October 2010
1 post
Old Dogs, New Tricks
In an earlier post, I told you about my youngest son’s early season football experience with his line coach/defensive coordinator. Well, here’s an update which I’d like to share with you. It came as a surprise to me, and in the middle of a terribly difficult week for our family. Whether the timing of it was a coincidence or a result of the events of that week, we may never...
August 2010
1 post
Too Many Coaches Still Don't Get It
High schools around the country are starting their fall sports seasons in earnest (although many high school fall sports teams have been practicing all summer). What’s unique about falls sports at the high school level is the “camps” that most of the coaches hold prior to the beginning of classes. High school athletes, and specifically those playing football, are subjected to...
July 2010
1 post
Four Key Steps to Ensuring Success of Your Youth...
(Sixth in a series) The past several posts have focused on how to develop an effective youth sports program structured around all participants. There are myriad studies about how participating in youth sports activities provides tremendous benefits to kids, assuming that the programs are structured to convey those benefits. Information is available from a number of sources on how to structure an...
June 2010
1 post
Modeling Appropriate Behavior at Youth Sports...
(Fifth in a series) About three years ago, Miller Donnelly, then a nine year old hockey player, made a satirical three minute video known as The Magic Hockey Helmet. In the video, Miller explains the magic of the hockey helmet in this way: “It does something simply amazing. When I put it on, it changes me from a 9-year-old boy to a 20-year-old man…The minute I put on my magic helmet...
May 2010
1 post
Defining a Model Youth Sports Program
(Fourth in a series) Finding advice on what constitutes a “model” youth sports program is as elusive as finding evidence of alien life. Getting administrators to agree on how a “good” youth sports program should be organized is even more difficult Although much has been written and said about what is wrong with youth sports, and who’s to blame for its problems,...
April 2010
3 posts
The Role of Adults in Youth Sports
(Third in a series)
Jay Coakley is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. He’s also an author and an commentator on sports, society, and culture and focuses primarily on youth sports and socialization issues. Coakley has said the he has offered groups of students $100 for a photograph of eight or more adolescent girls playing sports unsupervised by...
Why Kids Play Sports (and why they quit)
(Second in a series). “Youth sports are about building better kids, not building better athletes,” says Dr. Bruce Svare, Director of the National Institute for Sports Reform and author of the book Reforming Sports Before the Clock Runs Out: One Man’s Journey through our Runaway Sports Culture. But the continuing emphasis on early specialization and the...
Developing a Model Youth Sports Program
In this ongoing series, Wagdogs takes a look at the current state of youth sports. We’ll examine the challenges presented to players, parents, and administrators in creating a program that promotes cooperative and supportive participation, helps ensure the safety of all participants, and emphasizes the values and principles of youth sports beyond just winning and losing. Wagdogs will...
March 2010
5 posts
Update to Previous Post - Allan Trimble, Jenks...
In the blog post below entitled High School Coach Suspends Himself, we told you the account of Jenks (OK) High School football coach Allan Trimble, who was found to have illegally recruited an out of state player to his highly successful football program. The Oklahoma Secondary School Activities Association (OSSAA) found 7 additional recruiting violations and suspended Coach Trimble and the Jenks...
New Content Added to the Zones
Lots of new content added to the Zones. You can access the Zones from the links on the top menu.
Does "Winning" Get a Bad Rap?
Spring is finally here, and there are a few sure signs that it has arrived: the birds chirping outside at daybreak; the arrival of daylight savings time and longer daylight hours; kids out in the neighborhood burning off some of the energy they accumulated over a long winter spent mostly indoors; and spring cleaning, the annual top-to-bottom scrubbing of the house that “officially” puts an end to...
To Cut or Not to Cut,...
Here in southeastern Pennsylvania, the miserable winter has been followed by an equally miserable start to spring. Thousands of local fields across the region are closed until April 1, at the earliest, in hopes that they dry out in time for spring sports to actually begin.
And as registrations are processed and tryouts are held, an age-old question reoccurs: Should teams cut players? It’s...
Wagdogs is now on tumblr.
We’re looking at ways to connect better and more frequently with Wagdogs members and with the youth sports community, and we’re going to us tumblr. as our primary tool. We’ve looked it over pretty thoroughly and we like its reach, ease-of-use, feature set, and extensibility. It should help us to be more proficient (i.e., frequent!) in conveying news about both Wagdogs and the...