I had a different experience playing High School football. It was at a large school and yeah the coaches were tough from time to time but the head coach didn't tolerate cussing so it filtered down to all of the coaches. You don't have to yell and scream in a kid's face at all times. Sometimes yes but some kids respond better to calm criticism. Anyways, we had a brief interim WR coach who was a huge douche. He would get a pad and light us up coming across the middle. He laid out the weakest kid on the team and then yelled at him to get up. Other coaches saw it and just kind of shook their heads. We were all mentally tough but it still wasn't right. He was taking anger out on us. Needless to say he was replaced pretty quickly with a real assistant coach and never coached again. Coaching football isn't how loud you can scream and cuss. Watching Hard Knocks has opened my eyes about how much our high school coaches got their point across more than NFL coaches it seems. 9 is definitely way to young to get treated this way and almost no age is it the "right" way to coach IMO.
Verbal abuse is real and is every bit as destructive. Absolutely no reason anyone should treat kids like that. A good coach can find ways to get the best out of their kids without berating them.
My tennis coach once yelled at after my doubles team lost at State and I kicked my sweat into the court after the handshakes. "son, don't you come anywhere near me after that." Then he proceeded to stalk me out the racket club and cornered me and started screaming in my face and poking me in the chest for emphasis. This dick did that because he told us he was a Pete Rose esque hot head in baseball and would throw things and swore he'd never let any of us be like he was. Lols. How ironic that you're poking me in the chest and yelling in my face now I tuned it out because I was fuming at myself for losing that last point with all four of us at the net for about eight shots and was in a different place. After my assistant coach (also the def coach for the football team) who witnessed the berating came up to me and said, "I would have hit him." That was the coolest thing any teacher in HS ever told me
The parents. Some of whom probably shouldn't be parents. It's unfortunate you were apparently the only one bothered by what you saw.
i was your teammate who cleared the ball from the box and passed it to you Still scars me to this day
I'm glad my coach back in my katy youth football days was a real ass you know what. He would run with us on laps sometimes but if he beat us, that was pushups we had to do. He would run with us and carry the football out in front of us to make us run harder. He did it to me once and I ran faster, grabbed the ball and kept running. Then I got to run in the next game a few times. From d line to running back lol
I don't know if I can say all forms of abuse are equal (and a coach screaming at his players may not even qualify without knowing the context), but I don't think verbal abuse and bullying is something that should be overlooked. The psychological effects of it can't be easily seen. But it does exist and can be just as destructive since it leads to suicide in some cases. My point was that verbal and abuse most definitely belong in the same sentence together.
The only problem is I was young and petty at the time so I responded by tanking games on purpose and then faking an injury. Yeah, I was just as much an ******* as my coach lol.
A coach yelled at me once for messing up while I was playing first base. Got me embarrassed and sad. But now I pretty much kick ass at first base.
Anyone that lets their 9 year old play contact football doesn't give a crap about the kids anyway. Our local high school coach who has won a state championship lately is telling parents not to let their kids play contact football until middle school at the very least. There is no point in risking their health at such an early age, especially when there is nothing they can't develop playing flag or even soccer.
Football is safer for kids than soccer. They never are able to run at speed because they start so close to each other. Junior and High school levels it flips.
You can develop alertness and reactions while operating at full speed and maximum intensity at a time when your brain blindly and quickly processes information. But it's probably safe to assume there are as many top performers who start in junior high as before it, especially considering they haven't physically grown into any real positions yet. It's also possible he got tired of hearing parents ask him about or talk up their 4th grader, since the junior high coaches are already scouting for him anyways.
