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By Randy Gardner

Last week was the first weekend of outdoor soccer for all of my teams. The reason that I bring this up is that every year I get more frustrated by the coaching of other teams. What the heck is this world coming to and what are we teaching our kids? I am almost ashamed to call myself a coach and be grouped in with these so-called coaches.

Let me offer a few examples–and as you can tell I am really ticked off. My 5-year-old team is playing a team where the coach did nothing but tell his kids the entire time to do moves, yelling out let me see the Maradona, give me a Maradona, you better give me a Maradona.

I was about ready to lose my mind. Not once did he say pass the ball to your teammate or look for open players or dribble. It was all about these stupid individual moves. Let me tell you something: as a coach, you can practice this stuff all day long but remember there are 10 other players on the field. It is not all about one player.

As these kids get older and they have been trained to do that stuff, ask any coach what they will say to do. You go in hard and what ends up happening is that showoff player gets hurt. It’s bound to happen.

Soccer is a game of passing and looking for the open space. I wanted to tell him that all that stupid fancy crap you’re teaching right now is doing nothing to advance the ball in the game towards the goal. A good player is one who is unselfish and plays the ball one and two touch. I guess I am getting older and I am going to start being vocal to others about this. (Our readers already know where I stand.)

There are so many parents that are being duped by their kids’ coaches into thinking they know what they are doing and they never played a lick of soccer in their life. Take some time and ask some questions. You want your child to be in the best position to succeed. Find him a coach who will develop him long term as an all-around player, because I can tell you that if all he can do is a couple of fancy moves, a good coach at a higher level doesn’t really care.

 Getting Grouchy as I’m Getting Closer to 50

They say when you get close to 50 that you start experiencing emotions that you never have before, like a mid life crisis. I think I am there. I have always been a quite shy kind of personality in relating to controversial issues—now I am not. It feels good to say something and believe in your point. Example: the other night at my son’s basketball practice, a kid from the other gym was in there kicking a volleyball and almost hit several people. I went and took it away from him. His mom came in and he pointed at me and I motioned for her to come over because she was going to get a piece of my mind. Not mean but honest. Watch your child and you didn’t even know what he was doing was my comment. I am turning into a grouchy old man, I had better end this.

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