Stressing a Positive Environment in Youth Sports
Blue Valley Recreation Helps Make Youth Sports a Positive Experience
By Doug Vance, KRPA Executive Director
Appeared in KRPA’s Summer 2009 Magazine
For parents of youngsters involved in one of the six sports leagues run by the Blue Valley Recreation Commission, their introduction into a season of youth sports is designed to be both educational and memorable.
For the last several years, Blue Valley Recreation has made it mandatory that at least one parent of new youth sports participants attend a meeting at the start of the league season.
“People don’t always look forward to attending, but I do hear a lot of them saying afterwards they were glad they went,” said Derrick Wilde, program director at BVRC.
The meeting serves as an introductory training session for parents and features a comprehensive presentation on youth sports values by a representative of the NAIA Champions of Character program. It offers distinct guidelines on proper behavior that emphasizes sportsmanship and helps parents better understand their role in supporting their children in youth sports.
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Coach Tom Elms emphasizes a point of learning to Clayton Leathers during the Blue Valley Recreation Early Bird Tournament.
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“It’s an exposure to youth sports concepts that parents really need to understand. It’s had a very positive influence on all aspects of our youth sports experience,” added Wilde. “Parents have a much better understanding of behavior that helps their children, the coaches and the umpires.”
Blue Valley Recreation administers one of the state’s largest youth sports programs with more than 1,100 teams and rosters totaling nearly 11,500 participants.
The mandated, introductory meeting has sent a strong signal each season to parents that sportsmanship is positioned squarely number one as a requirement of participation for everyone in the Blue Valley youth sports leagues.
“We also require coaches and parents to sign the Code of Ethics set up through the NAYS (National Alliance for Youth Sports) volunteer coaches training program,” said Wilde. “We take volunteers for a sportsmanship committee for each major sport and assign a committee member to monitor problem coaches or teams and report back with the issues.”
In addition to training parents to be better citizens at youth sports events, Blue Valley also asks its volunteer coaches to operate under a stringent set of guidelines. Wilde hosts a pre-season coaches meeting for each major sport league and addresses his expectation with the group.
“We talk about what youth sports can do for children, both from a positive and negative perspective,” explained Wilde. “We always highlight values such as teamwork, creativeness, how to deal with adversity, how to with humility, how to deal with defeat and how it all plays a role in everyday life.”
Blue Valley has added an Advisory Council for each major sport that is made up of coaches, parents and officials. The council helps the BVRC staff set policies and rules for the leagues, serves as a hearing committee on violations and rules and determines needed action if appropriate.
“We feel this concept helps create more awareness among the league coaches,” said Wilde. “It helps them better understand that if something negative occurs under their watch, the procedure calls for them to appear in front of a panel of their peers.”
Wilde noted that BVRC recruits, hires, trains and evaluates its own officials. “This gives us the ability to talk about sportsmanship and its importance in our goals and allows us to give them insight on things to watch for and correct when they are officiating games. We think this system encourages more feedback to us on positive or negative issues during game play.”
Wilde also likes to bring local sports celebrities to present the message of how sports competition builds character when the experience is positive.
“We’ve brought in KU women’s basketball coach Bonnie Henrickson and basketball coaches from UMKC to conduct clinics,” said Wilde. “We ask the college coaches to address issues such as sportsmanship and how to work with parents and officials. I think they make a strong impact on our coaches.”
BVRC also offers sportsmanship incentive programs. Each team votes on a sportsmanship award for a team in their division and players on the winning team receive a medal and the coach is presented with a plaque acknowledging the team’s achievement.
“We’ve found that our coaches and participants are often more proud of the sportsmanship award than the first-place trophy,” smiled Wilde.
The BVRC sportsmanship emphasis has also brought meaningful recognition on a state-wide basis. A team from Blue Valley – the Blue Valley Royals – was the first recipient of the KRPA Youth Sports STAR Award, which is given annually to one team in Kansas that best demonstrates the values of sportsmanship among its coaches, parents and participants.