Youth coaches should get a start-up package when they begin coaching: A whistle, a handbook, a clipboard, maybe a golf shirt and a visor. They should also get a foldable chair — perhaps with a seat belt.

Coaches should be sitting down during youth games and matches.

Media representations of the celebrity showboat coach have inured us to the image of a maniacal mentor pacing the sidelines. But, especially at the youth level, I think we confuse good coaching with doing, in our zeal forgetting the obvious, that the doers are on the field or in the gym. We equate coaching with activity, so as coaches, we stalk around, hollering, often at the most inopportune moments. I’ve seen coaches yell “Swing!” as a baseball hurtles toward a six-year-old. I’ve seen coaches shout a young goalie’s name as a ball is shot at her. I’ve seen coaches flip out at a little wrestler who’s flat on his back, pinned.

Coaches become driven by an excessive focus on the particular game/match at that moment at the expense of the big picture of why kids are in sports, which includes not just learning by doing but also by making mistakes, by being out of position. (I also need to mention that they positively have to lose.)

The stakes of any youth game are always low. We need to remember that.

This isn’t a plea for coaching silence. I’m certainly not always sitting there on the bench, the portrait of placidity. When you’re coaching little kids, you may to have to project your voice to them at times, and there’s no perfect formula for always knowing how much is too much.

Several years ago a friend and I were coaching a nine-year-old soccer team. After one game, the youngish ref chastised us for talking to the kids during the game, pointing out that college and pro soccer coaches calmly sit and watch the action, letting their players play. The ref was kind of smug in his advice, and I stewed a bit, thinking he was missing a fundamental difference between coaching pro players and children. These girls were nine, were on a big field, and were still learning the basics of the game: many didn’t know the difference between a sweeper and a broom. During the game, my friend and I were trying — not by screaming or berating them — to get them into position, to pay attention, to think through the game.

But after my ego retreated to its cave, I realized that the spirit of what the ref was saying was spot on: The kids need to play and learn from experience.

Claudio Reyna, who was hired last year as U.S. Soccer’s Youth Technical Director, is great on this topic. He said of the best youth programs he has seen, “The coaches were guiding the training. They were not controlling. They weren’t on top of the kids. They were not stopping the play for every mistake.” Our prowling is indeed linked to error hunting, and Reyna says, “When you first start coaching young players, you see so many things, because, yes, they make mistakes, and if you see a lot of mistakes you want to correct a lot of mistakes. But these coaches were really letting the kids learn the game.”

This is where sideline demeanor becomes important. Reyna observed that “at the best places the youth coaches are sitting down. And if they get up to give instructions, they sit right back down again. When the game is going on, all the coaches should just sit down. I think if you ask any player at the youth level, if the coach is on the sidelines standing, it brings tension. You can sense it.”

If you have been a sideline stalker, it may take a lot to change your “I yell therefore I coach” mentality. You may not believe your very presence, looming, is making your kids tense, more mistake-prone. But you could just sit down.

However, if you try to back off and be less active, you will need a good, solid sense of self. You will also have to communicate to the parents of your players, because when they see you lounging on the bench with the snack eaters, they may think you’re not doing your “job,” you don’t care, or perhaps you’ve gone nuts.

Trying to adhere more strongly to my sitting-down principles, I was recently on our foldable bench during a soccer game for my Red Sharks, my six- and seven-year-olds, a few weeks ago. My parents, who are a great bunch, saw me settin’ there, and some of them were amused. They went up to my wife, asking, “What on earth is he doing over there?”

I realized I need to do a better job letting them know that, hey, I’m just coaching.

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Scott Warnock

Scott Warnock is a writer and teacher who lives in South Jersey. He is a professor of English at Drexel University, where he is also the Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education in the College of Arts and Sciences. Father of three and husband of one, Scott is president of a local high school education foundation and spent many years coaching youth sports.

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