I favor equal participation by all players. Unfortunately, this position is not favored by most coaches today because of the "must win"  mentality that exists in youth sports. I am also disturbed by the number of players on your son's team. I think that having 15 players on a youth basketball team is absolutely absurd. Youth sports should be about playing and if there are 15 players on a team that fields five at one time there are going to be too many kids sitting on the bench for too long. Teams sizes should be limited to 8 or 10 players per team. I realize this is beyond your control this season but you should campaign for smaller team rosters in the future.

Let me get back to equal playing time. Your coach's "balancing act" is to play the weaker players for just a quarter of the game and the better players for half of the game. The obvious reason for this is because he wants to win the game. Putting it another way, the coach is letting his desire to win deprive many of the children on the team their right to equal participation. I believe that is wrong.

So many of the problems that exist in children's sports today can be traced to an "intense-must-win mentality" on the part of the adults that supervise and attend the sports. Unfortunately, youth sports have been poisoned by adult's intense desire to win. These days it is more important to win the game than to have all the kids play, enjoy and learn.

You must remember, that the only reason the better kids play more than the less skilled today is that someone, usually an adult coach/parent involved wants to win. Coaches obviously don't want to substitute weaker players for fear of losing. Coaches typically want all the best players on their team and they want to keep them on the court for as long as possible. It's really as simple as that and as long as that mentality prevails, less skilled players will suffer and playing time will remain a concern and a problem for many parents and players, regardless of the "balancing act" substitution strategy employed. Minimum playing rules help somewhat but are not a silver bullet solution to the problem.

It is not difficult to implement an equal participation strategy. Let me suggest one. Youth basketball games are typically 40 minutes long (four ten-minute quarters) and there are 5 positions on the court. That translates to 5 times 40 or 200 minutes of playing opportunities that will be divided between 8 players, assuming 8 kids on a team. That means that each player should play 25 minutes of every game (a little more than one half the game). If there are 10 players on the team, each player will play 20 minutes or 1/2 of each game. On your son's team with 15 players, each player would play only 13.3 minutes of each game. (I will explain how to  specifically implement my equal participation strategy in a minute.) Because there are 15 players on the team, playing time is too limited, even with equal participation. That is why team size should be limited to 8 or 10 players.

As you suggest your coach should arrange his line up to include both skilled and less skilled in different mixes but the key is that everyone should play an equal amount. Given the situation of your son's team I think the coach should take his better players and spread them across four units trying to create four essentially balanced groups, one for each quarter of the game. In the example below, I have assigned ratings to the 15 players - A1 thru A5 being the better players, B1 thru B5 the second group, and C1 thru C5 being the less skilled. (By the way, I would not share these ratings with the players.)

This requires a little thought and preparation but in my opinion it is well worth it. All kids play approximately an equal amount of time, albeit over the course of the season, not in a single game. Since all players are going to play approximately an equal amount, the coach should be motivated to help make all of his players improve and play better and that certainly would be a good thing.

I believe a coach's biggest commitment to winning should be to work with each of his or her players to help them learn and improve. The coach should spend quality practice time with all his players. All too often, though, coaches spend most of their time working with the skilled players and just ignore the rest. On game day, they substitute the weaker players minimally if required.

When you think about it, if competing teams were competitively balanced (and most leagues try to achieve balance) and if all competing teams used the equal participation rule, the successful coach would likely be the one who got the best production from his weaker players. Wouldn't that be a great thing?

Philosophically speaking, other than to win, is there any reason why the better player should receive more playing time than a weaker player? Isn't the less skilled player entitled to a fair share of the fun of playing. Doesn't he or she pay the same registration fee? We are not talking about big time revenue sports here. These are little kids playing for fun and to learn. I don't believe there is a valid reason that good players should receive more playing time than the less skilled. On the contrary, some experts make a case that the less skilled players should receive more playing time so that they might improve.