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Team Rules for Conflict Resolution

A question from Rich:

My son, who is in the 6th grade, is on a recreational basketball team and the coach has a particular rule I would like to share with you. The rule is that if a player wants to quit the team (or the parent wants the child to quit), the player must go to the coach and talk to him one on one about the situation. We have a situation where the parents of one player told the coach that they disagreed with the coaches yelling at players on the team and they were removing their son from the team. That conversation occurred over the phone and the coach replied to the team via email. Below is the part of his email about the player/coach meeting. Can you give me your opinion of this?

In closing, I just didn't want this issue to come as a surprise to anyone such that it had to be discussed in front of the boys at practice. Secondly, I wanted everyone to know my thoughts/feelings on the matter. For those that wish to remain on the team, hope to see your sons fully engaged and ready to learn at the next practice. If anyone else wants to drop out, kindly have your son arrange a time with me over the next couple of days to tell me on his own, face to face. You may not believe it, but it will be a good experience for him on his way to manhood.

Now having said that let me venture an opinion on the matter. First, I find it surprising that the coach felt a need to have such a rule. That the coach feels a need to have this rule makes me suspicious of his qualification or acceptability as a coach for young children. By instituting this rule before the season even starts, the coach appears to be anticipating that dropouts are going to be an issue on his team. This may indeed be a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Children do drop out of youth sports season--for a variety of reasons. Some times, especially at a very young age some youngsters may not be mentally, emotionally or physically mature enough for organized sports in general or for a particularly demanding sport in particular. However, the reasons most often cited for kids dropping out of youth sports are:
 1) Abusive coaches
 2) Sports are longer fun
 3) An over-emphasis on winning

Each of these issues can be laid at the feet of the coaches.

Rather than anticipating and developing a plan or strategy to deal with potential dropouts, I believe the coach should take time to re-evaluate his coaching approach relative to the three primary reasons for dropouts listed above. I believe that concerned and caring coaches will make playing sports fun for all the participants. These coaches focus on the enjoyment, improvement and skill development of every single player on the team. These coaches keep winning in proper perspective, recognizing that the game is for the kids, not the adults and they understand that striving to win, not winning, is the essence of sports participation. These coaches encourage players to always try their very best, to play by the rules and to respect the sport, their teammates, their opponents and game officials. After all, these are the important life lessons and experiences that youth sports can provide, even at the young level, given proper coaching. Coaches that can do this don't have to worry about kids dropping out of the sport.

The bottom line here then is this: I do not agree with the approach taken by this coach. His point that this "face-to-face" confrontation between the player and the coach represents a learning experience may be accurate, however, I am not sure that the experience is either justified or appropriate for most young children playing sports for fun and enjoyment. Perhaps it might be more appropriate for older more advanced participants.

While it might be beneficial for the coach to talk to both the parents and the player to better understand the reasons the player no longer wants to play, I don't think forcing the situation - in effect making it a confrontation - is appropriate.