Breaking the Line: The ECNL Podcast
The Elite Clubs National League was founded in 2009 and continues to lead by daring to do things differently, embedded with grit, collaboration and tenacity – all things learned from the beautiful game. The ECNL protects and propels the integrity of the game and everyone it impacts by facilitating the perfect symmetry of excellence and humility, exclusivity and accessibility, freedom and community. We believe that challenging everyone to rise to their best creates game-changers that live well, long after cleats are unlaced. Born out of the belief in a better way. Continued in the ever-evolving pursuit of excellence.
Breaking the Line: The ECNL Podcast
Communication is Key: Unboxing Parent-Player-Coach Dynamics | Ep. 125
Let us know the topics of interest to you!
It's a very special episode of Breaking the Line, as the podcast celebrates its 125th episode!
After an invigorating discussion about navigating birth years and skill levels within youth soccer, ECNL President Christian Lavers and ECNL Vice President Doug Bracken continue the conversation with a parent email regarding how to properly handle when an athlete has the skill to compete at a higher level, but not necessarily the physical attributes to do so.
This question, paired with some realizations from Ep. 124, leads to the meat of this week's episode: the parent-player-coach dynamic.
The Breaking the Line team dives into the relationship from all three parties, and discusses the roles and responsibilities of each side of the dynamic, and how to ensure everyone is copacetic and have positive relationships and interactions throughout an athlete's journey.
As always, make sure to submit any questions to https://ecnl.info/BTL-Questions, to subscribe to Breaking the Line on YouTube, and to follow the ECNL on all social channels.
Welcome to the September 17 edition of Breaking the Line, the ECNL podcast, where Christian Labors, ECNL President and CEO, and Doug Bracken, Vice President and Chief of Staff, dive into the coach, club, player and parent communication channels. Oh, so important and what a great conversation. And it all begins with this handoff to Christian Labors.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much, dean, for that intro. As always Doug, good to see you.
Speaker 3:Good to see you, Christian. How's life in sunny, beautiful San?
Speaker 2:Diego, it is all of those things. Spent the weekend coaching and watching a lot of Zone 1 games again, which is entertaining.
Speaker 3:This is really your first real venture into the Zone 1 coaching.
Speaker 2:Last six months yeah.
Speaker 3:Last six months, you've talked about it. Now that you've experienced it, tell me how it's going.
Speaker 2:It's good, it's challenging. I would say it's one of the, if not the most challenging coaching job I've done. I've said that to a few people just because of the dynamic of the kids and the range of interest, potentially to some degree, range of performance or ability, the maturity variations of kids, the newness of the parents. Tell you what if your kid is in zone one? Give those coaches a high five. They're working hard.
Speaker 3:It sounds like you're jonesing for high fives, right? No, no, no, I'm good. I get lots of high fives, I get lots of high fives.
Speaker 2:What I'm saying is that you know people, so many and we know this, I mean so many soccer coaches aspire to move into the older age groups and it's it's the American soccer or American sports culture, right? I mean many American parents would assume that a college coach, by default of being in college, must be better than a youth coach because of just the levels of play, which is a complete inaccuracy. Right, the level at which you coach does not have an indication of the quality of which you coach, and I think there's very, very different skill sets. So you could be exceptional at coaching college or professional sport and be really, really unsuccessful and not very good in coaching not just zone one, but in a youth or a developmental oriented type age group.
Speaker 3:I agree with that. The perception that the level is pro college, then youth, whatever, whatever it is, I think is a false one, because I think each takes a really specific skillset and I agree with you a great professional coach may not be as successful as with young players, so I give kudos to everybody out there who's doing it Tough job.
Speaker 2:If we were to go a little deeper in that. I mean, there's a couple of core coach skills. One is, let's call it, controlling or creating the environment. Right, that's managing the team. Managing, before we get into anything about interactions or interventions or anything that's soccer specific or sports specific. It's creating an environment where players understand how to behave, where you create, you know, the right structures or just culture around having an appropriate learning environment and training environment. That's one sort of skill, I would say.
Speaker 2:The two other skills that I'm going to highlight that I think are very, very different One is, let's call it, managing a game, which is the ability to, on one end of the continuum we would say joystick, which is probably over control the player's decisions. You know constantly yelling, do this, do that. At the other end of the continuum, you would have the ability to identify a problem, a tactical problem on a field and then identify a solution for the team. So I put that kind of under game management. That is maybe classic X's and O's. That is one skill of a coach, varying degrees of importance, again, depending on age and context. And then the other skill which I think is very, very different and I don't for a lot of coaches I don't know that they'd actually be correlated which is the ability to teach understanding or biomechanics. It's one thing for a coach to be able to look at a field, identify a space on the field where their team is consistently outnumbered or overloaded, and the reason why and it could be system versus system it could be an individual action of an opponent or your own players. That is one skill set. To say, okay, we're getting beaten in this space on the right side because the outside back is taking a high position on their team and overloading our left midfielder 2v1, whatever it may be, and that's creating lots of problems.
Speaker 2:But that's one skill example. And then the other one is I'll use two different ones. One is the technical ability to break down a biomechanical action and teach a kid hey, here's how you strike a ball, here's what you do with your ankle, here's what you do with your knee, here's what you do with your core, here's what you do with you. Know the follow through and be able to give that in a way that a young learner can understand. And then the other variation of that is being able to teach a young player where they should look, when they should look, why they should look and then how do they make a decision between a, b and c choices? So those sort of teaching skill sets and the game management X and O recognition skill sets I think are very, very different. Agreed.
Speaker 3:No question about it. Which one do you?
Speaker 2:think is more prevalent in coaching.
Speaker 3:Which people are better at.
Speaker 2:Which of those two skills let's call it game management, tactics X and O's versus teaching, which one do you think most coaches are better at? Is this like, are you?
Speaker 3:trying to do a Laver's brain buster better at. Ooh, is this like? Are you trying to do a Laver's brain buster right now?
Speaker 2:Well, I have an opinion, you do, I do. I'm curious of yours.
Speaker 3:Man, that's tough. I would think that people are generally more inclined to the technical side of things, their ability, I mean I think you're going to disagree with me here, but I actually think it's a really hard thing to do both things, and what I mean by that is to be able to look out on the field and identify what is happening and what is going wrong and what is the solution to that. Is a is a is a tough, is a tough thing to do? Um, it is also tough to coach players individually, both technically and tactically. But I think generally when I'm out looking at coaches, they're giving team instruction more than breaking down probably technical stuff I think, I don't know.
Speaker 2:I think you started one way.
Speaker 3:I know yeah, but yes, I, yes, I kind of contradicted myself right there, a lot of coaches and I.
Speaker 2:I don't want to speak in total generality here, but they're way better at identifying team issues or tactical issues.
Speaker 3:I think you are a lot more specific than I would be. I would just generally say because I wouldn't say just because they're giving team instruction that they're good at it or identifying the problem. So you can further peel the onion on it, say, just because they're giving team instruction that they're good at it or identifying, okay. So right.
Speaker 2:Well, so we can. You know, you can further peel the onion on it, but I I guess the point would be I think there's a lot of coaches who look through the lens of the team or the collective and try and solve problems on game day at a team level. That can be very, very simple and basic. I mean, let's make it, let's dumb it down. Hey, the opponent has a super fast forward who's faster than all of our defenders. I've recognized that and I need to solve that. Okay, that is not tactical sophistication, that's just obvious. Some people still don't see stuff like that, but I think there's a lot more people who look through the collective than who are really skillful at teaching the individual how to do things, whether that is biomechanical, which you know we'll talk about technical passing, striking, dribbling, whatever or decision making. I think that is a far less common skill for most coaches and it's a very, very difficult one. That being said, I think the very, very best coaches do both.
Speaker 2:The phrase that I've I forget where I stole it from but all of coaching is stealing ideas right, If you don't steal ideas from other people, you're probably not very effective as a coach, but it's the quote. Teams don't learn, individuals do, and so that is even when you're solving a team problem. If it's not put within the context of the individual's role and decision and actions within the collective, you're not actually teaching. You might be solving a problem, but it's the old teach a man to fish and he fishes for a lifetime. Or give him fish right. If you teach them how to recognize the problem, they hopefully will solve it before you need to do anything in the future, versus if you just solve the problem for them but not teach the individual what's happening.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I agree with that, and you, as you usually do, articulate it different than I. I keep ita lot more simple and say generally coaches, coach their teams and not their players.
Speaker 2:Yep, that's a good summary of it, or a good basic statement of it.
Speaker 3:But I will acknowledge that your in-depth description is accurate.
Speaker 2:Wow, thank you, I appreciate that.
Speaker 2:We had a great podcast last week that did spark some questions, some conversations, and we did get a question that I think you wanted to address about a player's movement based on physical ability versus tactical, technical, technical ability yeah, so we talked a lot last podcast about what are clubs going to do to manage the the kids now born after august one who potentially can drop down an age group once we change from the january one cut off to the august one cut off, and what should players or parents look at in making this decision? We got a detailed email talking about a player who is in that category, so born after august one, you 15, but could next year drop down to a younger age group.
Speaker 3:Yeah, remain U15. Remain U15, so not move up.
Speaker 2:Let's just take it for what it's written at A technical, successful player doing well playing, quote-unquote up as it would be under the new format, but physically undersized and with some concern about whether the game physically will become too difficult for the player to succeed. The parent perception is the player is skillful and quick and smart, but undersized physically and may run into growing problems at the older age groups. Just from a strength power perspective maybe and they are in the age group where that is starting to happen I think there's a huge jump between 14 and 15 in the physical level of the game and then there's a, you know, probably another big jump between 15 and 16. And then maybe that degrees on the girl's side, because this is a female on the girl's side. That maybe slows down, but yeah, so that accurately describe the scenario yeah, you want me to take the first crack at this?
Speaker 3:go ahead, take the thank you. Thank you for that. The reality, if the player is successful tactically, technically, is there. I would argue that if the player is undersized, they are going to have to learn to play as an undersized player. I mean, there's no guarantee this player is going to grow or get bigger or get stronger, whatever you would assume they would, just naturally a little bit by getting older. So I actually think, provided the player is successful in their current environment, that maybe that's the right environment for them to stay in.
Speaker 3:It does require players to come with solutions because physically you are not able to solve the problems necessarily with strength and power, which I think is what they're kind of alluding to. Right, that the player is not strong and powerful, she's more small and quick and whatever. There's a lot of value to the player staying in that environment and learning how to solve the game with soccer and IQ and things like that, rather than being able to rely on strength and power to make solutions. And that is with the caveat that the player is successful. Because, to your point, last week you said and I agree with you that you have to have the proper resistance and the player has to experience some success to continue to grow right and they're not getting beaten down by the level and whatever.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you shouldn't be playing in an older age group unless you are doing very well in that age group.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's not some panacea that people think right, it's not some utopia. Oh, if my kid plays up, they must be amazing or it's the right thing or whatever. And I don't know if you've experienced this. I think this is kind of anecdotal, maybe but I tend to see that players who are smaller and later developing at times at the end of the line, maybe grow a little bit more because of their reliance on things other than strength and power, you mean grow as a player, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Grow as a soccer player because they're forced at early ages to solve things and do things differently.
Speaker 2:I would add within this again to me, one metric immediately of are you in the right place as a club is your ability to go talk to your coach or your director and say hey, here's what I'm thinking as a parent, this is what I see, and I'm asking for your opinion and your expertise as the coach or director about what's best for my player or my son or daughter or whatever it may be.
Speaker 2:I think you have to have that conversation. A club should be willing to have that conversation and should be able to tell you their perspective on it, and that may put it all to bed. If you don't trust the answer from your coach or your director, then I would beg the question why are you there? And if you don't trust anybody, then there's a different problem.
Speaker 1:You know at some level.
Speaker 2:Maybe you think you're the expert, but at the end of the day, you got to ask them their opinion and then, if the player is doing well, providing that extra level of resistance is great, and I think it's also important that players ultimately have to understand what their strengths and weaknesses are. So, just like a player who is physically stronger but may not be quick is going to have to learn how to play in a different way and do and not do certain things in order to be successful, a player who is smaller but very fast is going to want to put themselves in some situations more than others. So, for example, that player is going to want to be in space. They're not going to probably post up and be back to goal with defenders on their back. As much as a big, strong player, you don't want to get in a physical fight if physical power is not one of your strengths, but it's not the answer is not be more physical?
Speaker 2:Correct? The answer is put yourself in a spot to maximize your strengths and minimize your weaknesses, and that's ultimately, I think, what successful players do in every sport, at every level. They identify what they're very good at, they figure out how to get themselves in those situations more often, and then they maximize their effectiveness in those situations situations now, that doesn't mean they completely avoid doing things that they're not great at. I mean, the game doesn't allow you to yeah, I mean, I always say the way.
Speaker 3:I always say this to players who maybe let's use this player as an example aren't as physical is. I always say to those players you have to be willing, because physical challenges are part of the game and they're going to happen and so you can't shy away from it when you're confronted by it but you're not out there seeking it right. You're trying to play to your strengths, to your point.
Speaker 2:Well, it's the same thing about your dominant foot and your weak foot. I mean, at the end of the day, it's not accurate to say you have to be great with both feet, correct?
Speaker 3:You have to be willing.
Speaker 2:You have to be competent with your weak foot If you are exceptional with your strong foot.
Speaker 3:The game will evolve and people will sit on your strengths and if you can't do anything with your weak foot, then you're going to struggle probably.
Speaker 2:I mean, listen, the higher the level you go, the more people are competent at a lot of things, right. Listen, the higher the level you go, the more people are competent at a lot of things, right. But I think what we're stating here is that exceptional players are exceptional because of one or two attributes and things they do. They're very good or above average in everything. That's how they get to the very top, but what separates them is an exceptional characteristic or two. I call them superpowers, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, okay. So, having said all that and thanks to the person who sent that question in, because I think it was it's a good, good conversation. But that, I think, transitions us to what we wanted to talk about today, which is coach, club, parent kind of communication as a whole and how that should look, how that plays out from the club and the coach side, how that plays out from the club and the coach side, how that plays out from the parent player side. I would start this by saying that it is a fact that that there are three stakeholders in this process, and those are the player, the coach and the parent, and to ignore any one of them and I think we've said this on this podcast before to ignore any one of them, I would say, is a mistake, and to think that parents aren't part of the equation or aren't part of the developmental process is wrong. They are.
Speaker 2:I've been and I would think you have a similar journey on this, but I've been on all sides of this position over different parts of my coaching career, from being very interactive and vocal with parents to putting out the you know the Heisman pose and saying stay out of it to, I think, being where I am now in a better spot. You know the maybe the best spot, which is what you said, is recognizing that you can choose to engage and try and educate and understand with parents, or you can choose not to. You are ultimately going, I think, to either regret it or you're going to miss opportunities to stop problems from happening or address problems when they are minor issues and before they become major issues. My sense, my experience in parents, is that there is a growing number of them that have experience in the sport, and that's positive. That helps to some degree, but a lot of them still do not have um have a ton of experience there christian.
Speaker 3:I don't know if you know this or not, but I played high school soccer. There you go I did play high school soccer you're wondering if you're wondering, correct, you know yeah, don't yeah that is not a good that is not a good gauge of your understanding level.
Speaker 2:And I was going to say, even if you play Maybe it is, maybe it isn't though you know, Well, let's just say okay, that gives you hey, I kicked a ball, Great, You've kicked a ball, that's great. That might give you better understanding than somebody who's not in some ways about technical actions or basic concepts of decision making in the game or organization actions or basic concepts of the of decision-making in the game or organization. Uh, that's still very different than having ever been in a role of trying to teach somebody something or organize a team.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:Um, what I was going to say is, with or without that. I think the vast majority of parents want one thing, and that is they want a positive experience for their kids and to see them have success. And when that doesn't happen and, by the way, that not happening may have nothing to do with the coach- Right and, honestly, that not happening might be very beneficial, correct.
Speaker 3:So?
Speaker 2:let's start with this. We agree the vast majority of parents, because it's kind of psychopathic If you're, that's not what your goal is, to be honest. But the goal is for my kid to have a good experience and learn and be successful. And that good experience includes the things like learning how to be resilient, learning how to function in a team, learning how to work hard, learning how to be tough all that stuff. And it also includes learning how to be a soccer player and the specific things of a sport.
Speaker 2:If we start with that, and that's what the vast majority of parents want, when there are problems, it usually comes when there is not success, whether that is, the team loses a lot or the player is not performing well, and by performing I mean, maybe they're not starting and you wanted them to start. Maybe they're playing 50% of the game and you wish they would play 75% or 100% of the game. Maybe when they go out there they're just losing the ball a lot or they're not doing something. You can tell that the coach is asking them to do, but there's some obstacle or adversity that stops the success, and that is when 90% of the problems begin.
Speaker 2:Would you agree with that? Absolutely, and I think the issue is parents, especially parents who don't have a big background in the sport, are not very adept at identifying why the adversity or why the problem has occurred. Why the adversity or why the problem has occurred. And if you don't know what the problem is caused by and you try to solve it, you may end up putting a square peg in a round hole, addressing the wrong issue, handling it the wrong way. And I think that's where parent education and parent engagement is most effective Giving parents a process and a guideline on how do you handle those situations when there is that initial feeling of, hey, this isn't maybe going how I wanted it to go, what do I do about it?
Speaker 3:Much like I said to you in our last little discussion here about players, that a lot of coaches do talk to the team and don't do a great job talking to the individual players. I think that's true. I think coaches avoid or don't do a good job communicating what their plan is. That's the fallacy, because if you don't, articulate.
Speaker 2:So you've identified a problem on both sides. On the coach side, the coach has not provided a clear communication of here's what I'm doing, why I'm doing it and here is how you should handle various situations or address them. And the parent has not done an effective job of saying take a breath and before you jump to a conclusion and act, I won't even get there yet.
Speaker 3:Okay, right, because, again, I would say, a large number of coaches, particularly younger ones, don't do a great job of saying here is what I'm going to do and how I'm going to do it, why I think it's important. Here's what I think philosophically, here's probably what you're going to see, based on my experience, and there's no reason to lose it. And then I'm going to be transparent with you about the development of your kid. That just doesn't happen enough. So what happens when you do that is obviously then parents, who are big stakeholders in this and invested in rightly so. They're trying to guide their young child, and in the right way. They are left to try to figure out and put the pieces of the puzzle together on their own, and they may not have the experience or the knowledge or the or that to do that.
Speaker 2:And so it's the old. Causation is not correlation.
Speaker 3:Right, and so I think it is the responsibility of the coach and the club to a greater degree to say here is what we think, what we believe in, how we're going to do this and how it's going to look. And then you have to, and that gives you, as a coach, all of the well it gives you something to refer back. Yeah, that's correct. That's exactly what I was going to say. So that's one of the huge and the biggest causes of problems.
Speaker 2:And I guess you know again, I reflect on my own journey on that too because when you are the coach and let's say now you're the well-meaning coach who is trying to do that, and you want to be very transparent and clear about what it is you're doing and why and how, a lot of parents don't really want to know every single detail.
Speaker 3:And if you go, I don't think you have to give them all the details.
Speaker 2:That's my, that's my point Cause once you get into it, though, and you say, hey, I believe this, I need to make sure they understand, and I want to try and help, educate and engage in whatever you can go down in the weeds so much that nobody really hears what you're saying. So I think there's a balance even in that. That is both how deep you go Not too deep, not too deep and but also you need to do it more than once. It's what we say about any leadership position. You got to communicate and communicate and communicate, and if you don't communicate, it opens a vacuum.
Speaker 3:I think I said this to our board one time, which is this is my little analogy on this is I said we have a staff of 40 people in the ECNL, or whatever the number is, and the culture and the care to have a successful staff requires constant care and attention. That's the same thing. You can't say one time this is what I think, this is what I believe. You have to say, this is what I believe, this is how we're going to do this. And then you have to come back and say okay, I know, I said this, here's where I think we are on the path, here's what we need to do better, here's what we'll go. You have to stay. This is a journey. You don't have to talk to them every week, you don't have to talk to them every day, but you better do it along the journey, Because if you don't, then rightly so the people along that journey will start to think whatever they think it's the same thing with players, Christian.
Speaker 3:If you don't talk to players frequently about their journey and how they get better on an individual basis, they're going to start thinking about whatever they think about.
Speaker 2:There was a quote I saw somewhere and I'll butcher it, but it was basically that over the course of a month, I'll just say, a person will read and hear, and again I don't remember the detail, but a billion words, something like that, in the course of a month, between conversations and reading and watching TV and hearing radio, whatever. A billion words. And in that context if you've said something one time and you're you know 200 word, you know, well reasoned, well articulated email was one of the you know was 200 words of the billion that they got in the last month. The odds of them remembering that, especially remembering it three, four weeks later, are low. So it's just a general leadership principle that communication and consistently repeating communication is essential to making sure the other part of the communication process, the listener, actually understands it. It's the, it's the old Doug Lemoff. There's a difference between I taught it and they learned it.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And then you, if you want to dig a little deeper on how coaches communicate their philosophy, your philosophy and what you believe and how you're going to do things, has to be simple and it has to be easy to understand. Because, to your point, you're going to say it a lot, right, and that I think the art is in the simplicity of of it You're not going to talk about. You know, your overlapping goalkeeper and whatever. That's how the sausage is made. I don't think you need to get that deep to it, to your point. But you're right, this is an ongoing thing. This is a journey that will have many, many, many touch points along the way and you have to stay, stay on it. Decide that one part of the equation of stakeholders being the parents are not part of it is is crazy. I will also say I think coaches need to do a better job of coaching players individually, because they also have to know what it is right. Right, because if every, all those people are connected as much as they can be, then you're, you're good. So I, I think, and I think you agree with me, that the first responsibility in this process is to the, to the stakeholder, the coach and the club, who are the professionals at it. They bear the initial responsibility in this to set the culture and the tone and the environment as to how this is going to be, and then they need to live it every single day and then, when they're going to make adjustments to it because you are along the way, you need to communicate those adjustments. That is the initial responsibility in this, no matter how you slice it. So as we talk about that, all right.
Speaker 3:So now let's put our parent hat on. You're the dad of a young soccer player. I'm the dad of a soccer player who's older, right, my son's 15, freshman in high school. We're experiencing high school soccer for the first time and, by the way, the coach told us at the beginning of the season what was going to happen. We agreed to our point. We agreed to be part of that, just like every other player. I will not probably speak to the coach for the entire season. I haven't talked to him yet. We're halfway through. I will never talk to him, probably because he told me I see with my eyes what they're doing. We agreed to be part of that situation and so I'm supporting my kid in doing it, period. That might be the extreme of not even talking to the coach at all, but he told us what he was going to do and how he was going to do it. We said okay, we're in right, my son's 15, though, so it's time for him to start, you know, handling these things on his own. In my opinion.
Speaker 2:Your son is eight, so you have to advocate for him, probably a little bit more with his coach who is known to be very difficult I would say, though, on that, is there an age at which it is too young and let's say let's, with the acknowledgement that soccer starts around generally six, seven, eight that it is too young to encourage them to have the confidence to speak with another adult. I think it's great to encourage players to do that at every age, and again, how you say it is at eight or nine or ten is different than 15, but I think we've all coached players who, at age 15 and 16, have a very difficult time having a conversation with their coach.
Speaker 3:So let me ask you this have you, as the coach, created the environment for the player to want to do that or feel comfortable to do that? And again, I'm not saying that this is the only way or saying what I'm doing is great or greater than someone else. What we do is when a player comes to training, they have to come, and I took this from. I observed the Philly Union Academy for a couple of weeks many years ago and my good friend Chris Brewer was coaching there and they required every player, when they came in, to come and shake the coach's hand and say, hello, I'm here. And then, when practice was over, they had to do the same thing. So I took that to your point coaching is stealing. I took that and put that in place in my team.
Speaker 3:So even from the youngest age, you have to come and say hey, coach, how are you? That means I create this moment where you have to engage with me every single training session, at the beginning and then at the end. You have to do the same thing. Sometimes it's quick, we're out of here. Have to do the same thing. Sometimes it's quick, we're out of here.
Speaker 3:Sometimes it gives me the opportunity to say, oh yeah, christian, I thought you were excellent today. I really liked the way you've been training. Or, christian, it seems like something's going on with you, is everything okay. I think by doing those kinds of of things, you create an environment where players will be more comfortable asking you. Yeah, the last thing I'm going to say about this, sorry, sorry. I want to finish. This is I always tell players and I think this is an important thing to say if you ask the question, I'm going to give you the answer, and it might not necessarily be in line with you, with what you think. So if you're going to ask me a question, I'm happy to have it, but I'm going to tell you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, when I ask you why am I not playing as much? You can't be mad at the answer of what you're not doing and what you're not. Very good at.
Speaker 3:That's correct and I also expressed have expressed that to parents that I'm here for you. If you have a question, I'm always available to answer it. But if you ask me the question, I'm going to give you the answer. Right, and it's just my answer doesn't mean it's right for you, but it's my answer and I'm the one that is is charged with running this team, this right. If you want young players to come and talk to you, it requires, I think, more than saying to a parent hey, have your kid come and talk to me.
Speaker 2:It's more about the coach creating yeah, you're just talking about what is good general practice in a training environment and you know we have similar expectations of greed every player. I talk about ending sessions on an intentional note, not just ending with hey, it's whatever, it's 6.30, see you guys, but it's bring people together. It's an opportunity to reset mentally and emotionally. It's an opportunity to reemphasize something, but we're sort of diverting yeah, sorry, talking about parents and the parent-player relationship. There's probably some do's and don'ts that we can give on these things. Number one is everybody and this is just general human, everybody's having a journey of their own and they've got their own things going on. So I think Carrie said this to me once and it's resonated with before when you're evaluating a coach.
Speaker 2:So if you're watching a coach as a director or you're looking at a coach and trying to decide whether to hire them or whatever it may be, before you judge the coach on what they're doing, you should ask why? Why do you think they're doing this are doing? You should ask why? Why do you think they're doing this? Because it may be for a completely different. Maybe what they want out of today is a completely different thing than what you think and it wants understanding that you would say oh well, I get that. I would say that same advice applies to a parent is you know, when something happens, the first thing you should think about as well is there. Is there something that maybe I'm not thinking about that the coach is trying to do here? Because, just like you'd say, almost every parent wants their kid to have a positive experience where they have some success. Every coach, no coach or again no coaches, start the season saying, man, I hope I got a bunch of unhappy kids and then we don't do well you know there's nobody's now.
Speaker 2:Whether they're doing all the things they can or as well as they can and making these positive outcomes happen is a different question. But it's not intentional. You know, we got fundamental attribution error here of people assuming that when something goes wrong it's because the coach wanted it to go wrong. Ill intended yeah, right, yeah, like I, I definitely wanted this kid to be upset and not perform well and then therefore not play as much, and this was all part of the plan.
Speaker 3:I hear you. I think everybody goes in with the best of intentions.
Speaker 2:So it starts with some grace. Yeah, I think that's some grace.
Speaker 3:I think that's a big deal. I think that's a big deal, I think it's an important thing to say and think about is like what do I think this coach's intentions are? They're probably good, right To start with.
Speaker 2:And so that's like the stop and say, okay, maybe I should just put myself in their shoes, walk a mile, whatever, maybe the other part is and I'll use an analogy you know we always talk about goals, change games. An analogy you know, we we always talk about goals, change games and, as silly as that sounds, the emotional difference I mean, think. I'll give you one or two situations. If you have been outplayed, all half the team is not performing well, the players are not doing what you wanted them to do, whatever, forget the age level, whatever, it's been a terrible half and you're losing one zero and then somehow, by the grace of God, you score an equalizer right before half time.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah it's now one one. It is a totally different emotional level in that half time than it would have been 30 seconds before and, by the way, you might not have earned that goal. It may have been completely against the run of play. It changes nothing about the 45 minutes or the 30 minutes or whatever it was you were coaching, but there's an emotional difference of that goal, and I would say the same thing is when you're a parent or you're a coach, and the feeling you have in the moment and the feeling you have in the five minutes after the game is almost always dramatically different than the feeling you have two or three hours later. Absolutely.
Speaker 3:And so number one is I will say when you lose in a national championship game, it never leaves you.
Speaker 2:No, that's going to yeah, sorry, but you know I'm talking about that emotional response of how important this moment was or how big of a deal that one thing the coach said was, or what one action that happened. Whatever it may be, it always feels different. It doesn't mean be it always feels different, doesn't mean that it's. It doesn't mean your initial reaction of whether it was right or wrong or good or bad is necessarily wrong. It means that the way you're going to handle it is way better a couple hours later.
Speaker 2:It's why most clubs have like a 24-hour policy you know, they try to say don't go talk to the coach about playing time right after the game. That's not just to give the coach a window, you know, and and stop confrontations on the field. That that is part of it, but the main part is everybody looks at things a little bit different when they're sitting with a cup of coffee at home, rested, then when they're hot, sweaty, tired, mad, frustrated, whatever it may be, and so I think there's some guys on both sides, by the way, that's a parent and a coach.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, I mean, I think you would agree that you've probably said some things right after games to teams and you were like with a little bit of perspective. I probably could have.
Speaker 2:Here's what's the answer Whenever a coach has a long postgame. Yeah, and, by the way, we've all had them the long.
Speaker 3:also, the players aren't listening.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the player goes back to the parent and the parent says hey, so what did the coach say? And the answer is I don't know. I don't know. I mean so as a coach, unless you're into performative art, like, there's not a lot of reason to give a long postgame because nobody's listening. And, by the way, to our previous point, you'll probably word it and phrase it differently in 24 hours anyway. And again, it usually comes from a good place. The coach is trying to say well, I'm going to give some feedback right now, on a very timely basis and very specific, and forget that they're not emotionally or even mentally in any space to really receive that feedback. So if you're going to give one or two things, that is not the time. Besides one or two basic things, Absolutely, totally agree.
Speaker 3:Let's take a quick break and when we come back let's give some I don't know advice isn't the right word to parents on this, because I think we've taken this a lot from the coach's perspective and we probably need to take it to the parents perspective.
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Speaker 1:Welcome back to the September 17 edition of Breaking the Line, the ECNL podcast. Once again, here's Doug Bracken.
Speaker 3:Now, christian, put your parent hat on. What advice would you give to parents, because I'm sure you've dealt with some already in your Zone 1 coaching. We've all done it. We've been doing this for a long time. Give me your thoughts.
Speaker 2:I think, in the same way that we say coaches should be specific and coach to individuals even in the collective concept, you got to tie that down to how do the individual actions and decisions and behaviors you know, determine the collective. I think parents need to speak on behalf of their child. If you're the parent who says I am speaking on behalf of the silent majority, who says I am speaking on behalf of the silent majority, you generally are not.
Speaker 3:Coaches will generally stop listening.
Speaker 2:Correct Because, number one, there is social dynamics and when you're complaining or whatever, on the sideline there's a lot of parents who will just nod along with you because they don't want to get into a dispute with you about it. And that doesn't mean they necessarily agree with you, because if they did, they might address the coach themselves. So I would say, please do not take the perspective as the appointed union representative who is speaking on behalf this is not a class action lawsuit Correct, and you are not appointed to represent everybody else.
Speaker 2:So even if you think you are, it doesn't help what you're about to talk about by saying that there are many, many people talking to you and you are the voice of the week. Don't do that, because you should be speaking about your situation, your beliefs, what you see about your player and that's the second piece to that is there is generally, I think, nothing positive that ever happens about one parent talking about somebody else's child, unless there is an issue going on between the kids that is behavioral or bullying or something like that. There is generally no positive at all from making a comment about somebody else's kid good or bad at all, from making a comment about somebody else's kid good or bad or in comparison to your kid or anything like that, because every scenario is different and so even if you feel like, well, this player in this situation got treated this way and my player in the same situation got treated that way, the reality is that there's probably four or five other variables that you don't even know about that dictated the reason that if there was a difference in treatment, that that difference in treatment was applied. Keep going, start with an open mind. This is not a a cross-examination, and it's very obvious when it becomes one where a parent has sort of a an end in mind, these conversations should be initiated early enough.
Speaker 2:In whatever concern there is that your reaction is. I just want to understand and feel and identify what ways I can help, and I think if you bring questions early, that's more likely to be your mindset. Now, if you sit on it for weeks on end and don't say anything, then by the time the dam breaks, for example, you may walk into this interaction a lot more conclusory than you would if you asked a question early on, early on, and then I'd kind of default and wrap it all up with. If you've got questions about everything all the time and doubts about everything all the time, there's one of two things either maybe you are the one or maybe maybe it's time to go to another club. Yeah, and if that is the case, if you just don't like it, you know absent, you know really, really, really not good things happening. If you just don't like it, you don't like the personality of the coach or you don't like the way the club does things, then go and you know, do so gracefully. What parents?
Speaker 3:look for should be in the big picture. What is the track record of this club in getting players where my child's aspirations or talent align? Because then that can change, because you know kids start young and things change. So that's the big picture. And then the coach what does the coach believe in and what's their philosophy? Do I align to that philosophy as step two? The next step is do I see the coach's stated philosophy coming out when I observe my kid playing in this situation? And if the answer is yes, then then you're good, right, and you're always you know.
Speaker 3:Obviously we talked about this last podcast you're looking to see if your child is improving, getting better, continue to have the proper resistance, whatever. And then I think it's perfectly to be curious, because a lot of times the parent is going on this journey along with their child as a support person, but to gain knowledge and understanding. And so having that curiousness to find out why or what we're doing, or how you're doing it or whatever, I think great, that's great. At any point you have to be able to differentiate between your child struggling and needing to experience that struggle to get better, because struggle doesn't necessarily just mean that your kid is is bad and, by the way, when your kid struggles they're likely going to like it less and helping them push through that so that they can use that adversity to be more successful.
Speaker 2:Remember when.
Speaker 3:Anson said snowplow.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the snowplow parent, the helicopter parent.
Speaker 3:Right, we're trying to move obstacles out of the way of our kid and, instead of that, saying, hey, listen, this is part of it. Right, this is part of it. Having settled that, then if at some point your child is not getting better or you no longer align with the philosophy or you don't align with the philosophy of the coach or the club, then it's time for you, as an individual, to go. Look to do something different. Not you and the group, or you to your point as a spokesman for the group, but you and your child in their individual situation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I would add a couple of comments to that. Number one is I think in a lot of scenarios your child will act in the way you model, and so if something happens and again we're talking about these minor moments of adversity they make a mistake in the game, they get criticized, they don't start, they don't play a lot in this game or that whatever something you you feel it was unfair. I'm not justifying anything, I'm just saying it's at what's called a minor moment of adversity. This is a, you know, one of the values of sport that parents over and over and over talk about, why their kids are in sport is to learn resilience. And so when those moments happen, if you treat it like the end of the world, so will your kid, and that opportunity to develop resilience disappears, as opposed to to your point saying, hey, this happens, this happens in the journey. Sometimes things don't go the way you want and you just got to roll your sleeves up and work, or you just got to move on. You made the mistake or something happened you didn't like. It's time to move on and just keep working.
Speaker 2:And a lot of times the kids will, you know, even if there's some emotion in it will say, well, okay, I will do that.
Speaker 2:And it moves on and the kid has learned okay, I can distinguish between big things and little things and I can learn how to handle things. So now, if there's just in the same way, say their appropriate amount of resistance is important. You know, the appropriate amount of resilience is important Because if there's too many challenges that just keep coming up over and over and over and over again, you're not going to develop a lot of resilience when you just keep getting punched in the face. Right, but be aware of the first time there's a bump, that's probably not the time to do anything except to say, hey, it's OK, work through it Now. The third or fourth time in a short period of time, well, maybe that's the time to ask the question. But I think you can model behavior on that, because they will. They will very much react in a way that is aligned to how you react, and it's a great opportunity to teach a young player we talk about with our kids sometimes.
Speaker 2:The difference between big things and little things Is this a big thing that you really should be upset about, and this is not sports specific, this is just life. Yeah, or is this a little thing?
Speaker 3:And yeah, it didn't happen, but it transcends sport, right, correct?
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure, I love that. Not pretending that I'm the expert on this.
Speaker 3:No, no, but yeah, I mean. But I think you're right, I think it is helping them through those times and the house isn't necessarily on fire. We don't have to make extreme decisions, extreme reactions in every situation. Man, a lot of kids quit the sport and sport because of the interactions with their parents. That is not to absolve coaches or anyone else who may also create bad environments that make kids quit sports.
Speaker 2:But well and you know, let me jump on sports because they're not fun. Well, that's true, and what I would say is, if, if you have a coach that's creating some adversity and resilience for your kid maybe very intentionally Okay, cause that is part of teaching and as they get older, deliberately created adversity is actually what we call learning. You know, it's an overload in the soccer sense, but if a coach is doing that and then you add on to that as a parent, that's when the adversity can become too big.
Speaker 3:You know there's a yeah, that's a great point.
Speaker 2:There's a famous quote, and I forget which coach it was, but he said you know, you know I got. When I see kids with a lot of cream in their life, I add a little shit, and when there's a lot of shit in their life, I add a little cream and excuse the language. But that's a great point, the point being that a coach needs to be able to balance those scenarios, because if everything's perfect all the time and there's no challenges and there's no adversity, well, there's no opportunity to grow resilience. There's a question about whether they're learning much Right. There's no opportunity to grow resilience. There's question about you know, whether they're learning much Right. And, on the other end, if everything is really just hard and a slog and not fun and just so so much resistance and adversity, well then they're not going to like the sport.
Speaker 2:The answer to me is in the middle and you'd lean. You'd lean towards. You know the the. You want more positive than negative. For sure. Whether that's 70%, 80%, 90% probably also depends on the age of the aspiration and all that. But a hundred, zero or zero 100 is not where you want to be.
Speaker 3:Yeah, right, right, totally. Again, I know we touch on a lot of things and we go a lot of places on this, but I just think it's important to talk about this stuff. It can be a little bit, you know, uncomfortable. Parents need to understand, coaches need to understand, players need to understand. So, again, it's about communication. I think, first and foremost, and I do think the club bears the responsibility and the coach bears the initial responsibility in that that's our take on it.
Speaker 1:And what a solid and thorough take. Indeed, the show's not over. We've got Bracken's Brain Buster after a couple more messages from ECNL corporate partners.
Speaker 5: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, hashtag. You can't stop our voices. Follow Nike on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. Did you know? Ecnl provides free recovery sessions. Ecnl has partnered with MarkPro, a staple for recovery in professional sports. Markpro is a unique, safe, portable e-stim device that feeds sore muscles and removes metabolic waste. Stop by the Recovery Zone during your next event.
Speaker 3:Christian, you ready for a Bracken Brain Buster?
Speaker 1:I am you ready for it? All right.
Speaker 3:Jacob, this is for you, jacob, this question is for you, literally for you.
Speaker 4:I feel like you get a little unheralded.
Speaker 3:You're an unheralded member and behind the scenes you're always working hard. First, I was definitely poked by Jacob. I do want to recognize one of our big sponsors and that's Continental Tire. Score big with Continental Tire. Continental Tire has your back. The tire is designed for top-notch traction, handling and durability. Drive with confidence and ensure your family's comfort on every journey. Find your dealer at ContinentalTirecom. Continental Tire the smart choice in tires. Here we go with Bracken's Brain Buster dedicated to Jacob. Best band of all time, best band, musical band of all time. And if you say Depeche Mode or something like that, then we're gonna. Then you're no longer gonna get anything in your honor on this, jacob, I'm gonna let you go first. I know you're a huge music guy.
Speaker 4:I am a huge music guy guy, but best is such a wide-ranging come on, come on discussion, because if are we talking favorite, are we talking most influential. Because if it's. It's a personal, it's personal, whatever you want my favorite band of all time is a band called a day to remember.
Speaker 3:They are a something obscure, but nobody's heard that there was a band in your high school.
Speaker 2:I get it.
Speaker 4:They're a pop band out of ocala, florida, but I've seen them eight times live in seven different cities. They are my favorite band.
Speaker 4:They are so good, they have such a wide range of musical talents and, um, they put on one of the most fun shows that I've ever seen as well so you like groupie status with that group yeah, when I worked for the iowa wild, they played a show at our arena and I may or may not have taken 10 trips down to the locker room just to walk past them every hour before the show that is just hoping they say hey, buddy, come on here and play the drums I don't fanboy much being with professional athletes. I don't fanboy much, but with music artists, and specifically that band, they're one that I that I fanboy well you've Christian.
Speaker 3:Do you fanboy at all? Are you not me? Neither I'm a. I'm not a fan, not a fanboy. You know who I saw in the airport the other day? Kyle Korver. I don't even know who that is.
Speaker 1:You saw him in Salt.
Speaker 3:Lake city. Great shooter plays in the NBA Great shooter.
Speaker 1:Yep, I don't really watch the NBA. You were sitting right there.
Speaker 3:I didn't even say anything, I was just like oh there's Kyle Korver, all right, christian, that was a tangent.
Speaker 2:Best band, let's see, and unlike Jacob, I'm not going to just knocking back and forth on this.
Speaker 3:This is where you come out as a Taylor Swift fan, and it's.
Speaker 4:OK.
Speaker 3:It's fine.
Speaker 2:I'm going to say the best band I got to go with U2. U2. Been around four or five decades now.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Music that's got meaning depth. I can do without some of the other pontification sometime pontification.
Speaker 3:Are they your favorite band?
Speaker 2:I think they're my favorite band. I would say, if you said best singer of all time, you got to go with frank sinatra wow, okay, all right. Usually, dean, when he's on here, he has two answers he's gonna say when I hear my wife singing to me, it's the most melodic song in the world.
Speaker 3:Whatever Leah sings, dean, that's what you get. When you don't come on here, you get that man. I've kind of gone all over the map, I feel like when I was young, in my high school years, a big rap, beastie Boys, huge, and then I went to college and I probably took a more Pearl, pearl jam, nirvana, kind of kind of deal spoken class today yeah, I, you know, pearl jam is definitely up there more lately. I'm more like a chris stapleton tyler childers kind of good kind of guy.
Speaker 3:But I'm gonna say pearl jam will be my uh all right will be my best band ever grungeunge band.
Speaker 2:Grunge band Seattle, Seattle. So that's our little venture away from soccer. Best. Pearl Jam song Yellow Lead Butter. I have no idea what he says anywhere in it, but it's got a hell of a melody.
Speaker 3:Black is also a good song. Black is a good song. Pearl Jam song. There's a lot of good Pearl Jam songs. There's a lot of good. Next time we'll ask everybody except Jacob what their favorite song is.
Speaker 2:What would Christian, what would your wife Haley say Her favorite, Her favorite is she would probably say who is the female Christian singer was on American Idol Carrie Underwood.
Speaker 3:Lauren Daigle, lauren Daigle.
Speaker 4:Okay.
Speaker 3:Lauren Daigle. All right, jacob, what about your?
Speaker 4:Laura's favorite band is a band called falling in reverse. Who is another metalcore band?
Speaker 3:what is going on.
Speaker 4:This is one of the biggest rock bands currently in the scene. They've got like 10 million spotify listeners. We've seen them probably four or five times now. They're so good, like a week ago, banging together like I envision I envision that musical conversations in the Bourne household are deep and obscure, yeah, but intense and loud. You know my better half is T-Swift. They're loud for sure.
Speaker 3:You know, my better half is T-Swift all the way, every day, all day, every day. So shout out to all the Swifties out there.
Speaker 2:All right, all right, good discussion, yes, good discussion If there's specific questions on these issues. As always, we're not the experts, we're just sharing from our opinions.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Send your questions. It's info at the ECNL right Info at the ECNLcom. We love getting questions. It does spark our brains to start thinking about these kinds of things and talking about them. So I agree Great conversation and thanks to everybody who listens. Keep sending those questions our way.
Speaker 1:Fantastic indeed, major shout outs to Jacob Bourne and also to our producer, colin Thrash. And we'll see you in two weeks for another edition of Breaking the Line the ECNL podcast. And we'll see you in two weeks for another edition of 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.