LTAD – Page 2 – PARADIGM Sports

SPASIBO (THANK YOU)

Posted July 9, 2018January 27, 2022 Glen MulcahyLeave a commentPosted in Uncategorized

As this year’s World Cup is being hosted in Russia, my wife’s family have been rooting for their home country as they moved to Canada from Russia a generation back (my wife’s Baba (AKA Grandmother) was born in Russia and only English word she knew was EAT. Each time she extended the invite, I learned to say “Spasibo” / Thank-You from my wife and in-laws (one of the few Russian words I know).

Now that they lost in the semi-final in a closely contested match vs. Croratia, suspect her family will not be glued to the TV watching remaining games, but I wanted to touch on a couple of other teams that have made headlines this World Cup.

The first, is Japan, and how they handled a bitter defeat losing to Belgium who came from behind and show the world the epitome of class and respect for the hosts.

Not only did the team leave the dressing room cleaner they found it, they left a note of gratitude to the hosts in Russian.

Their fans, also did the same in the stands, they picked up all the litter although the stadiums operation staff were paid to do so.

As a result of their demonstration of true sportsmanship and respect for the game, their hosts, their opponents, the image of the dressing room and thank you note was shared amongst numbers social media accounts across the world.

Kudo’s to the coach, the players, the Japanese National Team and all their organizers for showing us what winning with humility and losing with dignity really means (one of the core values that I have taught all my players since I learned the same from my coaches.

The other team that is receiving a lot of attention is the very same team that defeated Japan in the bittersweet game coming back from behind to win, Belgium.

It all happened due to the changes that Belgian FA director of coaching education Kris Van der Haegen made to the football program starting at the grassroots level.

He shared insights with our good friend John O’Sullivan, host of Way Of Champions Podcast, the changes they made to their program since they did not make it thru the first round of the Euro Cup they hosted in 2000 and have since moved from being ranked 66^th in World Rankings to #1 in 2015.

Player-Centred Approach – he changed the approach from being a team or coaches ego’s to focusing on the players wants and needs to ensure they not only attracted players, but retained and grew their football programs (reverse of trends facing many youth sports globally today)
They implemented Small-Area Games so 1 on 1, 3 on 3 vs. 8 on 8 or 11 on 11 so it increased the number of touches, scoring opportunities, dribbling. Other sports have also followed suit, like Hockey Canada rolling out cross-ice hockey to mirror for USA Hockey a few years prior to ensure that kids touch the puck vs. beehive that I saw when coaching novice age group and still was full ice hockey.
Multi-Move (Multi-Sport/Activity) – ensuring that kids sample as many activities as possible until they are 13 years old to pursue football if that is the sport they love the most.
Giving Players Freedom (AKA Street Soccer) – No refs, parents, coaches, kids just play without the fear of being criticized

A strata in Chemainus may want to look into the benefits of street sports as I read in the paper today SORRY KIDS, NO FUN ALLOWED they passed an amendment to their bylaws to prohibit any form of PLAY on the streets.

Really?

Obviously, the very same people that voted for are oblivious to the fact that there are multiple organizations that are promoting the importance and benefits of free play so that kids LOVE to be active and are ultimately active for life. The list of banned activities includes “hockey, baseball, basketball, skateboarding, chalk artistry, bicycling and other sports and recreational activities”

Wonder what Sidney Crosby is going to say when he finds out after he battled a street hockey ban in his hometown Province in 2006, followed by other former NHL’s who did the same when the issues came to light including another “pretty good player” Bobby Orr, Tiger Williams just to name a few. I imagine Walter Gretzky, whose legacy is the world’s largest street hockey tournament, as would his son Wayne, may have a few words to say also on the same subject.

Even the VP of the very same strata council voted against the bylaw as she enjoys watching the kids PLAY, the others that voted for the bylaw should give their heads a shake as playing on the streets in urban areas, especially those in poorer neighborhoods is for many kids the ONLY option to get outside and PLAY.

Game-Based Approach for Practices

Kris also changed the way that coaches run practices to ensure it is based on a game based approach, in lieu of deferring to scrimmaging the last 5-10 minutes of a practice followed by technical drills only, he implemented the slogan “make your players love the game” After that, you can help them learn the game.

Winning doesn’t matter – No Competitive games until 14 Years old

Perhaps Kris researched the model in Norway, who don’t permit competitive play in many of their clubs until same 14 year od age group.

This is now the second nation that not keep track of wins, losses, goals, assists who has reached the HIGHEST level of the sport with their national teams.

Hmmm … wonder when Canada, USA and other countries that are suffering horrific attrition rates in youth sports will GET IT … KIDS JUST WANT TO PLAY.

Looking after the late bloomers

If late bloomers need to drop down a level until they catch up to their early bloomer counterparts, they will, to ensure they develop confidence and love the sport vs. chasing the ball like kids do in North America chasing as only recently USA soccer is experimenting with bio-banding putting players in their physical maturity groupings vs. chronological.

With early exits in this year’s World Cup by Germany, Brazil, Argentina I suspect all eyes are on Belgium to see if they advance and potentially win.

I would be remiss not referencing Iceland, who in their FIRST EVER World Cup tied Argentina, who like Belgium, totally revamped their approach to how they develop their players going back also to 2000 when they were ranked 124^th in the world and now are ranked 22^nd.

The Nations that continue to do the same thing over and over again expecting different results (AKA Insanity) need to seriously look at how others have developed cultures of excellence.

Better yet – cultures where kids LOVE to play and continue to play beyond current trends where 70% by the age of 13 because the game is not about the kids, it is about adults competing with other adults thru kids.

Let’s all work together to bring the game back to the kids … where it belongs.

Why Kid’s Play Sports

Posted October 11, 2017January 27, 2022 Glen Mulcahy1 CommentPosted in Athlete, Coach, Organization Executive, Parents, Uncategorized

Why Kids Play Sports2

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Quote for our upcoming newsletter is one that I share in every clinic or talk I do, “Kid’s play sports because it’s fun and quit when it no longer is … it’s not rocket science.”

It amazes me how few answers when I pose that question either in workshops or keynotes, of 30 people, a few say “fun” but then I hear a myriad of other answers including winning. This week I will share why kids play sports to piggyback on recent back to back appreciation weeks, the first coaches week to thank all the volunteer youth sports coaches in Canada for everything they do, the second week for all the youth sports parents.

Too often traditional and social media have focused on the doom and gloom in youth sports, yes SOME coaches are abrasive focusing on winning above all else and SOME parents take it over the top on the sidelines, stands at youth sports games but the reality is many are GREAT and without their support kids would not have an opportunity to PLAY a game they love.

Early on in my youth sport coaching “career” as a volunteer, I started asking three questions of the players on my teams and I recommend all youth sports coaches do the same at the beginning of each season they coach

Question 1: Why are you playing X?

Answer? All of the players I asked would say Fun … from 7 year old recreational to 17-year-old AAA players and everything in between.

Question 2: What is fun about X?

Answers?

They varied from early on when the kids were Novice age groups focusing on things like the snacks, pool parties, windups then as kids got older things like working on their skills, making friends, staying in shape to learning life lessons like learning respect from coaches, leadership, communication, work ethic and so forth. Older age groups I also asked them what was not fun and over and over again was the adult criticism (from parents and coaches) when coaches played their favorites (ran short benches) and ride home which I will defer to further post why kids quit sports.

I joke with coaches in clinics, workshops that the first question kids ask when they get in the dressing room is?

What is the snack?

The last question they ask when they leave is?

When do we play again?

Fast forward 25 years and think about the sports you play as adults like slo-pitch, adult rec hockey and what is the first question you ask as the game is over and go to bench or dressing room?

Coach — Who has and how much is the beer? (AKA Snack)

The last question you ask when you are leaving?

When do we play again?

IT DOESN’T CHANGE if we instill the love of the game when kids are young so they love a sport to play and be active for a very long time.

Sadly that love or passion for sport and activity is not there like it was in past due to all the issues that have evolved that has affected today’s generation of kids but we can change it if we let kids PLAY again without criticism, reduce the structure and bring back more free play.

If you don’t believe me and have not had a chance to listen to Amanda Viseks podcast with WOC then I will give you the anecdotal studies of thousands of kids based on her research at George Washington University.

Like I, Amanda asked kids why they played sports, and over 95% stated because it was fun.

She then asked them to define what was fun, and she got many of the same answers I did as well as many others. In fact, she identified 81 characteristics why sports was fun, below are the top 6 reasons;

Trying their best, respect from coaches, get playing time, exercise and being active were all answers I received every time I asked my teams and various of 4 and 5 were getting to meet new friends and having fun as a team so none of these answers surprised me.

At NO point in all the years and all the teams I asked the question what was fun, NO player answered winning.

I know that is the adult’s motivation more than kids but Amanda confirmed it, below are the latter half of the 81 characteristics why sports were fun;

In the bottom ½ of the list (48 of 81) winning was mentioned, but there were 47 other reasons why sports were fun to play.

Few other ones Amanda highlighted also, earning medals/trophies ranked 67^th on the list!

July 3rd, 2018 Update – I wrote this in October 2017 where we originally shared the quote why kids play sports. In addition to trophies, note that other least fun activities are playing in tournaments, travel and working with specialty trainers which continues to feed the $15 Billion business model that youth sports have become vs. focusing on the top 5 reasons why sports are fun. The reason I said it’s not rocket science, is one only has to ask kids why they play to get the answers, something I have been doing for many years as a means to connect with my players and also share with parents so all of our goals align vs. adults competing with other adults thru their kids.

Coincidentally, in my interview with Dr. Wade Gilbert (AKA the Coaches Doc) for our inaugural digital summit, his #1 tip what coaches can do so kids love the game at the end of the season is #3 of the reason why kids play sports, is let them PLAY. Due to the winning at all costs focus of travel teams, even when you make the travel team, many kids are victims of a short bench and don’t get the opportunity to do so, no wonder why they are putting up the white flag and 70% are quitting before they enter high school.

AGAIN, IT’S NOT ROCKET SCIENCE.

Please NO MORE participation trophies, if players on competitive sports teams are ranking trophies at the bottom 1/3 of why sports are fun, for recreational or participation only they have no value whatsoever and like my son’s participation trophy from t-ball merely get put in the Toy Story box to be recycled down the road.

The same is going to hold true for the other extreme I came across recently, Rawlings is sponsoring the National Championships of U6 T-Ball.

Has Rawlings lost their minds? Sponsoring a National Championship guaranteeing 4 competitive games for 4-5-year-old kids? Worse yet, in November AFTER even the professional MLB players are DONE for several months. Will coaches commit to becoming the FIRST ever (and hopefully last) World Champions of T-Ball be flying in ringers? Didn’t USA Baseball just roll-out their LTAD model and are they not supporters of Multi-Sport Participation when kids should be sampling as many sports as possible until they reach adolescence?

This only a few weeks after Aspen Institutes Project Play had their 2017 summit and talked about the importance of sampling, free play activities before kids became teenagers? How are programs developing where kids organize their own sandlot games without any adults present? In my new post will share insight from their recent summit.

This has gone viral via social media (thankfully there are other sane adults thinking the same as I am).

4-5-year-old kids should merely be playing, focusing on developing all their fundamental movement skills throwing, catching, two and one handed striking, kicking, falling and getting up and so on NOT traveling to Houston to play 4 competitive games costing their families thousands of dollars. That is one of the reasons why youth sports now a $15 Billion industry in the USA!

Baseball in the US has seen increases in total participation in recent years thanks to MLB’s Play Ball program, and although this may be argued is a means to plant the seed to get in the game early, but there is such a thing as too early and too much and this is over the top.

So if you don’t believe me, you don’t believe Amanda’s research, maybe you will believe the kids. Below is a panel was done at the Aspen Institute Project Play – So when do kid’s get a vote?

Youth sport and free play will never get back to what it was for our generation due to the digital evolution but we MUST find a way to bring the game back to the kids … where it belongs.

Otherwise, the current trends where 70% of kids are quitting all sports by the age of 13 will just continue to get worse.

Cross Ice Hockey Benefits

Posted August 8, 2017January 27, 2022 Glen Mulcahy59 CommentsPosted in Uncategorized

Source: Getty Images

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As we are only a few weeks away from kids, coaches and parents returning to ice rinks for the upcoming hockey season I thought it was a good time to discuss the benefits of Cross Ice Hockey.

In many of the clinics I have ran over the years I play clips from a video of Don Lucia when USA Hockey was introducing their ADM Model in 2007. He touches on several key points, one being his belief that tykes (5-7 years old in the USA) should be playing cross ice games, not full ice.

That was 10 Years ago, right when I was coaching very same age groups and thought the same, as he referenced it was like adults playing on a football field, there would not be much back checking. My analogy for full ice game play for Novice was Beehive, as the lesser skilled players would literally chase the stronger players all around the ice surface, many of which would not touch the puck at all during an entire game.

Below is a short clip that USA hockey did put together several years later showing what it is like for adults to play on a similar playing surface to a football field with nets that are approximately twice the size as traditional hockey nets.

USA Hockey mandated Cross Ice Hockey for their 5-8 year old age group in 2014, then for the 2016-17 season, BC Hockey mandated cross ice for the same age groups (Initiation 5-6, Novice 7-8). Saskatchewan Hockey implemented for initiation (5-6 yrs old) group only last season, and in March of this year Hockey Canada announced they will be mandating cross ice hockey nationally for the Initiation Age Groups. As far as I am concerned, it should have happened years ago and I applaud all of the governing bodies implementing to adhere to LTAD.

While I was running clinics last fall and interacted with coach coordinators, coaches and parents in those same age groups there were many that were for the implementation of cross ice, but also many against. Literally every clinic when I was going to or leaving benches I would walk past parents that were huddled up expressing concerns that cross ice would not prepare their son or daughter for Atom (9-10 yrs old). I also would hear concerns about it not preparing them for the rep level of Atom, which is supposed to be development age group but give players of higher skill to play with kids of similar skill.

What I found coaching both Atom Rec (House) teams and Atom Rep teams was the same, as soon as kids entered that age group it became competitive even though we should still be adhering to LTAD and learn to play at that age group.

Why ?

Because players do play full ice, they do keep track of scores, wins, losses so teams can win a league or playoff banner regardless if playing rec or rep streams.

That is also when the insanity starts to escalate in the stands.

For all those naysayer’s that I came across last season, I would pull out my smartphone and play the following USA analytics videos for parents to show them all the benefits of cross ice hockey;

According to the analytics, the benefits of small-surface play vs. traditional full size play are as follows:

2X the body contact battling for the puck
6X more shots per player
2X more puck touches per player
1.75 shots per minute on goalies vs. 0.45 on full ice
2X more pass attempts per player
5X more passes received per player
2X more changes of direction per player

Advanced players benefited even more

2X more puck touches
2X more shot attempts
2X more pass attempts

These are the reasons why USA Hockey, BC Hockey and now Hockey Canada are implementing cross ice for the youngest players, to give them the opportunity to touch the puck vs. what I referred to as bee hive hockey for the first few years.

For the skilled player it is not much fun and for the lesser skilled players it becomes very frustrating and many will give up on the game well before they should as they never touch the puck.

I also had coaches or hockey executive members complain about the following issues;

BC Hockey only gave them 2 months notice to implement, it was voted on at the annual AGM in June and all MHA’s in BC were expected to implement in Sept.

My reply, if we continue to delay, we will continue to fall behind other nations like USA and Europe.

The costs to purchase the boards used to split into two, or for the creative associations 3, sheets of ice to permit cross ice hockey was in the area of 30K and for many smaller associations would require they raise reg fees to absorb the expense.

My reply – it is a one time expense and the cost savings permitting 2-3 teams on one ice surface (with ice costing approx. 200-300.00 per hour depending on where located) should offset within one or two seasons (depending on how many H1-4 teams associations have).

The logistics of setting up for the younger age groups then taking down for the older age groups to permit full ice play would take up to 30 minutes and would affect the total ice time available for all hockey age groups, but also ringette, figure skating, public skating etc.

My Reply – I have known some AMAZING ice schedulers over the years who can make adjustments on the fly to accommodate and having multiple teams share once ice surface would permit potentially more ice slots for the older age groups.

Cross Ice Hockey for U9 age groups is a long time coming, and if you have followed the world juniors the last 2 decades if we do not go down the same path as other nations that are implementing cross ice play for the younger age groups we will continue to struggle at the international level.

The World Juniors has been a showcase for the worlds top U20 players, many of which have been drafted or draft eligible for the NHL.

In the 2000’s Canada dominated, winning 5 consecutive gold medals.

They then won Silver in 2010 and 2011, Bronze in 2012 and did not medal in 2013 or 2014. In 2015 thanks to an emerging “pretty good player” Connor McDavid and outstanding play by many of his team mates Canada did return to the podium for Gold only to not medal in 2016 and lose to the USA in 2017.

Brent Sutter, coach of the 2014 team that did not medal stated when interviewed after the tournament that he would like to see more skill and creativity and that is what they got beat by on some nights. This starts at the grass roots level when kids are in the early stages of LTAD, and he further comments on the fact that the current Canadian Youth Hockey Model puts too much emphasis on competitive play (games) vs. skill development in practices.

Click here to read the full Globe and Mail article

Although many parents aspired for the kids to play at the rep level where teams are assured to get 2 practices a week, as a result of our current system it still works out to a 1:1 practice to game ratio. I believe in atom and peewee ages groups which are the key development years of skill acquisition that we should revisit this model and rep teams should only play one game per week and replace the second game with a practice to ensure optimal skill development. This would change the practice to game ratio to 3:1. It would not require any additional ice to do so, merely converting one ice slot that is already assigned for those teams to a practice vs. a game slot. By doing so, I believe the skill and creativity level of Canadian born players would increase exponentially to ensure that we remain competitive at the international level.

Hockey Canada 2014 World Junior Team after loss to Russia in the Bronze medal game

USA (3), Finland (2), Russia (1) and Sweden (1) have been the other countries to reach Gold since 2010, all of which have invested heavily in LTAD models.

Although Canada once was Canada’s #1 Youth Sport, it no longer is for a myriad for reasons, Soccer is now the #1 youth team sport by over 100,000 registrants. Jason De Vos, Director of Development and the rest of the Soccer Canada team also are looking at various means to improve skill development in the younger age groups.

Why ? Because Canada National Men’s Soccer (European Football) program is ranked 117^th in the world.

In the keynote presentation he did for Ontario Soccer we shared in this weeks newsletter, he referenced the transformation that Iceland did with their National Football Program, in 2000 they were ranked 131^st in the world but due to various initiatives they implemented (including focus on LTAD, skill development with the younger players) they not only qualified for Men’s Europ Cup in 2016 they WON against England !! Iceland is now ranked 23^rd in world as a result and are 1/10^th the size of Canada or 1/100^th the size of USA in terms of population.

Another nation that has developed some pretty good NHL players is Sweden. They implemented Cross Ice Hockey years ago, and play until they are 10 (atom age group), and then full ice non-competitive games (no scores kept) until they reach the Bantam Age Group (13-14 years old). They also have a practice to game ratio of 5:1 as it is in practices (when planned well) that players develop.

Every single coach who played his youth hockey in Europe that I have interacted with over the last 10 years, including several who played professionally, state they don’t understand why there is such an emphasis on competitive games vs. skill development.

For me it started in my first year coaching minor hockey in 2004, H1, 5 year old kids and there were no games, just skill development ice slots but we did incorporate small area games in. Only a month into that season several parents asked me and fellow coaches “when are we going to play games”, to this day I still shake my head the question was posed, most of the kids could barely stand on their skates without falling down and parents wanted to see full ice games.

I look forward to seeing the impact cross ice hockey will have in the coming years, and other initiatives as they are rolled out to continue focusing on Hockey as a long term player development model.

Let’s work together to bring the game back to the kids.