Author: Dallin Rahlf

School clubs are an extremely underrated part of getting your education. Some of the best friends and best experiences you may have at the high school level await through the doors that lead to an awesome school club.

What do you do if you don’t have a school club in something you’re interested in? The reason your school doesn’t have this particular club is because it likely:

• Didn’t know it was something students had an interest in.
• Didn’t have the necessary amount of students to create the club.
• Didn’t have anyone available to run the club.

Don’t let these reasons keep you from creating a club. There’s dozens of reasons on why you should, but let’s break it down into a few!

It’s GR8 for your college application

Are you wanting to stand out on your future college application? Starting a school club is a massive plus that add to your character and application. Universities want to bring in students that are ambitious, passionate, and excited about bringing change. There’s nothing a university loves more than being able to brag about one of their students doing incredible things. Starting a club will show anyone reading your application that are ready to rock and bring prestige to the university. Those are the things that really stand out on an application.

It’ll let you pursue something you care about

There’s nothing worse than wanting to do something and not really having the ability to… do that. Why sit around and mope about why you can’t lead heartfelt debates or speak German with other likeminded folk when you can start up the club yourself? Having a club that caters to what you and other ambitious students find important in the world will be an excellent avenue for further exploring your interest towards it.

Starting up the club will not only be great for you, but it’ll be great for others as well. There are dozens of students or kids in your community who feel strongly about something the way you do, but they’re held back from really diving into their interests simply because there isn’t a place to do it. Be the wonderful hero that starts the club!

Great for meeting new friends

When you start or take part of a club, you meet other people who have similar interests to you. It’s pretty easy to make friends with people who like the same things that you do. Your future best friend might be waiting for you in one of these clubs–even cooler if you’re the one who started it! I’m not sure who wouldn’t want to be your friend at that point.

Raise awareness about something important

Let’s face it, there’s a lot of great things going on in this world and a lot of not so great things going on in this world. Between the 10,000 different things for the average persona to focus on, it’s hard to focus on anything at all! You working on something and raising awareness will help your friends, family, school and community know that it’s an important topic worth researching. If you do it well, you’ll add people to your cause and start creating some real and wonderful change in the world.

“Mom? Dad? I’ve got to do this fundraiser for my baseball team.” This might be one of your least favorite sentences in the world. Here you are, glad to be home from work, and your wonderful child has given you some more work to do in the subtle form of a fundraiser. If you and your child are lucky, the program decided to go with Flex Fundraising, which makes fundraising easier than before. If you’re unlucky and you’re stuck selling those chocolate bars for $5 a piece… we pray for you and your family. Maybe you can call up the program and see if they can switch to Flex Fundraising. Either way, the tips below will help you out.

Be Encouraging

We’re sure you know this, but kids feed off the emotion, language, and attitude of their parents. If you have a bad attitude about the whole thing, your kids are going to as well. It’s not fair that, yes, YOU and I have to be the adults in our kids’ lives, but that’s just how the show goes, I suppose. The best thing you can do that will make life easier for the whole gang involved in little Jack’s fundraiser is keeping a good attitude about it. It’ll make it go by quicker by you being more successful, and it can be fun if you allow it to be!

Use your own network

There ain’t nothing wrong with getting your friends, family, neighbors, and coworkers involved in your kid’s fundraiser. It’s somewhat of an unwritten rule in being friends with someone that, at some point, either party might ask for some charity. It’s uncomfortable to ask friends for help, especially regarding things involving cash, but I bet most of your pals would be happy to throw a couple bucks your way for the fundraiser. They will probably ask you to contribute to their kid’s fundraiser next soccer season. It’s the circle of life, essentially.

Set them up with rewards

You know what makes work fun? Being rewarded along the way. Your child might already be a little nervous about the whole thing, so giving them breaks from their hard work will help keep their spirits high. You can make them one of their favorite meals after an hour of work, or play one of their favorite games with them–anything that can help them feel positive about the experience will be incredible for them in the long run.

Help them to work smarter

The days of going door to door or standing outside of Smith’s or Kroger’s is long gone. We live in a modern age, and that age means smartphones and sharing. One of the best things you can do for your kid is to help them share their fundraiser online. Do they have an Instagram following? Put that bad boy to use by sharing the fundraiser there. Using your networks, going online and engaging with people directly will help your child learn some essential life skills. Win-win.

Appeal to the audience

You know how that one commercial made you laugh super hard or that one sad video about the puppies made you feel some emotions you haven’t felt in years? That’s because the video was able to tailor their message to YOU personally. You and your kid can do this in the fundraiser at all. Know your audience and who would be likely to donate their time and/or money to your kid’s program. Doing a tiny but of thinking and research can save you hours of work!

You need some awesome ideas to make your fundraising efforts a little more interesting to you and your team? Nothing makes working for something better than knowing you’ll be rewarded along the way. Kids and adults alike need to be able to take a break and enjoy some good times while they work towards something. If you didn’t catch the first blog post on fun incentives to do while going on with your fundraiser, be sure to check it out.

What are some other incentives you can do for your team besides some recess games instead of practice?

Throw a house party

There’s something wildly fun about being invited to your coaches house for a party. Most of your students or kids on your team will find you, naturally, a little intimidating. It’s good to have a sense of respect coming from the team, and I’m sure there are moments when being a little scary can be a good time, but I do not think you will regret showing your fun side as a coach. It’s always good to show your team that you are, indeed, human and that you can, indeed, destroy them in a game of HORSE or Mario Kart.

Throwing a house party can be as simple or as complicated as you like. For coaches of larger teams like football, this might be a little harder to execute. Getting 100+ kids in your house is a nightmare–let’s face it. You might need to see if you can work any favors of schmooze your way into renting out a larger hall or recreation area for everybody. It’s a little more work, but it can certainly be done!

What to do at a house party

The great thing about hosting a party is that it can be exactly what you want it to be. Long, short, super involved, super laid back; you are in the driver’s seat and you get to determine how it goes down.

If you’re looking for something more relaxed with less effort but still a larger payoff, order lots of mediocre pizza (which is still good pizza… like Little Caesar’s) and put on a movie. The movie can be one of the sports classics like The Sandlot or Remember the Titans. You can wrap up the movie with an inspirational speech about how coming together as a team and not making enemies with each other will make them better as individual players and better as a team.

If you want to do something a little more involved, bust out some party games! Have one of your teammates bring over their Nintendo Switch and have everybody play Mario Kart. You could have a tournament and even have the coaches all go against each other! Your team will be ecstatic to watch their coaches battle it out in Super Smash or Mario Kart.

Besides video games, do some party games! You can break them up into smaller groups and do games that easier done or have everybody play a game together. Got a dog? Tape balloons to everyones ankles and see who can be the last man standing with the dog trying to bite all the balloons. Play some charades or do a trivia night (and let the nerdier athletes shine) or do a wiffle ball home run derby in the backyard. There’s hundreds of things you can do!

Why throw a house party??

You might be feeling uncomfortable with this whole idea. I get it–there’s a slight feeling of vulnerability when you show more of your personality. It’s probably why coworkers never become great friends! We get this silly idea that we need to close off our personalities in school, work, sports, etc. It’s awfully hard to connect with anyone this way, and connection is what makes teams incredible.

Do you think Klay Thompson and Steph Curry avoid each other at all costs outside of the basketball court? Do you think Tom Brady rejects all of his teammates from his home and doesn’t do anything fun with them on the side? Of course not. Finding these moments outside of practice and games and watching film allows you and your team to bond, which will help them feel more confident, ready to work, excited to be there, and feel more competitive.

So you’ve found yourself in the middle of another fundraiser, huh? I certainly hope that you’re taking full advantage of the incredible Flex Fundraising team–they’ll bring you your highest return in fundraising while doing the least amount of work. Fundraising doesn’t need to be sucky, and with Flex Fundraising, they’ll make you and your team excited to be doing a fundraiser. I know, that sounds weird, but trust me. They’re your guys.

While doing your fundraiser, you’re gonna want to have some incentives to increase the competitive nature for your team while also rewarding them for their hard work. An excellent time to do this incentive would be during practice. I know, I know, practice is a sacred time to prepare for the next game, but believe me when I tell you that there is absolutely nothing wrong with having a straight up fun practice that has little to nothing to do with the sport.

Below will be some tips on what you can do for your team. Regardless of age or the sport itself, you’ll be surprised when you find that even high school seniors get absolutely stoked out of their minds for a water balloon fight or capture the flag. Do not doubt these awesome team-bonding activities!

Awesome “recess” like games to reward your kids with

Dodgeball, capture the flag, freeze tag, water balloon fight, kickball

• Dodgeball. This one should be pretty easy to set up and execute–talk with your buddy who runs the gym and see if you can borrow some dodgeballs. This doesn’t need to take place in the gym! Take advantage of whatever your practice field is, set up some loose boundaries, and get a tournament going. Athletes are always motivated by competition, so let the winners get something cool at the end!
• Capture the flag. This might honestly be one of the most underrated games to do with a group of athletes. I’m sure you remember the rules: have each side hide a flag, draw a halfway point where you can be captured if you cross into enemy territory, bring the flag back to your side, etc. You can make up whatever other rules you see fit! I’ve seen people play this where they take pantyhose material, put flour in the end, and swing or throw it at people to get them out instead of tagging. You can have both sides hide the flag in plain sight where both teams know where it is, or you can go the classic route and have them hide it. This WILL lead to hurt feelings, but it’s all part of the game!
• Water balloon fight. This one is a perfect reward for a hot summer day. Imagine the look on your team’s face when, instead of gearing up for another hot day of brutal practice, you reveal some coolers filled with colored balloons. Put some clothing-friendly dyes in the water and split people into however many teams. From here, you can go the capture the flag route or play any sport, with the added element of water balloons! Nowadays they’ve invented some little tools that make filling up hundreds of water balloons much easier, so it won’t be that annoying to set up…
• Kickball. Kickball is such an easy and good time. You can get most if not all of the equipment needed from the gym or baseball shed. You can split the teams up easily and have the team just go nuts. It’s pretty self explanatory, naturally. If you want to add some craziness to it, check out what some people have been doing in the summer to make kickball a little more fun! This takes a little more effort to put together and may be tougher for your larger teams (football, namely) but will be an awesome and memorable time for your team!

We’re back with another three tips on how to improve your team’s excitement for the game! If you didn’t read part 1, you’ll certainly want to check that out as well as this one!

1. Mix it up

You see Top Gun yet? For real, go see it. The reason I bring it up is because good ol’ Tom Cruise takes crucial time that could be spent teaching his students about the mission and instead has them play football. This allows them to overcome some of their harsh feelings towards another, gives them a break, and allows them to destress with the intense mission ahead.

Do this with your team. Instead of playing soccer, bring a frisbee or flag football gear. Have them play capture the flag. Give them a different thing to do and watch them work together in a different way than they have been. Shaking things up will guarantee that your team will come closer and help them enjoy coming to practice.

2. Make it fun

Soccer (and all youth sports) should be fun. I believe that most coaches are tempted to make practice intense with high focus on drills and results. Coaches should instead focus on providing their team with fun and memorable moments to encourage kids to keep playing. I had a difficult time myself getting into soccer because I had a terrible coach that honestly treated everyone like we were professional athletes. At the tender age of 5, this made my first experiences with the sport pretty awful. I never did get over it. Don’t let that happen to your kids!

Don’t be afraid to get in there yourself! It’s always exciting to see the coaches get involved with the practice and play against the kids. It makes practice fun and engaging and gives you the opportunity to be fun and a special part of the team. I had way too many youth coaches that took themselves, the team, practicing and winning way too seriously. If they had made things fun for us, I would have had a much better time on that particular team.

3. Add in new elements to the game

This is where you have there chance to be creative. Why play a simple soccer game when you can totally change up the game and make it more exciting? I’m not sure if you’ve every read Calvin and Hobbes–Calving and his tiger buddy Hobbes play a game called Calvin Ball, in which the game changes as it’s being played. This is something you can easily do during a game to make it fun and challenging. Here are some ideas on how you can change up the game for 1-2 minutes at a time

• Throw in another soccer ball, requiring teams to play both offense and defense at the same time
• Have them run backwards only, or crab walk, or bear crawl
• Have teams switch goals
• Have them only kick with their left foot
• No goalies

There are some awesome games to do with soccer as well. You can do lightning/knock out, HORSE, or you can have them play traditional games while playing soccer, like freeze tag or capture the flag. Doing this will give the kids a different way to bond and enjoy the game, and going back to basics will help make soccer “easier” than it was with the added challenge!

What’s one of the absolute worst things you can do as a coach of a youth soccer team? Make practice dreadful. These kids aren’t training to be fighter pilots (Top Gun shoutout, seriously go see it) or practicing for the World Cup–they’re kids! They signed up to play soccer and that’s what they want to do most. Practices can either be an awesome experience or the worst part of their day. Below, we’ll give you a few tips on how to make soccer practice fun.

Following these tips will help you:

• Create team bonding
• Help the kids have fun with the sport
• Introduce the “basics” without making practice boring
• Make your life easier as a coach

1. Talk less, play more

One of the best things you can do to have an immediate impact on the team is to begin practice by playing the game. Too often coaches believe they have to make a big speech or create a slow pace of practice with the same drill or warmup every single day. Why not allow your kids the opportunity to play the sport they signed up for? Get them into team, get the ball out, and start playing.

Doing so will teach the kids the game better than most drills will. At the end of the day, the kids and their parents want at least one thing: they want their kid to play soccer. Kids show up to practice excited about playing the game, not doing a passing drill. While these can and should take place, make an emphasis on beginning practice with a game and letting the kids enjoy being there.

2. Make it competitive

Kids naturally tend to love competition. The thrill of the fight, the prospect of winning, the chance to prove themselves on the field of battle–this is what makes kids the wildly competitive machines that they are. When you put kids on the soccer field, be sure to make every drill and game competitive. Give kids the chance to win and give them something exciting to work towards. Having meaningless games or exercises where nothing matters will make everything boring. Do everything you can to make every aspect of the day exciting and competitive. You kids will work harder with it.

3. Don’t go too crazy with drills

I’m sure you’re getting a slight tone with this blog, but the message shall remain consistent: more playing, less drills. When I think back on my time in sports (having played baseball, soccer, football, basketball, lacrosse, swimming and diving), my least favorite sport of every single one was doing drills, and my favorite part of each and every one was scrimmaging/playing. Which one was better for me? The games. Being put into game like situations was important to me as a kid. It allowed me to simply play the game and not overthink how I look doing a drill.

However, drills are still important. They can teach kids certain techniques, it can help improve on the basics, and they can still be fun. Do try to make them fun and rewarding. Help them realize WHY they’re doing this particular drill and how it will impact their play. Too often kids are thrown into drills with no explanation and they end up feeling stupid, which is a dangerous feeling when playing a sport.

Why does the team getting along matter?

I was once on a baseball team in Colorado. I was 9 years old playing for a solid team that had been playing together for a long time. I was new to the team seeing that I had moved to Colorado from Ohio. I was never a fantastic ball player, but I could certainly hold my own. That was until I went on a team that kinda shunned me as far as being teammates go. I was the new kid and for some reason that meant that most of the teammates weren’t that cool to me. That was tough as a kid, and it’s tough on any team. That affected my game play. I was nervous at bat. I made bad mistakes because I overthought things. I certainly wasn’t having much fun. It affected my love for the game that was tough to get over.

Having a solid team comradery is crucial for every individual player and coach. It helps players relax and have fun. Being able to do this will make your team perform better and will encourage kids to stay in the sport longer. How can you help create a welcoming and fun environment for everyone?

Make practice fun

Unless you’re coaching the NFL or most college sports teams, many of your players will not be the best athletes you’ve ever seen. They might be playing because they have an intense love of the game, their best friend is playing, their parents want them to play, they want to try it out but they just haven’t found their footing yet, etc. Practice can be an intimidating time for these players. It’s tough to be the odd man who might not be very good at swinging the bat or shooting free throws just yet.

Whatever you do, never out a player for being bad. The few times I’ve witnesses a coach out a player like that, it was game over for that kid. There’s no coming back from when a coach personally tells you you’re not good in front of everyone.

Make practice fun. Give every kid a way to be successful. Get creative with your coaching and with your drills. You absolutely do not have to cater to the less athletic kids, but if yo throw them into the deep end and get annoyed when they don’t swim, you’re not doing a great job as a coach. Coaches, especially for younger ages, are meant to help kids practice the fundamentals and discover their love for the game. Anything more than that is awesome. Anything less than that is lame.

Take advantage of your time with Flex Fundraising

While you’re doing your fundraiser, be sure to create some fun incentives / awards for your players to be excited about! This will encourage them to actively participate in the fundraiser and will create a sense of unity as everyone is working towards a goal. “If everyone raises at least $25 dollars and the team races $500, we’ll have ice cream after practice and the coaches will race each other.” Doing small things like this during our fundraiser will make it engaging and help the team come together as buddies. You want buddies as teammates.

Use a game to bring them together

Don’t tell me you haven’t seen the new Top Gun movie yet… it’s very good. You need to go see it. I’m going to spoil something very unimportant in the grand scheme of the plot that pertains to this blog post: creating good comradely for the entire team.

Tom Cruise (Maverick) is having a difficult time getting the group of students to enjoy working together. Instead of spending precious time preparing for their mission one day, he decides to take them to the beach and allow them to play football. This act lightens up their spirits, gets them away from the terrible stress of the mission, and helps them create a unique bond that will later help them in their mission.

Imagine with me the times you or your kids spent walking around familiar and unfamiliar neighborhoods seeking for donations towards your fundraiser that you’ve been peddling for a couple days now. You’re tired, you’re scared, and you’re seeing very little return. Not to mention you have to go out of your way to knock on peoples doors, disturbing their evening, and push for some coupon book that they probably don’t want. The whole thing is awkward, uncomfortable, disheartening and tiring.

It was truly a frustrating time. Long have those days passed, and we now find ourselves in a new and encouraging age–an age of sharing online, not being face to face, and raking in more cash than you ever before dreamed.

To knocking on our neighbors doors, we say, “adieu.”

What is “Online Sharing”?

Not all of us all well-versed in the ways of technology. There’s absolutely no shame to that, coach! Zero! However, at the end of the day, you’re going to want to familiarize yourself with the basics of “online sharing”. What exactly does this mean? Sharing something online simply means sharing a message with someone else via technology. You do this way more often than you think: every time you send a video to your sibling through text, send someone a link to a product via email, or post about something on your social media page is a form of online sharing. It can be as complicated or simple as you want, but for us at Flex Fundraising, we’re keeping it quite simple.

How to Share Online

So now that you’re feeling comfortable with the idea of sharing online, we’ll go over the ways in which Flex Fundraising makes it as easy as possible for you to spread the word about your fundraiser. Let’s go with some of the basics:

• You know about those QR codes? They’re kinda like a new variation of bar codes where you can present the QR code and someone can pull up their smartphone, access their camera app, and then focus on the QR code. From there, they’ll be able to click on a link that the QR code is attached to. You can present this QR code in person, on a flyer, on a banner, or online! Simple post the QR code wherever you want to share your fundraiser, and when people take a picture of it, they’ll find a link that will take them to your fundraiser page.
• You can share the actual page to your fundraiser the same way. Using QR codes are great for things like sharing in person or on a banner. Sharing the actual page is better when it comes to sharing online through things like text or email. In order to share your fundraiser page, you can copy the link from the search tab in the web browser or you can copy the link provided in your page. Flex Fundraising makes your life easy by giving providing the link for you at all times in your fundraiser page. Simply click on the teal tab besides the link and it’ll copy. From there, you can paste it into emails, text messages, social media posts, etc.
• You can share your fundraiser page through social media, texting, emails, work chats, online forums, local news outlets, etc. The sky is the limit, and sharing is easier than ever.

What to do if players don’t have smartphones

When working with little league teams, kids probably won’t have a ton of smartphones. If most of your team is without smartphones, the parents will need to do most of the “work” when it comes to sharing online. I say “work” because it really does take about 5 total minutes to spread the good work about your fundraiser!

Send out a quick email or text to the parents and show them the steps of sharing the fundraiser. They’ll be able to share the fundraiser and their child’s page with family friends, coworkers, neighbors, etc. Pretty simple and it guarantees a high return!

Fundraising has never been easier. Sharing online is when it comes to fundraising is the epitome of the “work smarter, not harder” mentality. You’ll find yourself sporting the best uniforms you’ve ever seen your team wear thanks to Flex Fundraising and our guarantee for you to raise more and keep more with your next fundraiser!

Is conditioning important in youth sports? Studies show that daily conditioning and exercise is crucial for healthy development for kids and all aspects of their lives–physical development, social skills, mental skills, etc.

Naturally, throughout the practice, kids will be conditioning and learning to coordinate their awkward little bodies through the sport. Us adults have a pretty solid grip on jogging, sprinting, jumping, catching, skipping, etc., but these are still pretty new to younger kids, or even older kids! We should never judge whether or not a child can perform these activities like professional athletes would. Kids develop at different rates; some will quickly catch on to things while others may not get it down for awhile. Patience is key here.

When talking about conditioning in practice, we normally mean the scheduled 5-10 minutes before/after practices that focus purely on things like running sprints, suicides (we should probably change the name of that if we haven’t yet), jumping, etc. Are these too tough for kids, or should they be done in every practice? The answer is, yes, they should be done in every practice, but they need to be done correctly.

If you need some tips on how to better execute conditioning in your youth sports team, read our blog post about it! We go over how to make conditioning fun for your athletes, how to make it exciting and challenging without it being a negative experience, and why YOU should get involved during conditioning segments!

Helping your kids enjoy exercise and conditioning

When it comes to conditioning and overall training the human body, it’s important to take the age of each child considerably. This will help you determine the right kind of activities to do in or outside of the sport. Kidshealth.org has some thoughts on how and why kids should take conditioning seriously:

“Keep in mind your child’s age and developmental level, natural abilities, and interests. Kids 6 to 8 years old are sharpening basic physical skills like jumping, throwing, kicking, and catching. Some enjoy doing this in organized sports teams, but non-competitive leagues are best for younger kids. Show your support by coaching your child’s team or cheering from the stands on game days. Kids 9 to 12 years old are refining, improving, and coordinating skills. Some become even more committed to a sport while others drop out as competition heats up and level of play improves.”

In this modern day in which staying at home, watching TV, playing video games (none of which are terrible things, but it easier to do these things) than going outside, it’s crucial to have your child and the kids on your sports team be sure to do some sort of conditioning every day. Another quote from Kidshealth.org:

“Kids who enjoy sports and exercise tend to stay active throughout their lives. And staying fit can improve how kids do at school, build self-esteem, prevent obesity, and decrease the risk of serious illnesses such as high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart disease later in life.”

Why conditioning will help your players

• Conditioning allows players to work together while also working individually. Some kids will naturally be faster or stronger than their teammates. This makes conditioning “easier” for them in that they feel they are not being as challenged as the other kids. Have your kids who finish quicker go back and help their teammates finish the sprint or do their pushups. This can help create a unity in your team and help the less popular kids feel like they belong as well.
• Conditioning can encourage your team to take care of their bodies and and off the field. Helping them learn to better take care of their bodies through exercise, diet, and resting will help build strong habits that they will benefit from for the rest of their lives.
• Kids have a wild amount of energy. Doing conditioning is a great way to help them get their energy out in a great way.
• Conditioning, when done correctly, can help your athletes play better individually and as a whole. Sports require an impressive amount of grace, coordination, and technique. Practicing these with your team during conditioning is a great way to strengthen and train them. Talk about a win win!

You know how your mom used to get you to do something that you didn’t like doing? For me, it was cleaning my room. I hated that as a kid… I don’t know why. Naturally, messy rooms aren’t great to live in, and my mom knew that. How did she get me to clean it? She tricked me by making it a game. She would get make it a game to see who could clean the section of the room the fastest. She knew I was a competitive young sprout, and she played that to her advantage. It worked like a charm for years.

Moral of the story? Sometimes kids just don’t wanna do something until YOU make it fun.

If I went around and interviewed 100 7-year-olds on what they think about the idea of “conditioning”, they would probably boo me out of recess. Not many kids are going to line up and jump up and down with excitement at the notion of running sprints and doing a big jog around the baseball field. What they will get excited for is being tricked into conditioning by making a game out of it. Here are some ideas you can do with your team, regardless of age. Heck, high schoolers would even want to do this!

Tips for conditioning

• Play some sort of game that they normally don’t. Things like dodgeball, capture the flag, relay races, etc. I would imagine most kids on a sports team would go nuts for any of these games and run harder and longer than they will at practice.
• Bring out your neighbors dog, give that dog a stick or something they love, they have the kids chase after the dog. Dogs love them a game of keep away, especially when they do the keeping. Dogs can run for a long time and they’re pretty elusive. The youth might have to come up with a game plan and strategize!
• Get you and the other coaches involved! Make it a game of coaches vs. players. It was always really cool whenever the coaches showed their fun side. Most youth coaches I had were intimidating to me, whether or not they meant to be. The thing that broke that barrier was them playing with us.
• Never use running as a punishment, especially in youth sports. This teaches kids that doing sprints is a negative, dreadful experience. Sprints, when done the right way, can be challenging but exciting.
• Remember that these little athletes are kids. They’re not trained to be like professional athletes. They’re not fully developed. They are not being paid to play a sport. Pushing kids too hard will discourage them from playing a sport, make them afraid of you, and may take away the simple joy that youth sports should be.
• Don’t be afraid to make it fun. We trick ourselves into thinking, “Well, conditioning for me as a kid was miserable and I hated every minute of it, especially when Coach Pete would yell at us and make us all feel terrible. Yeah… I should do the same to my kids!” Let us be the new age of helping kids fall in love with sports and training their bodies by making it fun. Just because it’s fun doesn’t mean it can’t be challenging! Find that balance and do your best to maintain it.

In my humble opinion, the emphasis of youth sports shouldn’t be winning championships or destroying your crosstown rivals. These are fun perks, but we adults tend to get waaayyyy too caught up in sports in general, let alone youth sports with 6-year-olds playing soccer. The best coaches are the ones who help their kids love sports, to enjoy exercising and to help them get more coordinated and talented as well as improve as individuals and as a team. If conditioning doesn’t accomplish the latter, then it’s being taken too seriously, and you need to take it back a little bit. Conditioning should be fun, natural, and exciting!

Keep it simple and you’ll do great, coach.