Written by: Michelle
Smith
Monday, March 6,
2000
©2000 San Francisco
Examiner
To
compliment rather than criticize. To encourage with measured tones
rather than raised voices. To build up rather than tear
down.
Jim
Thompson worked hard as a father and an educator to alter the
youth sports experience for his son and the other children he has
coached in two decades. Now he hopes to expand his vision to the
rest of the country.
"People
complain about the death of sportsmanship and bad coaching," said
Thompson, the director of the Palo-Alto based Positive Coaching
Alliance. "For a long time, complaining about youth sports was
like complaining about the weather. You couldn’t do much about it.
But I think we can."
Thompson is
trying to see to it personally, having organized a two-day forum
for educators, psychologists and sports administrators from around
the country called, "Against the Grain: Transforming the Culture
of Youth Sports," beginning Wednesday at Stanford.
The seminar
will bring together "senior-level" people from such youth
organizations as the YMCA, Little League Baseball and Special
Olympics.
"We will
have the major players in the world of youth sports," Thompson
said.
The speaker
at the two-day forum include Los Angeles Lakers coach Phil
Jackson, new NFL Hall of Famer Ronnie Lott and Olympians Summer
Sanders, Bart Conner and Nadia Comaneci.
An
estimated 25 million American children participate in youth
sports. Jackson belives many children’s youth experiences have a
great influence on their adult life. And those experiences are
influenced by the adults who guided them.
"It’s easy
to criticize," Jackson said. "The Alliance advocates 5-to-1
positive comments to negative comments. Most of the time, what
people get for feedback is their mistakes. It’s a hard bargain to
keep, but what if you went around in life and did that. It would
be a different world."
Thompson
formed the Positive Coaching Alliance in 1998 following his own
experience as a youth sports coach for his son’s teams more than
15 years ago.
"It wasn’t
a particular event that motivated me, but the general atmosphere,"
Thompson said. "I was working at a school for emotionally
disturbed kids who were abused and had a lot of problems. I was
trained that a positive approach can bring about some pretty
incredible changes.
"When my
son started playing sports, I was appalled. The principles I was
trained in were being violated left and right by well-meaning
parents and coaches who were doing all the wrong
things."
Thompson, a
director at Stanford Business School, has authored two books on
the subject of positive coaching. He has been planning Wednesday’s
gathering for more than two years.
The key is
translating positive coaching into successful performance on the
field.
"Believe
me, when I coached, I wanted to win. We are not saying we don’t
care about winning," Thompson said. "We are saying that we can
link character-building with higher performance. Sometimes it’s
just the right thing, but in most cases, it can help win more
games."
