Pride of the Pitch Blog
Friday, October 10, 2008
Teaching Youth The Values of Soccer and Life
What is the best way to learn values such as honesty, respect, courage, and resilience? In my view the best place is the pitch, or to us Yankees the soccer field. The wonderful game of soccer acts as a great mechanism to help promote healthy lifestyles and long lasting virtues that carry over into all facets of life.
Take for example the first character trait: honesty. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary honesty is referred to as: fairness and straightforwardness of conduct. So how is this taught on the pitch or through the game of soccer? In many ways soccer is a border less game in that the ball can go forward, back, side to side, up in the air, or practically wherever and at any time. However, there are those little white lines that keep us from going miles in any one direction. While coaching I have found that simply telling players about the rules and how important it is to be honest leads to me being able to relax and let the kids play. Rather than sitting on the sideline and barking commands such as, "Out, red ball." I have been able to watch and let the children govern themselves. A simple question has taken away my once constant ordering. What is it? Easy, "Who's ball is it?" This simple question allows players to not only think for themselves but in turn 99 times out of 100 the children call the play correctly. Thus they have learned a valuable lesson of the importance of honesty.
Perhaps the greatest virtue learned on the pitch and translated into life is the will to keep on trying, or better known as resiliency. I have found that nothing is given in life or soccer and that you must put in the hours of hard work to reach your goals. Of course there are those who are more athletic or in life the ones who have all the money. But I have still found out it comes down to hard work and resiliency for those that truly make it. In baseball you are great if you record a hit 9 times out of ten. In soccer the odds are generally one out of ten and you are great. Plus that is the final result, lets not forget you must trap the ball, dribble past people, try to pass with others often 10 or more yards away, and then you finally have the chance to shoot! Then throw on top of all that bumpy fields, poor weather conditions, defenders pulling at you, and doing this all with your feet! You must learn to fail over and over and over when playing soccer and that ultimately transitions over into your regular day to day life.
So my hope is that you take every opportunity whether as a player to learn about these great virtues and apply them to life, or as a coach how to instill these virtues into your players. At Pride of the Pitch our goal is not only to teach soccer, but ultimately how to teach youth the values that can be gained from soccer.