Technical Foul
raylewis | Jan 31, 2010 | Comments 7
In my fifteen years here in Las Vegas, I have had the opportunity to see a lot of basketball at the high school, middle school and AAU levels and one thing remains fairly consistent and that is the apathetic behavior of us as parents and a community. We put our children in leagues at a very young age in an attempt to ” give them something to do”, and when we realize that they may have the potential to be good, then we elevate them to more competitive leagues and thrust them into the sometimes seedy world of AAU basketball and athletic trainers. As they grow older and become more competitive, then there becomes a clear and defined class system amongst those kids that are considered the areas elite. the moderately talented and those that really cant play at all. Amongst the group that is considered to be the elite athletes, the parents and the community become insanely divisive. Many athletes who have been friends for years and have either played with or against each other, are now pitted against each other both athletically and socially by overzealous parents who live vicariously through their children.
Has anyone in Las Vegas realized that we traditionally have had a difficult time competing against teams on a national level, especially teams in California and Texas. The inability to compete against these states and regions has far less to do with a lack of talent but more to do with our inability to work together for the betterment of the local athlete. We as a community have pitifully deferred our ability to evaluate and rate our athletes to the so called experts in California and elsewhere, which has led to the under exposed nature of LasVegas basketball. Instead of supporting the best of the best and assisting those that want to attain that same level, we as a community engage in behavior to tear down our very own kids. when we have a vehicle that can be used to give our athletes exposure, we tear that down to, for fear someone may become rich or more popular than we.
I have decided to become a part of the solution rather than dwell amongst those that are the problem. I decided that I was going to do everything I could to help give our athletes the exposure they desperately need, by joining the staff at premierball.com and helping to cover the valleys sports scene. I leave you with this thought, when we buy that dream car that we’ve always wanted, we finance it for 48-60 months in the hopes that we will own the vehicle and the equity that it will hold. The same premise applies to any parent whose child has worked to become the best since they were a small child. When he or she reaches high school, they now have the same 48 months that applies to the purchase of the vehicle. We can chose to make payments on our child’s development which could and most likely lead to a free education worth 120-160,000 dollars, or we can do what we as a community usually do which is to do everything we can to make those payments difficult to make until that athletes future is repossessed.
Come on people, lets do everything we can to support each other and our athletes, I challenge each and everyone of you as I’ve done myself.
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I applaud you for this article! So many times I hear parents in the background talking badly about other players. How are our children suppose to learn about good sportsmanship and being a team player if they hear their own parents or other parents talk badly about another player. We need to encourage our children after every game, after every practice, whether they can play or not, “good job!” or “good game!” especially the younger ones. We as parents should be more aware in using constructive critcism with our own children and not demean or disrepectfully discourage them, no matter what age.
Wow, that was very profound, i never thought about it that deeply,i just assumed that the person being negative was a loser,but that article is 100 percent correct, and sometimes we should look at the man in the mirror before being critical of others,well done!
Great story and very accurate. Club ball brings a lot of positives to our children. The learn the game at a progressed rate. They play against great competition and play in tournaments in town and out of town. However, the dedication required leads to the attraction of many overzealous parents who do not understand the importance sportsmanship, teamwork and respect. Too often I have seen parents of one club team getting personal over a rival club team. Too often I have seen parents overly hard on their children stressing winning at all costs. I have seen parents cheat by letting their kids play in division below their age group and lie about their son’s age.
What does it teach our children? That winning at all cost is the most important thing. It also teaches disrespect for you team mates and a sense of entitlement for the better players. The players start thinking they are stars and they act like it. Even though they may just be 10years old and are a long ways from being a star.
Club ball is has a lot of great benefits, but please parents, our glory days are over. Please do not try to relive them through our children. And more importantly for those parents who teach win at all costs…..It will be real sad if your child’s glory days occurred when he was 10 years old.
Club ball in itself is good, however it has gotten extremely watered down with coaches who aren’t developing players and teacheing them poor habits. It’s definitely not all of the club programs, but all it takes is a few bad apples to ruin the bunch.
Colt: My problem isn’t with the wannabe coaches who take kids and throw them out to play. You will always find club teams who talent range from “excellent” to “what are you doing out there”. My problem are the serious programs who don’t let the kids be kids and live vicariously through them. Championships of NJB or AAU tournaments do not mean anything. What is important is the development that they can move on to jr. high, high school,and hopefully college basketball.
Then you have issues with coaches living vicariously through one or two of thier players specifically, thus causing “coach hogging” and selfishness and not playing ALL their players to their full potential, i.e. putting older kids on their team to play younger teams in tournaments, SELFISH ! ! ! Can you tell I’m just a bit disgusted? As parents, we will have to change coaches in the best interest of our child and in fairness to the other talented players who are looked over on our childs team.
@Prophet Very good points that seem to be unspoken issues-