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About five years ago I was in my mid-seventies, commuting between Washington DC and my home in California. I worked a consulting job and was putting the final touches on what I thought would be my eighth book titled Kid Sense: Advice to Coaches and Parents from Kids in Sport.
I was in a reflective mood. My daughter, Alison, a doctor, had been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour. She and her husband, Keith, a former Stanford University basketball player like myself, had one child — my then seven-year-old grandson Spencer.
My thoughts were with Alison, as they always were during that terrible, anxious time, but they were also on the book I was finishing. Almost all the books and essays I had previously written had, at their centre, the same message: sports can — and should — provide kids with much more than trophies on the shelf. For example, in Court Sense: The Invisible Edge in Basketball and Life (1999) I argued that if a child could learn to think on the basketball court, she could transfer the same thinking skills to the classroom, to relationships, career choices, and other decision making.
However, years of dealing with pushy parents and coaches who believe sports and games are more about winning than developing good citizens, made me aware I hadn’t made much of an impact. Therefore why not try something else? Why not give children the opportunity to speak up about what sports and games mean to them and what they wish to gain from participation? That was the stimulus for writing Kid Sense.
However, while on that five-hour flight, burdened by my daughter’s illness, it occurred to me that the proposed Kid Sense was devoid of integrity. The way I had conceptualised the book, it was my voice that would be speaking, not of children themselves. Granted, it was a voice that had more than 50 years’ experience of working with kids in sports; but still, it was like the difference between margarine and butter.
Fast-forward to 2015. At an age when most of my contemporaries are enjoying the fruits of their labour in retirement, I have just returned from a fortnight’s tour of India and Dubai, where I met with school leaders who were very interested in what children have to say about sports and life. And I also interacted with hundreds of children eager to talk. You can’t imagine the excitement I felt — it was almost like being 20 again!
So, what does it take to get an octogenarian like me excited enough to think, “Yes, I do want to keep working!” instead of, “Where’s my rocking chair”? Well, on my recent trip to India, it took two stimulating experiences.
First was my meetings with school leaders who expressed how excited they were about the idea of using a sports and fitness programme to empower children to lead other children. Maybe you’ll wonder why this was so unusual for me.
The answer is that I have been playing sport for almost my entire life. When I first started, there wasn’t much in the way of organised sports for children and youth. If you wanted to play baseball, you found a kid who had a ball, another who had a bat, and (if you were lucky) a few who had gloves. Everyone enforced the rules, everyone called their own fouls, everyone got to play.
Then adults started getting involved. Suddenly, they were making the rules, they were calling the fouls, and they were deciding who got to play (and for how long, and in what position). Along with this “organisation” came a development that — in my view — ruined most youth sports and games. That “development” was parents and coaches — and children — for whom winning became more important than playing. Winning took precedence over having fun, making friendships, and learning how to transfer lessons learned in sports to life.
I witnessed this transformation which overcame games and sports as I moved beyond my college sports career to become a coach, referee, sports workshop leader, consultant, and author. I gathered statistics of how many kids were dropping out of sports because it wasn’t fun anymore, and I witnessed rising obesity levels among youth in the US. You can see why India was a breath of fresh air!
The second thing that excited me was the questions thrown at me by children in Madurai and Chennai. They asked questions about how to control their aggression appropriately, how to balance academics and sports and why I chose a non-sports career (my answer: in my day, athletes were not paid anywhere near what they are now; even the ‘greats’ had jobs in the off-season). I loved these questions because they showed these kids were doing some serious thinking and making some right connections between sports and life. They were way ahead of children back home on the learning curve.
I believe if we’re going to save sport from itself, we need more children and educators like I met in India. We need people who believe in all the positive qualities that sports, games and fitness have to offer and believe in the importance of learning and practising them. I’m not sure if the US is ready for a revolution like this. But I think India is, which is very exciting and encouraging.
(Dr. George A. Selleck is a San Francisco-based advisor to EduSports, Bangalore)