As per a recent study on child sports, at minimum 10% of players confess to cheating, which is often encouraged by their instructors. A coach was recently punished after being caught on camera altering a yard marking.
According to a recent survey of child sports, over 10% of student-athletes commit cheating, and 7% of coaches urge their athletes to cheat. What other way are kids going to understand? One of them might be Paul Bryan, an assistant football coach at San Pedro High School in California. After a film recorded him altering a field marker to assist his side progress down the field, Mr. Bryan was prohibited for a year this week. The suspension, according to San Pedro’s administrator, was required to deliver a strong message of displeasure. Paul Bryan remained silent, but one of his running backs, Devin Carter, stated of the shifting marker, “It makes us all look awful.”
Although I feel bad for the kids, the news that Jackie Robinson West’s U.S. Little League championship was been snatched away from them for what equates to recruitment infractions comes as no surprise to me. Cheating is the standard in all youth sports, similar to the doping crisis that erupted during Lance Armstrong’s Tour de France stint.
To put it differently, Bill Belichick and the New England Patriots are amateurs in comparison to minor sports coaches and referees.
And the reason all of the lately reported coaches say there are just a few rotten apples in child sports is because if they spoke reality, they wouldn’t be teaching for a while. The leagues and clubs, like insects, can’t tolerate it when you switch on the kitchen light.
I was surprised every time I ran along with a coach who didn’t cheat after four years of coaching young soccer, regardless of the fact that the Tri-Cities Soccer Association (TCSA) is better than most teams.
Sockers FC, Northern Illinois’ largest and oldest youth soccer team, was straightforward about it. They managed to get away with it because they also operated the Northern Illinois Soccer League, which is the county’s sole sport. If you make a fuss, your team will be relegated. Best of luck in your search for competitors!
It’s also not restricted to kids soccer. Parents continue to come to me with all sorts of horror stories. So, here are a couple of examples:
- To ensure wins, groups would regularly “sandbag,” or position themselves in less contested groupings. As a consequence, double digits were regularly blown away. Despite the fact that this was a Sockers specialty, everybody did it, especially during competitions.
- Over one TCSA official pushed me to cheat to level the field, just like Lance had to take drugs to compete with other drug cheats.
- Coaches in all child traveling sports routinely try to take the top players from other teams, which is a direct breach of club regulations. JRW did nothing more than try to “legalize” poachers by broadening their bounds.
It is safe to say that cheating has become a major part of youth sports too.