“I trained 3-4 hours a week at Ajax (Ajax Amsterdam Football Club) when I was little but I played 3-4 hours a day on the street. So where do you think I learnt to play football?”
The parallels between coaching and parenting are striking and both of these elements naturally come together with youth sports. The concept of free-range kids popularised by author (and parent) Lenore Skenazy thus readily applies to how we coach young athletes (as well as sport parenting). In each case, free play and participating in unsupervised games are essential parts of how children and young athletes develop. Engaging in play is central to how we learn to navigate the world and engage with others. Voluntarily participating in games with others (without intervention from the grown ups) teaches kids how to conduct themselves and develops the capability to interact with peers in a competitive context and a cooperative manner. A less structured environment where the kids themselves decide the playing area and the rules of the game affords the opportunity to apply what they have learned, explore different tactics and engage in trial and error. As such, free play and unsupervised games are particularly rich in opportunities to acquire and adapt sport skills and develop game sense. Given the myriad benefits and the essential role that these opportunities play in developing adept athletes and capable humans, it seems baffling that they are systematically being eliminated with today’s youth. So here we will make the case for applying the free-range perspective to rethink youth sports participation and talent development in a way that fosters engagement and creates self-reliant athletes.
WHEN THE GROWN UPS STEP AWAY…
When compared to previous generations, kids are sadly less accustomed to engaging in free play and unsupervised ‘pick-up’ games with others in their neighbourhood and with their peers at school. Nevertheless, the urge to play with others comes quite naturally, so we can expect that they will soon figure out once provided the opportunity. The onus is on us as coaches and parents to collectively permit young athletes the space and time to roam, explore and interact without intervention from the grown ups.
To give a (sadly rare) positive example from (soccer) football in North America, which otherwise represents an object lesson in how not to do it (at least when it comes to the men’s game), a group of coaches instituted a pilot whereby the first 10-15 minutes of practice was devoted to free play, rather than the standard coach-led drills. Under the new regime the opening part of the session was entirely led, managed and refereed by the kids themselves. This is akin to what is described in the physical education literature as deliberate play. It proved wildly successful and popular, such that other kids started to flock to the club. Not only was there greater enjoyment and engagement, but the coaches also observed the young players becoming more creative and better at working autonomously rather than constantly looking to the grown ups for direction or intervention. The resounding success and boost in player enrolment following the pilot has since led other youth sports (baseball and softball) at the same facility to adopt this policy.
A CASE STUDY: YOUTH SOCCER IN CANADA…
Firstly, this is necessarily a generalisation, but what I have observed since arriving into Canada with youth soccer and the numerous commercial academies has made for grim viewing. Coming from the UK I grew up playing and watching football (fun fact - my dad signed with a club in the top tier of English professional football back in the day), so it is a sport I am very familiar with. The reason that (soccer) football is the world’s game is that you only require a ball and a patch of ground to play. On that basis, what I have found so baffling is to see even the youngest kids being over-coached in heavily supervised practices that largely comprise rigidly structured (and highly questionable) drills. One sight that still haunts me is watching a professional coach (in the sense he was being paid) instruct kids of 6 or 7 years old to dribble up to a static dummy - PICK UP THE BALL WITH THEIR HANDS - throw it over said dummy, then run around to shoot into an empty net. Moreover, parents are often paying significant sums of money for the privilege of subjecting their kids to these crimes against football, which seems especially baffling for a sport that does not have any significant barrier to entry in most other parts of the world.
To be clear, there is absolutely a role for instruction and (competent) coaching to acquire the necessary technical skills and tactical understanding. The more proficient the performer becomes at executing the basic skills and the better they understand the game the more they are able to enjoy playing it. Where we run into a problem is that whereas formal practices might have constituted a fraction of the total time spent (I refer the reader to the Johan Cruyff quote we opened with), supervised drills and related activities under the command and control of the coach are almost exclusively what kids seem to be participating in.
We can debate why kids’ participation in formal supervised practices is seemingly to the exclusion of playing the sport unsupervised. Perhaps what kids experience at practice makes them less inclined to engage in playing the sport of their own accord outside of scheduled supervised sessions and competitions. It is also true that young student athletes’ time is increasingly heavily scheduled, such that their involvement in a given sport is also often to the exclusion of participating in other sports for fun or otherwise.
Whatever the case, operating almost exclusively under external constraints and constant supervision is not conducive to developing game sense. Clearly this is a major omission - after all, once the player takes the field it is up to them. Whatever coaching instructions are provided beforehand, as soon as the game kicks off they must read the game and continuously respond to what is unfolding in front of them. The capability to make decisions, improvise solutions and respond spontaneously to what team-mates and opponents are doing in real-time is essential. Developing these specific capabilities requires hours upon hours of engaging in the sport under the constantly changing and inherently unpredictable ‘live’ conditions that they will encounter in a match. In other words, if we want to develop kids who can play, as coaches and parents we need to provide ample opportunities for them to play without getting in their way.
The downstream effects of all this are becoming noticed at the elite level. One of the top coaches in professional football in England recently commented on a trend he has observed whereby players continually look to the sidelines for guidance. He specifically traced this back to practices employed in the professional academy pipeline that teach players to become dependent and reliant on constant direction from coaches.
DELIBERATE PRACTICE AND DELIBERATE PREPARATION…
Hours spent at practice are not equal. Simply attending supervised practice and being exposed to drills under the direction of a coach does not mean that any learning is necessarily taking place. Mindlessly following commands and performing the drills set out does little to develop adaptive skills or the ability to execute in a competition environment. We might contrast this scenario with a performer voluntarily engaging in practice with focussed attention and clear intent to develop a specific ability or work towards a defined performance outcome, supported by external feedback and appropriate guidance from a coach as required. Deliberate practice is the term used to differentiate this type of highly purposeful practice where the role of the performer themselves is central rather than simply being a passive recipient.
Deliberate preparation extends this concept to all facets of youth athlete development to provide a similarly deliberate and intentional approach to developing proficiency in global athletic skills in much the same way as sport skills. Deliberate preparation has notably been applied to physical education more generally, following a similar rationale to what we outlined with sport skills - that is, in developing their proficiency in fundamental movement skills we support kids’ engagement in and enjoyment of sports.
A common assumption with deliberate practice and deliberate preparation is that this requires the constant presence and involvement of a coach. It is true that there needs to be adequate provision of external feedback and coaching input to guide learning; however, this can be provided periodically rather than the coach necessarily having to exclusively lead proceedings or even be in attendance at all times. In fact, as the young athlete progresses on their journey we should encourage and expect them to take more ownership and more responsibility to undertake this work of their accord and in their own time. In other words, with time there should be less of a necessity for the coach to always be there.
Once again, it was more usual in previous generations for young athletes to spend hours practising alone or with friends (without any adults being present to supervise or direct proceedings). One of the paradoxical effects of having sports participation supervised and directed by others is that the young athlete defers this responsibility to the grown ups. Conversely, free-range athletes are more likely to retain the intrinsic motivation to engage in this type of solo and unscheduled practice. This is important, as the practice behaviours that athletes spontaneously engage in are part of what differentiates the best performers. When the grown ups are out of the picture young performers are also more inclined to step up to coach and help each other, which benefits learning for all parties.
“Everything I know about football I learned on the street. My friends and I were always trying to think up a new feint. If anyone invented something new, they had to show it to the others. That is what street football is all about.”
WIDER IMPORTANCE FOR THE JOURNEY IN SPORT AND BEYOND…
The benefits of taking more of a free-range approach extend beyond sport. As in a parenting context, affording performers the opportunity to operate independently develops self efficacy - that is, a sense of capability and confidence in their ability to cope within a given context. Returning to the positive example of the soccer academy, it is a show of confidence when the coaches opt to turn over control to the young athletes and give them responsibility for coming up with the rules and collectively resolving contested calls without a referee. Moreover, young performers respond to challenge and it is motivating to have the onus placed back upon them (after all this is meant to be their show). Over time this approach helps to develop self-reliant athletes and capable individuals.
Greater recognition of the role of unsupervised participation in talent development among youth sports coaches and sport parents will hopefully lead to more initiatives incorporating a free-range approach and ongoing efforts to enlist young performers in the process. This is likely to go some way to reigniting young performers’ desire to engage in the sport spontaneously for the simple joy of doing so. In turn, unsupervised pick-up games with their friends may yet see a resurgence.
Ultimately, the time must come on the youth sports journey when the young performer takes their destiny into their own hands. Only the performers themselves have the power to choose to pursue a long term aspiration (and only they can decide how much of themselves they invest in the day to day process). Indeed if coaches and parents fail to prompt and enable this transition (or worse still impede the young performer in assuming responsibility) we can expect that they will tune out. Many young performers will walk away from the sport entirely, either out of rebellion or because they have come to view participating as something they are doing for others rather than for themselves. From this perspective, taking greater account of the free-range approach is likely an important part of addressing the growing drop-out rates we see across youth sports in the early- and mid-teenage years.
Cover photo credit: Photo by Adrià Crehuet Cano on Unsplash
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