| Just call me "Captain Clickbait" :-) But stick with me here... I started Summer Camp in Palos Verdes in 2005 with just 2 weeks of camps only for players 7 and up. About 60 kids total signed up across the 2 weeks and they all had a blast (of course!) - word started to spread quickly about Spring Training. Before camp started the next year, I received an email from a dad that I'll never forget. It basically said, "Hey Dan, I've heard great things about your camp I'm interested in signing my son up, but I'm just concerned that the focus is fun." I was stunned by the question, and sadly this email was a sneak preview of the direction that youth sports has been heading in ever since. My guess is that this parent was looking for a program that would do nothing but drills drills drills and push push push the kids non-stop. The idea that baseball could or should be fun was apparently lost on him. In his mind, the only reason for his son to be on the field was in order to improve his individual skills in anticipation of preparing him for something down the road. Yes, we do drills at camp and the players absolutely improve on a weekly basis. As someone who had dedicated his entire adult to baseball, teaching the fundamentals is really important to me and improving a ballplayer's skill is one component to their enjoyment of the sport. But that said, the underlying theme of every single minute at camp is HAVING FUN. The atmosphere is FUN. The coaches are FUN. The games are FUN. Trivia is FUN. My baseball stories are FUN. The drills are fun. Wacky Hat Wednesday is FUN. World Series Friday is FUN. My diabolical plan to make every camper love baseball works :-) So, let's circle back to the click bait title of this blog. I get asked all the time, "Hey Dan, all I want is for my kid to make the high school team someday...what should we be doing?" And the answer I give is not the one they are expecting, and probably not the one they want: "Make sure your son has fun in Little League, learns to love the game, so that he wants to continue playing." I know in these situations that what parents want me to tell them is, "Take this many swings a day, do these throwing drills to increase velocity, field this many groundballs, etc, etc" But the answer that I give is an honest one, and here's why: When our kids are younger, we get to sign them up for programs we want them to participate in. We drive them to every practice. We drive them to every game. Every karate class. Even Adventure Guides meeting. They're kids - they don't get a choice about their free time outside of school. Of course, as parents (myself included) we try to sign our kids up for activities that we think they'll enjoy and find rewarding, but even if they hate piano lessons, for example, we can still make them participate when they're younger. But as they grow up, we don't have the same control over them. If a freshman in high school doesn’t want to go to the field on tryout day, guess what, he's not going. We can't hold his hand on campus and force him to go. Once an athlete reaches a certain age, if they don't love their sport anymore, they'll quit. Simple as that. But even if they don't quit, even if they go to tryouts and make the team, but they don't love the game, they won't have the internal drive necessary to put in the effort to be successful. The most important foundational element of getting to the "next level" is the desire to continuing playing the game. As youth sports gets more and more serious at younger and younger ages, developing the LOVE of the game has become an afterthought, when it should be the primary focus. Why do people play games anyway? To HAVE FUN. It’s why we play Monopoly, and golf, and poker, and Crazy Eights, and soccer, and music, etc. We PLAY to HAVE FUN. We can play to win. And we can play to challenge ourselves. We can play to enjoy the competition. But more than anything, we play to have fun. So, yes, of course the primary focus at camp is fun. And what's the result of this focus? Another generation of kids who will have learned to play hard, respect the game, and supported each other...all while falling in love with the game. No matter where their baseball careers take them, if they've learned to love baseball when they're younger, they'll be fans of the game for life. And if they do eventually make it to the "next level" there will nothing more important to their success than their underlying love of the game that drives them to work harder and harder to achieve their goals. 70% of all kids quit team sports by the age of 12, with the #1 reason they quit being, "It's not fun." We can change that statistic. All we have to do is constantly remind ourselves that sports, especially at a young age, should be first and foremost about having fun and make sure that everything we do on the field reflects that mission. Play Hard, Have FUN! |
PREVIOUSNEXT