By Chris Johnson

Leave a team, join a gang.
Up to 75% of children leave team sports by age 13, and sometimes they leave sports for socially unacceptable activities. You leave a team, you join a gang. We need to question the motivation behind children's sports and other activities - is it to win or is it for fun?
To quote education psychologist William Glaser...
"The first 10 years of a child's life are the most important developmental years. If we ensure that they experience more successes than failures, they can handle failure better for the rest of their lives."
Children do need to win, so parents, teachers and coaches must create situations where children succeed.  As a result, I now preach against what I once was - the autocratic coach. I would do anything I could to prove I was bigger, faster, stronger, meaner. I still believe winning is important - but it's important for all children, not just the lone gold medalist or the top team.


My own children have taught me what winning means.

Three years ago my 16 year old son was slashed across the face 15 times. Can you imagine as a parent what you're thinking, what you're feeling at that moment. And he says, "Daddy, they're a bunch of losers."

I never got over that.

If your background makes you a loser and then if sports makes you a loser, too, then you're zero out of two. But, if sports makes you a winner, at least you get one out of two and one one out of two is better than none out of two.
For every tournament we play there seems to be one winner and the rest are losers. The system tells children they're losers in school and at sports. And it's self reinforcing.


Nineteen year ago, my young daughter taught me how to change losers into winners. [She taught me and I'm the one with the master's degree.]

Her solution to competitive games like musical chairs was to change the game so that every time a chair was removed, the remaining players had to sit in someone's lap until all the chairs were gone and every player was trying to sit in one lap.

I thought, what a simple solution and all we've done is change one rule. And this from a six year old.

[Editor's note: As the bio explains, Chris Johnson is not a baseball coach, but a coach's coach. And while he has written and talked extensively to coaches in many places on many topics, we really like this short piece because it covers so much ground. In fact, if you now look through some of the other Coaches Corner contributions and Game Prep pages - with fresh eyes after reading the above - a great deal of what some of these points on WebBall are about will become clear. You should also note that John Harr, who is very much a baseball coach, has listened to Chris on some of the same occasions I have - and that has no doubt inspired some of HIS thinking about changing the game. - Richard Todd, WebBall]