From the Founder, Brian Mazza 9/14
HOLD THE LINE
Cause and effect from coaching has made me a better parent.
The more I coach youth football, the more I realize how parallel coaching and parenting really are, especially with kids under 15.
As a coach, I have a responsibility. Whether someone is paying $5,000 a year to play or playing completely for free, if you are trusted with someone’s child, your job is bigger than teaching the game.
You are a leader. You are a facilitator. You are helping prepare them for life.
And sometimes the best thing we can do for a kid is stop bailing them out.
At the beginning of summer training, I bought both of my boys brand new shin guards.
Within no time, they both lost them.
Now, I could have immediately ordered two more pairs and solved the problem. In fact, what they didn’t know was that I had already bought replacements.
But I wasn’t giving them to them yet.
We had one old pair sitting around from the previous season. They were big, clunky, gross, and smelled like the inside of an ice hockey bag. If you know, you know.
My boys started calling them the “death pair.”
So for the next month, they shared them.
One would practice earlier, finish training, take off the disgusting death pair and literally hand them to his brother for his practice.
Imagine being the second kid.
Warm. Sweaty. Smelly.
Here you go, buddy.
And I let it happen.
Not for one practice. For a month.
Eventually, they had enough.
They sat me down and presented me with a plan for how they were going to take care of the next pair and make sure they didn’t lose them.
That’s when the new shin guards came out.
Some people might think that’s ridiculous. I think it’s one of the better parenting decisions I’ve made.
Because something changed.
Now I hear them the night before training, packing their bags and actually vocalizing their checklist to themselves.
Cleats.
Socks.
Shin guards.
Jersey.
Water.
They are preparing without me standing over them telling them what to do.
Will they lose another pair of shin guards someday?
Probably.
They’re kids.
But now they understand something much more valuable than where their shin guards are.
There is a consequence in real time.
That’s the lesson.
Forgot your shin guards?
Figure it out. Borrow a pair. Ask a teammate. Find a solution. If you can’t, you might not practice today.
Can’t tie your cleats?
Then your laces might be all over the place until you finally decide it’s important enough to learn how to tie them yourself.
Left your dirty jersey in your bag instead of putting it in the laundry?
Well, you might smell at the next practice.
These sound like tiny things.
They are.
That’s exactly why they matter.
Because if we constantly rescue our kids from the tiny consequences, how are they supposed to handle the big consequences later in life?
We have become so obsessed with making sure our kids never struggle that sometimes we remove the exact experiences that teach them how to become capable.
A forgotten pair of shin guards isn’t really about shin guards.
It’s about preparation.
An untied cleat isn’t really about a shoelace.
It’s about independence.
A dirty jersey isn’t really about laundry.
It’s about responsibility.
Cause and effect.
You make a decision. There is an outcome.
You prepare. You benefit.
You don’t prepare. There is a consequence.
And sometimes that consequence smells like an ice hockey bag.
That lesson has to be experienced, not constantly explained.
This is where we have to hold the line.
Holding the line doesn’t mean screaming at kids. It doesn’t mean embarrassing them. It doesn’t mean expecting nine year olds to behave like adults.
It means creating age appropriate expectations, clearly explaining them, making sure they comprehend them, and then having the discipline as adults to follow through.
At the U9/U10 level, I believe in giving kids grace. We give a warning. We explain the expectation again. We make sure they understand the why.
But eventually the warning has to become a consequence.
Otherwise the rule was never actually a rule.
This is where parenting and coaching become difficult.
Because bailing them out feels like love in the moment.
Holding the line can feel uncomfortable.
But our responsibility isn’t always to make today easier for them. Sometimes it’s to make tomorrow easier because of what they learned today.
Let them forget something.
Let them solve the problem.
Let them ask for help.
Let them be uncomfortable.
Let them experience a small consequence.
Then watch what happens the next time.
The bag gets packed the night before.
The shin guards are there.
The jersey makes it into the laundry.
The cleats get tied.
Nobody needed to yell.
The consequence did the coaching.
Our children are going to enter a world that will not constantly remind them, rescue them, organize everything for them, or erase every consequence.
So give them the reps now while the stakes are small.
Our job isn’t to remove every obstacle from their path.
Our job is to give them the tools, standards, confidence, and accountability to navigate those obstacles themselves.
Communicate the expectation.
Make sure they comprehend it.
Give them an opportunity to meet it.
And when they don’t?
Hold the line.
Because eventually we won’t be standing there to bail them out.
And if we’ve done our job correctly, they won’t need us to.
