We all dream of being the match-winner in a world cup final, but be careful of guiding your child by such dreams alone.
By Simon Lewis
WAITING FOR THE WORLD CUP FINAL
Remember that you are constantly building yourself up for YOUR World Cup Final. When a match is ‘dead’ you have a chance to experiment and to try things and to test yourself or to build your confidence of dribbling the ball past good defenders in order to create genuine goal-scoring opportunities. Sadly, too many teams keep taking potshots at goal when they find themselves in such a frustrating situation, and the ball flies into the crowd and the time keeps a-ticking by and they lose more opportunities for valuable match practice.
What can you do in such a situation? Make more positive attempts to break down the defence and ‘earn’ a goal, rather than stumbling upon a lucky strike. This applies equally if you are way ahead of your opponents and victory is assured: use those 20 minutes to practice more adventurous tactical goal-scoring opportunities or to try out movements or combinations you have practiced on the training field but have not yet had the confidence to try in a match situation. A lucky goal / try / wicket has no long-term benefits to you if the match is already won or lost.
MATCH SITUATIONS
If you work hard as a team and create a genuine goal-scoring opportunity and then score a good, honest goal (ie not a fluke or a potshot) then it’s a motivator for you for your next match or matches. Every extra goal / wicket / try boosts your morale, gives one of your players an extra notch in the season’s ratings, pushes one of your members up the list of goal / try scorers or wicket-takers and makes a slight dent in your goals / tries for-and-against ratio, which just might save you from relegation or ensure that you finish one spot higher up the rankings at season’s end.
Most importantly, it gives you an opportunity to totally enjoy your sport, even though you are losing. Ultimately, your sporting career (or Tiger Woods’ or Roger Federer’s) is not about winning or losing… it’s about playing and enjoying. Never lose a chance to enjoy playing your sport just because you are winning too easily or losing too badly.
TELL THEM ABOUT IT
If your child is depressed about losing a match badly, tell them not to worry because tomorrow the sun will rise again. And there’s always a more important match in the future. Even if they are playing in the actual World Cup final or at The Masters or Wimbledon or a Test at Lord’s… remember that unless they are about to retire, there will be another World Cup Final or Wimbledon. They might not have the opportunity to play in that event, but there WILL be another big match. Our society places a higher premium on winning than on developing yourself into being a long-term winner. For the individual, winning is secondary: what really counts is continually developing yourself into a better player in the aim of being able to win the next big match and to ultimately achieve in YOUR World Cup Final (not necessarily THE World Cup Final). Winning for the sake of winning serves only parents who are thinking about their own needs or expectations, or marketing people or people with a vested financial interest in a result. It is essential to have a winning attitude, approach and desire, but it’s more important to lose today playing in a way that is in some way helping to prepare you to win a bigger match tomorrow by playing in a more complete way.
THE TIGER WOODS MOMENT
You don’t have to be Tiger Woods to have and enjoy Tiger Woods moments, although so many of us embark on sporting or artistic careers because of a flash of inspiration we get from seeing someone having a GREAT moment. The opportunities awaiting you in life are vast, but to achieve in any of them takes mammoth dedication and commitment to a select few personal targets.
To get to the final round of The Masters golf event take years and years and years of grinding effort, sacrifice, dedication and luck. It’s a full-time job, and one that doesn’t pay until you’ve put in a good few years of solid work at it – and even then you have no guarantee that your efforts will reward you financially any better than if you’d stuck at your job as an office clerk. To get to The Masters (or any sporting equivalent) you will be required to sacrifice countless other life opportunities, and for anyone embarking on serious sporting goals you must realize that your chances of success are so small that any effort you put in could well be with no financial or even emotional reward in the long run. Obviously sporting pursuits carry huge benefits for the body and mind, and if you have a love for the sport you are playing then it’s an extension of a hobby, in which case all your effort and dedication is not wasted in the even that your final goal is not met. If a child is forced into a pursuit they are not passionate about then you risk stealing and wasting a great deal of their life from them with little reward for them. A child’e time, fun, laughter and potential is too precious to waste on your own personal dreams and unfulfilled ambitions.
Many parents subtly (sometimes not so subtly) motivate their children by encouraging them with comments such as ‘I can see you winning The Masters one day, son,’ or maybe something like ‘It would give me the greatest happiness if you played for the Springboks one day, my boy’. Not so much of this pressure is passed onto girls, although equally they are seldom provided with any access to sporting fun at any stage of their life. The problem with such subtle encouragement is that children will often throw themselves wholeheartedly into a sporting pursuit in order to please or gain the love and acceptance of a parent. Children might need such inspiration to get them away from the TV and to provide them with some form of focus in life (and with the balance right sport is a wonderful diversion and pursuit for them), so subtle motivation like that is not, in itself, a bad thing, but as the Parent Manager you MUST be aware of the impact of your words and seek to effect damage limitation.
Your job is done when, on your death bed, you can simply save ‘I love you son / daughter’… rather than having to apologise for leading them along the wrong life path. A life is too precious to waste.
HOW TO LIMIT THE DAMAGE
It’s irresponsible to put any form of pressure on a child that might lead them to believe that they will gain your acceptance by being successful or achieving and pleasing you. Equally, it’s emotionally criminal not to follow up with heavy positive affirmations at a later date that will fill your child’s needs regarding that affirmation that they were seeking. If that is they case then they will have thrown themselves into a sporting pursuit and could get sucked deep into it with no chance of turning back before it’s too late and they’ve committed themselves to it too much. You need to provide an escape hatch for your child. Don’t leave them heads down trying to prove themselves on the sports field JUST to please you: tell them (repeatedly) they are your great pride and joy (in whatever way you normally communicate to them – they’ll know you mean it if you use your words or actions and not the direct words I use here) and express your love to them. If you can do this for them then your child will reach their goal of gaining your love and acceptance and will be in a position that they can, on their own, re-evaluate their sporting goals. Achieve that and you will both be proud of each other.
© SIMON LEWIS • The Ball magazine
simon@theball.co.za • www.theball.co.za
