Ep 374 Should Your Kid Be Playing Up, or Is That Just You?

Playing at the Proper Level Links mentioned in this episode TeachHoops.com NukeHydration.com — clean sports hydration, no additives, low sugar. Coach Bill is drinking the Lime Time. Use code YOUTHHOOPS15 for 15% off CoachingYouthHoops.com — practice plans and everything else you need as a youth coach Should Your Kid Be Playing Up, or Is That Just You? Talent, maturity, and the parent in the parking lot. Tryout season continues, and this one is about the hardest call a youth coach makes: getting kids at the right level. How you decide, and how you tell the parents. (Also settled early: nobody has ever called Coach Collins "Coach Steve." Coach Bill's fourth grade girls have been debating whether to call him Bill, Coach Bill, or William, and at least one of them knows his full name.) Coach Bill lays out the case. You have a team that can do X, Y, and Z. You have kids above that and kids below it. Then you have the tweener: too good for her grade, maybe not good enough for the level above. Do you push her up for the challenge? Can she handle no longer being the best player in the gym, when one level down she would be? Coach Collins refuses to put it in a box, and Coach Bill gives him a hard time about it the whole episode. His frame is academic. If your kid is genuinely ready for calculus, they should take calculus, and the parent usually knows that better than anyone. But you do not want to push so hard that failure follows, and you do not want them so overwhelmed they quit and go play volleyball. The line he borrows: you never want to be the best kid in the gym. Caitlin Clark was playing against much older boys young, and her parents knew she wanted that. That is a real thing. It is also rare. At younger ages, Coach Collins leans toward keeping kids with their age group. His reasoning is blunt: nobody is scouting a fourth grade girls game on a Tuesday. Coach Bill's counter is that it does not matter whether scouts are there. Parents believe they are. That belief is where all the angst comes from, and a coach has to manage the belief whether or not it is grounded. Coach Bill's example is not hypothetical. A dad pulls his daughter out thirty minutes into the very first practice, says nothing beyond "we gotta go," then calls later to say she deserves to be played up. So you play her up. And she is not ready, or she is simply not as good as the other girls. Now what happens to the kid? Coach Collins' most useful point. A kid can be physically good enough to play up and nowhere near ready socially. A fourth grader with sixth grade talent and third grade maturity probably belongs with the fourth graders, even though she is better than all of them. That is also why he will not hand over a formula. He has made good and bad calls on this with fifteen to eighteen year olds, and he does not always get it right. Every parent thinks their kid is special. Coach Collins' test is behavior, not talent: is your kid going outside and shooting for three hours on their own? The truly obsessed ones are already obsessed in fourth and fifth grade. Nobody has to make them do it. His own example is his son, whose obsession was never jumpers. It was building things. YouTube channel, trick shot videos before trick shots were a thing, out back all day. So he fed that monster instead. The question a parent has to answer honestly is whether the drive is coming from the kid or from them. Coach Bill's addition: at that age the parent pushing is real and common, and a coach cannot do anything about it. All you can do is put the kid in the right spot. "I'm worried about all the kids. You're worried about one kid. So I understand what you're saying, and I hear you." Coach Bill's amendment: they are worried about two kids. Their own, and the kid they think theirs is better than. Publish the rubric. Same point as the tryout structure episode. If you communicate how the team is built before tryouts, you take the mystery out of the placement. Be timely. Everyone is on pins and needles waiting for the roster. Do not let it drag. Remember the kids feel it. They pick up the stress from their parents and from the situation, and depending on age they may have no way to say so. Know that parents cannot see the moving parts. "Why can't my kid be on so and so's team" sets off a domino effect across every roster in the program. The tough conversations. Cutting a kid, and moving a kid down from the top team. There is no formula. Weigh the skill against the maturity, watch what the kid does on their own time, publish your rubric, communicate fast, and accept that you will not get every one of these right. Learn more and get everything you need for your season at TeachHoops.com TitleAlternate titlesSubtitleShow NotesThe tweener problemWhy there is no ruleThe real life situationReady is not only about skillHow to tell whether your kid is actually that kidCoach Collins' line for parentsWhat coaches can controlComing nextCoa