I think it’s all about emphasis at different levels and deciding when it is generally developmentally appropriate to emphasize winning over development for an age cohort. Clearly winning is or ought to be the top emphasis at the professional level, but, even there, you (hopefully) talk about developing a young player or you look at teams in a rebuild developing a whole group of young players.
Conversely, at the youth level, of course coaches (myself included) “want to win,” but for a variety of reasons I don’t want that to come at the cost of every kid getting a chance to play, have fun, develop and participate. We had a losing season this year, but the kids were able to have fun and get better. They fought like hell to win games and we lost some real heart breakers, but they never got discouraged because we didn’t emphasize it. The kids play hard because THEY want to win, but they had fun because there was no added external pressure to win.
The whole question of winning has to be secondary to development at every level though-- it’s a matter of when the drive to win will aid the development of the player, whether the player is ready for that and where that motivation should come from. You can have a 7th grader hell bent on winning who needs a coach to reign him in a bit or a supremely talented NBA prospect more motivated to party than anything else who needs a coach to light a fire under him to help him develop to the next level.
Thanks for a very thought provoking piece. Great stuff.
I think it’s all about emphasis at different levels and deciding when it is generally developmentally appropriate to emphasize winning over development for an age cohort. Clearly winning is or ought to be the top emphasis at the professional level, but, even there, you (hopefully) talk about developing a young player or you look at teams in a rebuild developing a whole group of young players.
Conversely, at the youth level, of course coaches (myself included) “want to win,” but for a variety of reasons I don’t want that to come at the cost of every kid getting a chance to play, have fun, develop and participate. We had a losing season this year, but the kids were able to have fun and get better. They fought like hell to win games and we lost some real heart breakers, but they never got discouraged because we didn’t emphasize it. The kids play hard because THEY want to win, but they had fun because there was no added external pressure to win.
The whole question of winning has to be secondary to development at every level though-- it’s a matter of when the drive to win will aid the development of the player, whether the player is ready for that and where that motivation should come from. You can have a 7th grader hell bent on winning who needs a coach to reign him in a bit or a supremely talented NBA prospect more motivated to party than anything else who needs a coach to light a fire under him to help him develop to the next level.
Thanks for a very thought provoking piece. Great stuff.