy.
Speaker 2:Energy is directly correlated than how much you have to give based on how many teams you have. So if you start with the typical, you finish playing, you start to coach. I think probably when we started there weren't very many full-time positions in coaching. Now there are, so this changes a little bit. But generally you start with a team or a couple of teams, probably lower level, younger ages. Whether that's the right place to put a new, inexperienced coach is a different question. So you start with a couple of teams and when you say lower your level, younger ages, I think what that also generally means is, to some degree, a little bit less pressure in terms of results or the college recruitment path. Very few people start coaching in an ECNL team, for example.
Speaker 3:I mean, I never felt any pressure different from one to the other, like every team has its own pressures.
Speaker 2:Well, that's fair. I guess what I'm trying to say is, if you take a step back and you're looking at your club and you're saying, where is the most pressure on? It's going to be more on the U 16 or 17 ECNL coach than the under eight or under 11 coach.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I agree with you a hundred percent, although I don't necessarily think that's right.
Speaker 2:Right, I mean, there's that that there's that old thought experiment that says if we really want to make soccer better, we should put the best coaches with the youngest kids right. It's hard.
Speaker 5:It's hard because you can't.
Speaker 3:That's a different skill set impact on the whole experience is, you know, as a club person and a club leader, you have these pressures of doing well, helping kids get to college. You know, and you know I'm assuming we're all competitive people. But and so there's, there is that internal kind of pressure of where do you deploy your best people? And that is a really hard thing because a lot of us would probably say to our point, we would put those more experienced people with younger kids to help them develop, because once a kid is 16, a lot of what they are is what they are. But that is a huge internal pressure within a club of if Christian Labors is my best guy, where do I put him? He could maybe be most effective with our youngest kids, but the reality is I need to probably put him with our oldest highest level teams.
Speaker 2:Well so so that's another issue, right? So we're dancing around a couple of things. So number one is let's take the typical career path, and then the number two is what you talked about, which is then coaching at different ages and stages and what what coaches want, what clubs want, what might be right or not, or the opinions on that. But the first part on the on the career path, it's to start with a couple of teams. Generally, you know again, we're speaking in generality here You're not coaching the top teams, coaching the oldest players. When you start as a young coach, you're starting in younger ages. Then, if you do well, if you have some success, however, you're going to define that and you enjoy it. You're going to get more teams. You're going to get older teams, you're going to get better teams. At some point you get a lot of teams and you become a director.
Speaker 2:By the way, that's the only way really that you make a career path in terms of compensation, that you make a career path in terms of compensation right, and then, as a director, you now are, in theory, responsible for overseeing coaches, directing them and programs, and those programs can be, you can be clubs can divide programs by leagues. So you're the ECNL director, the RL director. They can be by age group. Some clubs do it by, you know, u12 to U14. They chunk together U12 and down. You can do it in a variety of different ways.
Speaker 2:But you become a director, which means you're responsible for overseeing and coaching coaches in theory. But it's not really that way, because to be a director, you it means generally you're still coaching a couple of teams, maybe more than a couple, and you have oversight of the program. But it doesn't leave you a lot of time to actually direct the coaches. And that is an economic issue, because most clubs cannot afford to pay somebody not to coach players directly. They don't have the resources to say, hey, this person is going to just watch the coaches and coach the coaches and not be assigned specifically to a team. So there's a there's a little weirdness in that coaching path, you know. And then whether you go from director of a program to director of a gender, to director of a club, to technical director, versus something else, you know you can go in a variety of different ways, but would we agree that's generally the coaching path.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'd say so.
Speaker 2:So you have one question, which is how many coaching directors are actually able to direct coaches versus they've got their hands full coaching the teams that they're assigned. So anything they do with respect to trying to direct coaches or educate or mentor coaches is a smaller piece of the calendar or their day than probably some would like or that they can even do, and again, that's not their fault, that's an economic issue. And then the other issue is, you know, to go back to the, the, the topic we teased earlier when you go into teaching, because everybody analogizes coaching, teaching, coaching teaches, and there's a lot, a lot of similarities. For sure, but I don't believe it's the case that when people go in and they're going to be a fourth grade history teacher or math teacher, they don't have ambitions of being a college professor.
Speaker 2:It is true that for a lot of people, if they start coaching the young kids, they want to end up coaching the older kids, and that is not right or wrong. But what it it sort of fails to state is that it's a very different skillset in coaching younger players and coaching older players. And it's not it's not a sign of upward progression in your coaching ability necessarily just because you're coaching older players. There's a lot of people who move in that direction as coaches because that's what they want, but I think we would all agree that it is a very unique skill set to coach and teach young players very early on in their learning. It's actually where you can probably make the most impact. It may actually be the hardest thing to coach is the younger players compared to the older players. What do you say to any of that?
Speaker 3:I mean one of the first teams. I went into the college game first and then I came into the youth game. One of the first teams I had was a nine-year-old team and I left there after the first couple of weeks and I was like I can't do anything. I can't get these kids to do anything. I'm terrible, right. And so it is really unique skill set and I think it's a huge challenge at the club level to create a culture or a or an environment where people want to specialize in that way because they do.
Speaker 3:There is this perception, and I don't you know, rightly or wrongly, that that is, that is a lower level and and that's a real, that's a real challenge. I mean, we, you know we have it here. We're like I'm just talking to our coaches all the time about how they want to move up and coach older teams and do this and it's like you know. So it's a. It's a real, real challenge and I agree with you that it takes some really special personality and a certain kind of demeanor or whatever to to coach younger kids and and I also agree that you can have a huge impact on them by getting a good coach with them early, early in their development process. But it is a challenge from a coaching perspective to get people to, to get coaches to buy into that.
Speaker 2:You know. Right now I mean I've said this before, I'm coaching my son, u8. And to your point of what you're able to do, I mean it can be an incredibly humbling experience because you say to somebody go play right midfield, and you know what. The next question is what's right midfield? Which side is right? You know, and you're like, oh my gosh, they don't. They don't know right from left and they can't tie their own shoes. Most of them you know, and so that's the.
Speaker 2:That's the reality of the kids there, that's where they're at, and knowing how to gain some control of that environment. Keep it fun, teach anything. Keep it fun, teach anything. It's just a totally different challenge than saying, okay, I've got a 17 team, I know who I'm playing, we have video and some scouting report. We're going to be overmatched and we got to figure out how we're going to defend and counter in this game and how we're going to exploit some weaknesses that the other team might have or it protects some things. It's just a totally different skillset. Totally, you can say the jobs, beyond the fact that it's got a ball and grass and some uniforms. It's a. It's a totally.
Speaker 3:Here's another huge challenge in that.
Speaker 3:That. That goes to the experience. What we're talking about is, generally speaking, in my experience the parents, who are an important part of the process, no matter how you slice it we've talked about that on this podcast before are less educated at the younger ages, less educated at the younger ages, and so it's a much can be a much more challenging management of that part of it. A lot of times, as the kids get older, the parents seem to start to understand a little bit more about what's going on and be a little bit more educated about it. That doesn't mean that the whole college recruitment thing doesn't make people crazy, because it does.
Speaker 3:So that's another challenge. You know you're putting potentially an inexperienced coach who's trying to figure out how to get their nine-year-olds to understand what right midfield is and how to package that so they can take it and use it. But in the meantime you're also dealing with the realities of uneducated parents who are supportive, want to be supportive and you need their support, but they just don't know some stuff. So I think it's a really it's a kind of a double-edged sword for the younger, for coaches of younger teams to deal with. That it also can tie back to why people get off the field. I mean, at some point you do get a little bit exhausted with the Well, so if you tie those together right?
Speaker 2:So we've said that the coaching career path generally is you go from coaching teams to directing, which means you just have a lot more teams to coach and you have coaches to coach.
Speaker 3:I would say there are very few clubs where the coaching of coaches is happening on a regular basis, correct?
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's some informal conversations, there are some meetings periodically. Very, very few you could probably count them on one hand that have a position, a full-time position, who is not coaching any teams but is responsible not for admin, not for facilities, but is responsible for coach development and coach education. And before everybody says, oh my gosh, that's so terrible, that's because there's not enough money to do that Right, right, right and and also you have people who are coaching for you.
Speaker 3:The greater majority of them are part-time, and so getting them education or getting them information is really challenging.
Speaker 2:You have this in the famous management principle, the Peter principle that you know the best salesperson doesn't necessarily make a good sales manager, and so being a really good soccer coach doesn't necessarily make you a very good soccer director. If the job of director is to coach coaches, now we've established that that doesn't happen. Very often what the director is doing is coaching more teams and having more stuff on his plate, and you could make some argument that in some way that takes one of your best coaches that's why they kind of rose up to become director is now stretched so thin that are they able to do as well as they would have been before they were a director, because now they've added other stuff onto their plate. So it's. It's a very complicated progression. If you look and say, okay, there's people that eventually are saying, hey, I want to be on the field less, and part of that is an energy level. You know we've talked before.
Speaker 2:One of the biggest problems we have in the country is at some point then when you say I don't have the energy for this, or I've been doing this for 30 years and I'm exhausted and I don't want to do it anymore. I want a different challenge. There is not that career path in very many places to use all of the knowledge and experience that that person has gained, usually by trial and error. Because, again we go back, there's not a lot of informal and consistent mentoring or coach education within the daily club environment. There's not a lot of. There's not a career path that allows that person then to be in a position to help the next generation of coaches avoid some of the same pitfalls and maybe to learn things a little bit faster and earlier than they did.
Speaker 3:And you face the reality of does the next generation want to hear it from you? I mean, that's real, and simply being the boss isn't you know, it probably isn't enough to get you there. I always think a third of the people that are working in your club as part-time coaches are really passionate about what they're doing, and the other, the middle third of our good, solid people you could count on and have them there and they'll they'll do a good job. And then you have a third of the people who just aren't really interested in in what's going on collectively. So there's some real challenges there with just getting people that that information.
Speaker 2:Let's turn it to another issue of measuring. We talk about hey, you're a good coach, you're a successful coach. What does that mean? Because it's the good coaches, the successful coaches that go beyond enjoying what they're doing, presumably, that go from coaching a couple teams to more teams, to to a director, to a whatever. So then you start to say, well, what does it mean to be successful, and how do you measure that? And that's another thing, and I think we were talking about this the other day. There's this sense, and I think it's throughout all of American sports, that the coach is this got this magical power to transform athletes from complete you know donkeys to thoroughbreds, and it's. It's not the player, it's just the coach. And I remember hearing this from a lot, a lot of people, and I think you had a. What was a?
Speaker 3:the quote was by the great italian coach trappatoni, who said a great coach can make a team 10 better, but a bad coach can make a team 30 worse, which I think is really interesting that and what we, what I I actually I think we both agree generally with that.
Speaker 2:Coaches get way too much credit when things are going well. They get way too much blame when they don't. But just to take that because I think it can be a little nebulous, but say, let's just take that statistic and make it real. A great coach can take a 9-1 team to 10 and, oh you know, and maybe be the difference in that game against the rival, whatever it may be, and it can tell you. A bad coach can take that same nine and one team and all of a sudden they're six and four. But the reality is those players were going to win six to nine games, regardless of who was coaching. Six to 10 games, regardless of who was coaching six to ten games, regardless of who was coaching the nine and one team wasn't going to go to one and nine because of the coach and the oh and ten team isn't going to eight and two because of the coach yeah, I mean it goes.
Speaker 3:It goes back to that also. We, you talk, we talked about this a long time ago about, uh, you, I? There's this book, it's called why we win. Billy packer wrote it and they asked all great coaches, not just in soccer but obviously in all sports, what is the key ingredient to winning? And by and large all the coaches said talent, like having players, players, having talented players is the number one consideration. Uh, for, for winning.
Speaker 3:Now, all this kind of works in this pyramid idea, right, where the kind of the cream rises to the top and then at some point you're going to get challenged against people who are as talented as you, you're going to go up against a coach who's as good as you, and then some of these other little variables start to take effect. Right, but I think it's, it's so right. I mean, I know you've had it. I've had it where I've coached multiple teams and one team did really great and one team didn't do that that great and it wasn't like we were doing a lot of different stuff with the two groups. Right, it's, you know it's the same stuff, it's different players, and that's. That's a fact and that's not to. That's not to also to absolve me myself from any responsibility for making bad decisions at times, or whatever, because I probably did. But the reality is, to your point, the team that's nine and one is probably not going to be one and nine.
Speaker 2:Well, and to that?
Speaker 2:Because somebody said well, why are we talking about this?
Speaker 2:It's cliched or this is the trite debate that always happens. Well, it's because at the youth level debate that always happens. Well, it's because at the youth level, if you take the assumption or the premise that the player, the quality of the player, is going to be the primary driver of competitive success or failure, and then you go into youth soccer, where you are very much limited in most places in terms of your selection of players, well then there is a large degree of your competitive success that is going to be defined by the size of the market you are in, especially when we go into these bigger. You know the consolidation that has happened. You know across ECNL and what's happened with the talent of the player pool within ECNL or even some of these other platforms. At the end of the day, the bigger market, by definition, is going to outperform the smaller market. If the driving variable is the quality of the player and if we are seeing a consolidation of the levels of players, the top players are coming together more frequently than they were yeah, 100.
Speaker 3:Yes, facts. I don't know how you measure it. How I measure it is. And I go back to my daughter's high school team. There are a lot of great high school coaches out there. They don't get paid a lot of money, so there's also some really not great high school coaches out there. They don't get paid a lot of money, so there's also some really not great high school coaches out there. And something the environment is can be wildly. Distance between the best player and the worst player is huge and that's, you know, could be problematic and we could talk about high school soccer.
Speaker 3:It serves a good purpose and I have a lot of respect for the do. What I looked at was I knew I watched him and his teams always got better as the season went on and that was essentially how I judged it. I looked and I said you know, at the beginning of the season, if they were a train wreck because they had no idea they weren't organized, they don't know what they're doing, and then, over the course of the season, you always had this feeling like they're going to do as well as they can. And what is it? I don't know what that means. From year to year it might mean you make it to districts, or I don't even know what these things are called. But and so when I look at coaches or I'm judging a coach, because to your point it could be nebulous and hard, you know, and and all that, do the players get better?
Speaker 2:that requires a longitudinal analysis or at least, yeah, it's an eye test over time of saying are they capable of doing more things than they were at the beginning?
Speaker 4:of the year.
Speaker 2:And, by the way, they still might be one in nine, but it is a better one in nine, correct? And so that adds additional stresses and challenges in coaching. Yeah, because you don't get immediate People don't immediately look and say I mean, the easiest and most common refrain is to say, well, who are the best coaches, well, who's won the most, you know, and which teams or which clubs are at the top. And again, to be very clear, there are very good coaches that are working with some of the best teams in our leagues. All right, this is not saying different, but what we are saying is you can take a coach who just won a national championship with one group of players and they can go 0-20 with a different group of players and still do a phenomenal job of helping those players get better, but they're still going to be 0-20.
Speaker 3:Yeah, let's take the level of the team out of it and try to look at where they started at point A, whatever point A is, and here they are at point B and they're better, the kids are better, the players are better, whatever. Yeah, winning can be a very you know, not necessarily. I mean it could be a little bit of a false indication of great coaching, although if you win, you've probably done something right. But yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Under the auspices of this conversation is hey, what is the coaching career path here? And I think our short answer is it's convoluted, it's very difficult. We haven't even talked about what are the sort of logistical realities of being a youth soccer coach.
Speaker 1:We should, we should indeed, and we do that after we hear from Quick Goal and Nike, and we do that after we hear from Quick Goal in Nike.
Speaker 4:The ECNL is pleased to announce Quick Goal as the official goal provider and partner for ECNL girls and ECNL boys. A new partnership created to support the growth and development of the country's top players, clubs and coaches at all national events, including national playoffs and national finals. The Quick Goal Coaches Corner will provide hospitality and social space for ECNL girls, ecnl boys and collegiate coaches. Quick Goal will also be the presenting sponsor of the national championship-winning ECNL girls and ECNL boys coaches of the year and the ECNL girls and ECNL boys goals of the year. Quick Goal looks forward to helping the ECNL continue to elevate the standards of youth soccer and provide more opportunities to players on and off the field in the coming years. Nike is a proud sponsor of ECNL. Nothing can stop what we do together to bring positive change to our communities. You can't stop sport because hashtag. You can't stop our voices. Follow Nike on Instagram, facebook and Twitter.
Speaker 1:Welcome back to Breaking the Line, the ECNL podcast. Once again, here's Kristen Lavers.
Speaker 2:Let's talk about the logistics, because in all of this again and we go back to the fundamental question it's like why do so many coaches burn out I guess is the most blunt way of saying it why do they burn out after a period of time? Why do you see such turnover? And you know my, my phrase, or the statement I think you've heard me say before, is that you know the coaching career path generally, for a lot of people ends up selling real estate at age 60 because they just burn out. And so why is that? And we talked about all of these different things and I guess if I summed it up, it would say there is a convoluted career path. There is a path from financial, more financial reward, but nobody's really getting rich. And I know somebody is going to say something different and I'm going to say no, you know, that's just not how it goes for 99% of people. There's a path where you can have a little bit more authority, you can have a little bit more compensation and all that sort of stuff, but it is convoluted because you're not moving up in management per se, because while you're still now a director, you're still actually on the ground floor coaching players a lot of the time, the vast majority of your time, and then there is some confusion or difficulty or inability for most people to measure your performance because the easy metric of wins and losses. If every coach in every sport is saying the quality of players the driving factor, then I think we should probably listen to that. So that makes it a gray area for that. And now we're going to talk about the logistics, and that is that if I'm a youth soccer coach, the only times I can train players, for most of the year anyway, is somewhere between four and nine 30 at night, and it's hard to start at four because they got to get off of school and you can't go much after nine 30 because it starts to get difficult.
Speaker 2:Whatever you're doing and however many teams you're managing and most teams are training three days a week, some four, some two, but let's just say most are three, but you're going to be on the field nights and weekends for the majority of the year. Your older teams are going longer and longer. Their seasons are longer. Some are playing year-round, not playing high school soccer. Some are playing year-round, even when some kids go to high school soccer. You probably have a group that isn't. You're still probably doing a younger team as well. So your nights and weekends which means you get home If you coach and you've done this right you coach a session that goes from 8 to 9.30.
Speaker 2:By the time you shut the field down, turn off the lights, pack up and get home, you're not out of the park until 10. You're probably not home until 10. 1045 at night. Then you got to wind down from sort of the energy, excitement, stress, whatever from being on the field. So you're probably not in bed till close to midnight and then you get up. You're going to do the same thing the next day, but it's nights and weekends, the same time when most of the people of your peer group or your age they work during the day, they're home. Nights and weekends You're in the exact opposite schedule. So it's not as bad as the third shift at a factory, but you are in an off schedule, which is hard for your personal relationships, it's hard for family relationships. It's hard for your personal relationships. It's hard for family relationships, it's hard for kid relationships.
Speaker 3:Look, when you use the word burnout, I would say it's the same reasons why everybody burns out. They do Players burn out. That's a big hot topic out there. Right is player burnout and why do players burn out? These reasons are all the same as why coaches burn out, right, and yes, there is a real goal to that as it relates to personal toll, because you're there nights and weekends and it's a lot and uh, and you're just away. If you have have a family, it's hard. There's no other way to say it.
Speaker 2:Well, let's just be honest. There's a lot of single or divorced coaches because of that.
Speaker 3:Sure there are. Yeah, that part of it is challenging. Now there are other industries that work different hours and different stuff like that. But I think if you put that with some of the other factors of there are some expectations that can be really unrealistic. I think we've had some numbers here about you know how? 83% of parents think their children can play college sports? 49 believe they should receive an athletic scholarship. The reality is 6% of high school athletes playing college and 2% receive scholarships.
Speaker 2:Right now in the ECNL, I I mean, where do people come up with? I mean, can you quote that where that study's coming from? Do you know?
Speaker 3:jacob jacob, uh, I think it was a. Uh, it was a. It was not a soccer related, it was all sports and one a bit. But one of the other ones is 75 percent of of parents think that their children can possibly play professional sports, and the reality is only 1% of players play professionally. There is that over-involvement, that helicopter, that conflict that is ever-present, that makes it harder to coach the players, because the players are hearing something from home that is counter to what you're trying to do and so that makes your ability to affect the environment harder. And then you giving up the weekends and the nights on top of that, that's what causes burnout, I mean it is.
Speaker 2:It strikes me and I think we got a comment here from the New York Life Insurance Wealth Watch stats, so I'm not sure where that comes from, but Jacob pulled that, so that's where those numbers come from. It does hit me for a second here, though, that we're painting a bleak picture, and if it was so bleak, we, you, you, I, chris, everybody we've talked to, wouldn't do it. It is, you know. I look and say I've had some unbelievable experiences as a coach. It can be a tremendously rewarding thing, and when people, when people go into it, they tend to throw everything about them into it, and it tends to take a huge amount of their time by choice because they're excited about it
Speaker 2:and they love the travel and it's a passion job and I think what we're highlighting in this is that, you know, coaching is is really it can be really really fun, but it is really really can be really really fun, but it is really really high time demand, really high energy demand and there's a lot of other factors around it and I do think it would be well. I'll just speak my own opinion. I do believe there is a coaching path problem in this country in terms of a career path, and we've loved coaching, we continue to coaching. There's going to be a lot of great people and we're we're not saying I'll feel sorry for all these coaches, because we are those coaches. We're saying hey, I think we need to look and say how do we make this more sustainable for longer?
Speaker 2:How do we find ways to have to take advantage of the experience level of coaches that have done it for 30 and 40 years, so that the next generation to your point, doug they want to know, they want to learn from those people, they're in a position where they're accountable for learning from those people, where those people do have the ability to recognize their changing career and changing tasks. That is a question for the future of soccer in this country, because I would like to think also that if we had a better coaching career path that kept more coaches in the game longer to give back to the next generation of coaches, we would see the game continue to improve faster, because you'd be learning from things in a way that I think there's a lot of people making the same mistakes in coaching now that probably you and I made 20 years ago, that the people before us made 20 years before that, because nobody was there to say, hey, don't do that, here's a better way.
Speaker 3:Just listen, don't get me wrong. You and I sat next to each other many, many years ago when we were fairly early in our coaching. Either one of us, if you said to me when I was 20, hey, you're going to coach and you're going to be able to make a living at it and do all the things that we've had the opportunity to do, I'd immediately sign up for it. It is a passion, it's something that you feel very drawn to and it's why you want to do it. And, to your point, I've had some unbelievable experiences unbelievable to see some players and where they go and what they're able to accomplish.
Speaker 2:and that you have a small part in that is makes everything well, well worth it this is just the youth perspective, right, because and we've talked about how it's so different, you know to be a coach of under 10s versus under 18s. That's all in the youth space, right, but it's a completely different job and we also probably need to have better career paths for the guy who, or girl who's going to be the expert in working with players age eight to 12. Path than the person who's going to become an expert working with players in that 15 to 18 age group. That you know now I guess falls into this pre-pro sort of. You know, whether they go to college or or beyond. That's a very, very different job. College is a very different job. They also have very different logistical demands. I mean, I always say what's? If somebody said what's the biggest difference between college soccer and youth soccer, some of the big ones are you coach one team, or you coach five teams, or four teams, or whatever it is.
Speaker 3:And if you're an assistant, which you probably are how much do you coach?
Speaker 2:That is very true. Versus administrative and other work, you have one fall season versus a year's worth of seasons. You train typically in the morning, maybe in the afternoon, versus training at nights. You have way better benefits coaching in college than coaching in youth soccer, which sometimes benefits like. That's not even a conversation that's even had that piece. And then you got pro soccer, and again there's skill, a very different skill set in pro soccer as well. So I guess what we're in a roundabout way of saying is that there's, this is a space. I think that could use some rethinking and how we structure it if possible. I'm not even sure what the right way is or how, how to start that process. I do think finding a way to recognize and reward really good coaches, to move them forward in a pathway that is more transparent, that is more sustainable, is something that would make the sport better.
Speaker 3:Greater widespread support for what these folks are doing.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And I would say that about teachers too right, just more widespread support on what these folks are doing and that's not to say that everybody doesn't have a decision they can make, whether they think that's the best environment for their kid or whatever but just more support for what? For what these folks do.
Speaker 2:Or just maybe a little bit more understanding about what it takes and what goes into it. It's, you know, I think I don't know if it was, uh, carrie Bowley or somebody else who said you know, the easiest thing people to do coaches do this to each other all the time is watch somebody else's session and say, man, I wouldn't have done that, I wouldn't have done that, I would have changed this, this was bad, this was whatever. And then what they? And if coaches do that to each other, their parents are doing that on steroids whenever they see anything.
Speaker 2:And the first question actually really should be what is the coach trying to accomplish? You know, because if we go all the way back to you know, use my experience right now with the U8 team and I have to figure out how to explain which side of the field is right and which side of the field is left. You know there's a thousand problems on the field in any second, of which we can probably tackle two or three at once, and so it's easy to point out the 997 that are not being addressed right now, because somebody has got to prioritize which ones are being addressed, and I use that as a really, really easy.
Speaker 3:How are you going to solve it?
Speaker 2:I just pointed. You know, just pointed. Can't even draw it on a piece of paper, just write on the field and you get a point.
Speaker 3:But you know you got to put them out there and there's in the spots, spots, and then you have to have a really fun name for each spot and they will remember. Now they might not remember right or left christian and I can't promise you they will, but I will tell you if.
Speaker 2:If you are your right midfielder is called the stealth fighter or the X wing, I say, you know there's some, there is some truth to that, but, um, but that's that's. That's making it fun and making it different in a way that's really appropriate for those kids, but it's the same. It's the same thing. When you're dealing with an under 18, you know, national championship level team, somebody can criticize the session or criticize what's going on, because actually they're looking at it from a viewpoint that the coach doing the session has no concern about that issue.
Speaker 2:Right now they're addressing something totally different. There's a little bit of that. There's a lot going on, a lot to balance. These people who are the backbone of our league, a lot of these people are the ones that are talking in internally at their clubs and saying, hey, we should do more of this or less of this. They're talking to the league directly about hey, let's do this to change and make soccer better. Everybody's trying to do a good job. It's a really rewarding but challenging profession. There are too many people that leave it, I think, than we would want, and that's a challenge for another day maybe, but we felt it was worth the topic today.
Speaker 3:The last thing I would say, and I've said this at our symposium one of the great things that maybe we didn't think about when we started the ECNL and what it would become, or whatever, is it's brought a lot of coaches together into a network. So and I know, christian, like I've called you a million times about something I'm working on with one of our teams or or whatever, and gotten your perspective on it and I think that's one of the great things about a league like this is just bring some connectivity to it, to the coaches, so we can try to find best practices where we can, even if they're in our networks, which I think helps the level of coaching overall. There are certainly more former players, college and pro coming into coaching, which makes coaching better. It's certainly gotten better since we started. I would say right, just the level of it. So it's good, but you know, support your coaches. They're out there doing their level best, I'm guessing.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:And when we return, Doug Bracken offers up the Bracken Brain Buster.
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Speaker 6:Racton Brain Buster time. Take it away, Doug. All right, you guys ready.
Speaker 3:We're going to do in the spirit of coaching, since we talked about coaching and the question is, how much of coaching is science versus art? So everybody's going to have their perspective. Not that everybody will have unique answers on this, but we are going to go first and foremost to the velvety voice of Dean.
Speaker 2:Linkey Dean talks to a lot of coaches in a lot of sports he does.
Speaker 6:I do, but I also was a coach, so I coached my boys in everything, including high-level AAU, and to me it's about putting the right players on the court or on the soccer field that are going to get the job done, and that's kind of how I approached it and I feel like we had success. So I'm not going to give you a big blustery answer, and it won't involve Leah. To me, it's just always about knowing you know it's knowing your personnel right. That's how I approached coaching and then, and probably how I would do it today, by the way, that's another vote for the player.
Speaker 3:Quality defines everything. I will say to that Dean then you believe that coaching is more art, because understanding the right players and all that, that's, that's an art. That's that's an art. Well, maybe it's a science. This guy's seven foot and he can.
Speaker 6:No, I like the art answer. I like the art answer better.
Speaker 3:Thank you I wish I would have said it that way.
Speaker 5:Jacob, I'm going to go the opposite. I think it's science, because it's a lot of relationships, and relationships boils down to psychology. And so I think it's really understanding the psychology of the players, knowing what makes them, what motivates them the most. Is it through positive reinforcement? Is it negative reinforcement? I think it's a lot of tactics as well. We talk about skill a lot here, but it's understanding where the players go the best and which tactics best fit the player, and so I think that's a big thing for the science. And then I think the third thing is is just making sure that you know you're putting the players in the right position with hydration, with uh training, with talk about athletic training, all that kind of stuff. So I think all of those are very science based building blocks. So I say coaching is a science.
Speaker 3:Okay, I need to contemplate on that.
Speaker 2:All right Lavers, I'm going to say very strongly art. I'm going to quote Fergus Connolly here, who said the NFL team with the most data and analytics had the worst record. And I do think that there are people that like to overcomplicate everything because it's a way of justifying their jobs. And I think, ultimately, if we believe that the players are driving most of this, it's about interacting with them, seeing where they're at. It's a very fluid process. Relationships are fluid, their performance levels are fluid, the constraints of their bodies and minds are fluid and there is science involved in it. But I think if you lean too much on science, especially at the youth side, I think the younger you go, the more art that it needs to be, because at the end of the day, the kids need to have fun, they need to come back, they need to feel good and that's an art of managing that relationship in that environment.
Speaker 3:Okay, I'm going to go art, for sure. And there's a scientific element to to all these, you know, to sports, no question about it, but totally agree with with Christian. There's an art of managing people and understanding people and getting the best out of people and pushing the right buttons. I think Christian talked about the younger kids and how you have to be artful of letting them know how to figure out what a left back is, or left midfielder, I would say equally as you go up the chain to the professional level. It's all about man management and understanding the right people in the right places and the right motivation. So I am going to go art on this one. And it's probably the hardest thing as a coach to learn, takes the longest to kind of understand the art of it. So there it is. Coaching might be science, might be art. Depends on your opinion.
Speaker 2:Whatever it is, it's hard. Thanks for the discussion, doug Dean Jacob, always good to see you.
Speaker 1:Thank you, christian, and it was indeed great to be back on the pod. Remember, the ECNL wants to hear from you. What do you want us to cover on the podcast? Do you have questions about the ECNL that you want Christian and Doug to address? You can do that by emailing us at info at the ECNLcom. That's info at the ECNLcom for Christian, doug Jacob, our producer, and all of the ECNL. Thanks for listening to breaking the line, the ECNL podcast. Thank you for listening to breaking the line, the ECNL podcast and remember, if you have a question that you want answered on breaking the line, the ECNL podcast, email us at info at the ECNL dot com.