Ep 374 Should Your Kid Be Playing Up, or Is That Just You?

Playing at the Proper Level

Links mentioned in this episode

TeachHoops.com

NukeHydration.com — clean sports hydration, no additives, low sugar. Coach Bill is drinking the Lime Time. Use code YOUTHHOOPS15 for 15% off

CoachingYouthHoops.com — practice plans and everything else you need as a youth coach

Should Your Kid Be Playing Up, or Is That Just You?

Talent, maturity, and the parent in the parking lot.

Tryout season continues, and this one is about the hardest call a youth coach makes: getting kids at the right level. How you decide, and how you tell the parents.

(Also settled early: nobody has ever called Coach Collins "Coach Steve." Coach Bill's fourth grade girls have been debating whether to call him Bill, Coach Bill, or William, and at least one of them knows his full name.)

Coach Bill lays out the case. You have a team that can do X, Y, and Z. You have kids above that and kids below it. Then you have the tweener: too good for her grade, maybe not good enough for the level above. Do you push her up for the challenge? Can she handle no longer being the best player in the gym, when one level down she would be?

Coach Collins refuses to put it in a box, and Coach Bill gives him a hard time about it the whole episode.

His frame is academic. If your kid is genuinely ready for calculus, they should take calculus, and the parent usually knows that better than anyone. But you do not want to push so hard that failure follows, and you do not want them so overwhelmed they quit and go play volleyball.