PROJECT PLAY SUMMIT 2020 | DAY 3
Watch Day 3 Sessions
Redefining Winning in Youth Coaching
Building the Capacity of Community Providers
For years, U.S. Olympic gold medal gymnast Laurie Hernandez rationalized that her coach pushed her just like any coach challenges young athletes. Hernandez started gymnastics at age 5 and became desensitized to being called lazy, weak or messed up emotionally given what she experienced for 11 years.
It was emotional abuse, but she wasn’t sure since it was so common in gymnastics. She saw coaches belittling and screaming at athletes not only in her home gym, but at friends’ gyms and at competitions. Hernandez assumed she just couldn’t handle the pressure, which contributed to her suffering from eating disorders and depression.
“I just know something is off and I think it’s probably me, which is not the case,” Hernandez said at the Aspen Institute’s Project Play Summit 2020. “Let kids know their gut instinct is very powerful and trust that and communicate with others.”
“We do a skill and immediately when we’re finished we don’t decide, ‘How did that skill feel to me?’ The immediate attention goes to, ‘How do you think I did?’ The outside validation is set from a very young age."
— Laurie Hernandez, U.S. Olympic gold medalist, on the gymnastics coaching culture
Five months ago, USA Gymnastics suspended Hernandez’s former coach, Maggie Haney, for eight years. A panel organized by the federation evaluated evidence from at least five of her athletes and found that Haney had engaged in “severe aggressive behavior” toward gymnasts that included trying to control a minor by ridiculing her, according to The New York Times.
The decision provided some validation for Hernandez, now 20 years old and training in a more positive environment as she hopes to compete at the 2021 Olympics. Still, there remains a lot of lessons to unpack about how coaches and other adults should truly hear young athletes.
“Emotional abuse can be quite tricky, especially with Gen Z,” Hernandez said. “We’ve gotten this totally enjoyable title of being snowflakes and of being too sensitive. I think a lot of that makes it especially hard to detect when something is really off simply because from the get-go it’s shut down and we’re told we’re too sensitive, which is interesting. Don’t get it. Maybe it’s because I’m Gen Z.”
Hernandez battled internal conflicts during the abuse. Even as she felt emotionally drained and not good enough, she was placing high at events. Success made her wonder if maybe enduring the abuse was actually working.
“A really big problem, and something that I struggled with when trying to heal from it, was saying, ‘OK, there is nothing physical to show,’” Hernandez said. “I can’t really be like, ‘This is where it hurts.’ It kind of feels like it’s everywhere. … It’s definitely been very terrifying and scary but empowering the last couple of years. Eventually being able to speak about it was having my voice heard.”
“In those losses is where you get the greatest runway to catapult to have the greatest wins. If you don’t want to touch that pain and let it go, that’s where the mistake is. … You’re molding these young athletes not to just be great at sport but be great in life. That’s really cool. It gives me goosebumps thinking about it."
— Apolo Ohno, Olympic speed skating gold medalist, on life-building lessons good coaches can communicate to athletes in defeat
In 2019, only 33% of youth sports coaches said they had been trained in the past year in effective motivational techniques with youth, according to Project Play’s State of Play 2020 report. Hernandez said it should “feel pretty obvious” for a coach to know the difference between tough and abusive coaching. It’s about creating safe spaces.
“When I go to gymnastics clinics and I’m able to coach kids, I notice the best results come when I hit them with, ‘OK, it seems like (the athlete’s routine) was better, but it didn’t work and here’s why,’” she said. “Then they get a reason for it. They don’t feel the need to question, and if they do, it’s a safe place for them to do so because it’s not their fault they don’t understand something. They’re literally asking for help and that’s your job.”
Hernandez’s advice for coaches: Becoming a coach means you’re signing up to be a mentor, so decide what kind of coach and person you want to be. “Sports should not teach you how to hold your own in an abusive environment,” she said. “It’s supposed to teach you how to hold your own in a place where you feel like you can, because physically there are these challenges and the challenges are fun and meant to build you and (make you) feel stronger.”
Why Alex Morgan avoided club soccer for so long
U.S. women’s soccer team star Alex Morgan has important advice for kids: Play several sports. She knew at a young age that soccer was her favorite sport, but she still wanted to play softball, track and field, basketball and volleyball. So, she continued playing rec soccer through the American Youth Soccer Organization until joining a club team at age 14.
“I always encourage really being courageous with what you want to do, even though it’s not the norm,” Morgan said. “Everybody back then made fun of the path that I took because it was something that was unorthodox, and it meant that I was maybe late to the game going to youth club soccer. But at the same time, you look at where I am today, it doesn’t have to do with making all of the right steps along the way. It just has to do with that self-belief and making sure you enjoy yourself and continuing to grow the passion of what you want to do in life.”
“I felt my growth as a human was actually quite stunted. My learning environment becomes that of the ice rink and the locker room. My personal development that we normally would see as a young athlete comes in the form of who my coach is and the relationship with my parents."
— Apolo Ohno, Olympic speed skating gold medalist, on being singularly focused on sports at a young age
Consider what Morgan would have missed out on by specializing earlier. Her dad coached most of her teams. Part of the fun for Morgan was driving with him around their city picking up teammates for practice and then getting ice cream afterward.
Morgan said AYSO practices weren’t all about winning games and competing to stay on the field. “We all took turns bringing snacks to practice to just share with everyone,” she said. “We all pitched in on the whole team camaraderie, and club soccer would have taken the fun out of it. This was a way for me to continue that until I was ready to dedicate more time.”
The pay-for-play travel soccer system as set up today “could be so much better,” Morgan said. “I think that kids are forced into one sport at too much of a young age. The travel of youth sports is just crazy. There’s so much great competition within your own state, within your own county. It’s really unnecessary to have so much travel across states. That means more time commitment for the kids, that means a lot of time commitment for parents, and quite a financial burden as well.”
“As a Black girl, my first coach was a woman. I think that made me comfortable. ‘OK, here’s this 22-year-old redhead girl who’s helping me to swim.’ It was a big deal for me. All my youth sport coaches were women and seeing someone who can do it so well was like, ‘Oh, if she can do it, so can I.’"
— Char Barnes, Columbus (Ohio) Recreation and Parks Department youth sports manager, on the value of female coaches
Morgan’s biggest piece of advice for coaches: Make practices fun. She said coaches can do this by awarding kids for having a good mentality and being a good teammate, so youth feel proud of the work they put in, regardless of the final score.
“That’s something my dad instilled in me and I was able to get from my club coaches that I think a lot of youth players don’t get,” she said. “They don’t get that confidence from themselves, their teammates and their coaches. … There were so many girls growing up that were so much better than me at soccer. But I wanted it more. I felt I had a good support system. I was a good team player. I was coachable. I had all of the things that I needed to continue to grow as a player and that’s why I’m here today.”
Announcements and Actions
The Susan Crown Exchange (SCE), Positive Coaching Alliance (PCA) and Project Play announced the Million Coaches Challenge, an effort that will train at least one million coaches in positive youth development by 2025. This national effort to train youth coaches was designed to capitalize on the simple but critical finding that, for kids who play sports, a good coach can be a transformational figure. “When done right, sports promote social and emotional skills like teamwork and empathy and problem solving,” said Susan Crown, SCE chairman and founder. “We know these are the skills that matter most.”
In support of the Susan Crown Exchange’s effort, Project Play has created free tools for coaches at as.pn/callsforcoaches. The website include coach checklists on promoting social and emotional development, “This is Winning” videos showing coaches what success in sports should look like, strategy guides on sport settings, tips on how to support inclusion of young athletes with disabilities, and resources to support conversations on equity and antiracism with athletes.
Call for Leadership — Enhance the Capacity of Local Providers
In a Zoom room co-hosted with the PLAY Sports Coalition, about 80 attendees discussed opportunities to Enhance the Capacity of Local Providers, one of the four areas of opportunity elevated in Project Play’s platform for action. In a live poll, 48% of participants identified the following sector-specific idea within that plank as the one they are most enthusiastic about:
Community Recreation Groups: Build the voice of children into the design of sport experiences through online surveys that create feedback loops. Do the same with parents, adjust your programs, then market them as the option best positioned to achieve customer aims. Modernize your software to more easily allow the processing of registrations of families that qualify for fee waivers.
Support was expressed as well for using national service to add human capacity to community sport providers. Parks and recreation officials find the recruitment of volunteer coaches to be a top challenge, and data show a drop in youth coaches to 5.7 million in 2019 from 6.5 million previously. With national service, government and private industry partner to provide stipends to young people looking to make a difference in their communities.
Kevin McLaughlin, assistant executive director at USA Hockey, said he is “very intrigued” by the Tennis for America model introduced this year that places recent college tennis players in underserved communities to coach, mentor and tutor youth. He said motivated national governing bodies of sports could help contribute developmentally appropriate coach training and parent education resources.
“My daughter (Gabby who played tennis at Florida Southern College) is in the first cohort of that program and it's been a great experience for her. She feels like she's made a real impact. I'd love to see the program expand to swimming and other sports."
— Mark Hesse, consultant and former USA Swimming manager
Each day during the Summit, attendees can explore a new plank in Project Play’s platform for action and share ideas with the PLAY Sports Coalition on policy actions. Coming Friday: Recognize the Right of Every Child to Play. The Zoom rooms are open to all Summit registrants.