In Maddux's game on Sunday, an interesting situation came up that, of course, made me think of larger implications in today's youth sports world.

 

Let me set the stage...

 

The opposing team had a really excellent point guard who scored the majority of their points, and they were correctly aggressive in getting him the ball as often as possible. Because of the playing time rules in PVYBL nobody can play the full game, so their offense was extremely fast-paced to try to get him as many buckets as possible while he was on the court. Smart. Every time they got the ball, they would run it up the court, get into their offensive set quickly, and clearly were trying to maximize their number of offensive possessions.

 

In the 2nd quarter, the opposing team's line-up had their 2 best players on the bench and they didn't really appear to have a pure scorer (like their starting point guard) in the game, so their offensive strategy changed immediately from pushing the pace to intentionally not forcing the action by slowing the game down to burn minutes off the clock. They walked the ball up the court and then were passive on offensive just trying to pass around the perimeter far outside the 3-point line; they were content to eat minutes off the clock.

 

(By the way, with kids in 6th grade, I think it's not only acceptable but developmentally appropriate to start learning and optimizing the strategy part of the competition like clock management, finding size matchups to exploit, etc. Some of the tactics I saw from certain softball coaches last year to try to run out the game "clock" in order to secure a win in the EIGHT-YEAR-OLD DIVISION was utterly embarrassing and taught the girls nothing in the process.  But with middle schoolers it is actually developmentally inappropriate to not be teaching that part of competition.)

 

Anyway, while the other team was attempting to slow the game down with more passive offensive possessions, my players did not realize what was happening and simply started playing passive defense, subconsciously matching their pace and allowing them to dictate the flow the of the game and execute their strategy.

 

I played varsity basketball in High School at a high level (you might remember from previous blogs that I got dunked on by multiple future NBA players my junior and senior years in Washington, DC), so while I recognized immediately what was happening on the court, I didn't say a word to my team to see if they could figure it out on their own.

 

They didn't.

 

So halfway through the quarter I called timed and we talked about it.

 

"Boys, what's different about their offense this quarter?"

 

After a few seconds of thinking, one player said, "It's a lot slower. Seems like they're not even trying to score."

 

"Correct," I responded. "Now why do you think that is?"

 

Again, a few seconds of silence.

 

"Because their best player is on the bench and they want to kill time until he can come back in."

 

"Yes! So if they want to slow the game down, what does that mean we should be doing in response?"

 

"We should be pressuring them and trying to speed the game up."

 

DING DING DING!

 

They figured it out, we went back out there, played much more aggressive defense, got some turnovers and changed the pace of the quarter back into our favor.

 

Now here's the interesting takeaway that matters to the current state of youth sports, from the 35,000-foot perspective:

 

Kids these days are often so over-coached from a young age, usually by well-meaning and technically qualified and knowledgeable coaches, that they are never given the opportunity to figure things out on their own.

 

Despite having more mechanical understanding of skills than ever before, kids in 2026 often understand less about their sport on a deeper level because coaches are telling them what to do every second of every game.

 

Yes, if I immediately called timeout the instant I saw what the other team was doing, we would have increased our chances of winning the game. But had I done that, I would have robbed my players of the opportunity to learn on their own, and I decided it was better for their development as athletes to potentially "fail" and then learn from that failure, rather than just have me tell them what to do.

 

 

This is why for the last 15 minutes of every flag football practice in the Fall, myco-coaches and I just let the kids play a pick-up game on their own. No plays coming from the sidelines, nobody hollering instructions during the play, no coaching after the play. Just letting them have fun playing and "figuring it out" on their own.

 

At Summer Baseball Camp twenty years ago I started seeing the writing on the wall with the downside of overcoaching and we invented what we called a "Dominican Game" on the older field with the kids getting to make their own teams and lineups, calling balls and strikes on their own, and playing the game completely free from coach intervention (besides maintaining order and safety standards when needed).

 

Baseball is a much different game than basketball, football, soccer, and lacrosse in that many of the decisions are made ahead of time: nobody on, nobody out and a groundball is hit to short...there's only one correct place to throw the ball...but it's still important to give gives the freedom to experiment, learn on their own, and take ownership of their experience.

 

In those other sports with constant movement and flow, it's absolutely essential to give "free play" opportunities to kids so they gain a deeper understanding of their sport through their own unstructured trial and error experience.

 

Kids need coaching but they don't need to be micro-managed.  I would love to see the coaching pendulum swing back a little bit towards a middle ground that finds a better balance between giving valuable instruction and orchestrating their every move and decision.

 

Yes, at the younger ages kids do need more guidance on where the play is and what to do, and we shouldn't feel shy as coaches to help them.

 

But we shouldn't do everything for them.  I know it's counterintuitive that good coaching actually means doing no coaching sometimes, but it's true.

 

Even in Little League, where there are fewer variables than other sports (the play is obvious before the ball is hit and 95% of pitches thrown are fastballs), there are opportunities to let kids learn on their own.

 

For example, on our 10U All Star team last year my co-coach and I let our Catchers and Pitchers call their own pitches during games. Did they make some mistakes? OF COURSE!  Could we have called every pitch for them to maximize our edge as a team?   We were both professional pitchers, OF COURSE we would have made better decisions than a group of 10 year olds.  But by allowing them the freedom to try to figure it out on their own through trial and error, we let them start truly understanding the game on a deeper level and not simply be robots following orders. That meant potentially handicapping ourselves on the scoreboard in the short-term, but giving them experience to make them better ballplayers in the long-term.

 

And in the other sports kids play with constant movement and unlimited choices at all times (shoot/dribble/pass/screen/cut/etc) letting them learn the game through free play is massively important to their development.

 

Sloane's team of 3rd graders needs more direction than Maddux's team of 6th graders (we still see kids at her age forget which hoop their shooting on sometimes!) but my coach and I on that team still give them 10 minutes at the end of practice to just play without our input or direction. Is it chaotic? Of course! Could we both be telling them non-stop what to do? Of course! But we're letting them, in the midst of the all the mistakes, start to figure it out on their own.

 

Do tee ballers need more help figuring out where the play is than kids in Minors? Absolutely! And do kids in Minors need more help in certain situations than kids in Majors? You bet! But as kids start to understand the basics, let's give them more freedom to solve the game on their own.

 

If we start doing that when they're in 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grade, then when they get to be 5th, 6th, and 7th graders and their opponents start implementing a strategy that's best for their team, our kids will be better prepared to recognize that and start implementing a counter-strategy that's best for our team.

 

So, while we are all passionate parents/coaches who want to help our kids learn their sport, sometimes it's just better for them if we do less.