A recent newspaper article brought out how Pop Warner leagues are important for high school football programs. They start with Mighty Mite for boys seven to nine years of age, and then go on to Pee Wee ball for ages nine to 11, followed by Midget for ages 11 to 14 before going into high school at ages 14 to 18.
This is definitely a great progression for selecting the top players coming out of the Pop Warner leagues. Because winning and losing is most important in each of these categories it is relatively easy to see who the better players are and what their accomplishments have been.
However, even though each level is supposedly an instructional level to help develop the players, it is related mainly to learnimg the nuances of the game rather than improvement of game skills. Players are drilled on learning their respective positions and the tasks required of each position rather than how well they run, cut, throw, block and tackle.
If it were a true developmental program, the main objective would not be to see how many games they could win. Instead it would be more to how much they improve in the respective skills that are most important for their position. Coaches may believe that this will show up in their game play, but it is not necessarily true especially if the player does not have as many opportunities as needed.
As I have brought out many times previously, skill development is a long process. You cannot take two or three weeks to superficially cover elements of the basic skills and expect them to be mastered by the youngsters. Skill learning takes years and requires considerable practice. For example, as has been brought out in the Olympic Games, the Chinese spend upwards of two years working on skills before they even play a game.
They learned, as the Russians and East Germans did before them, that mastery of sports skills requires expert instruction followed by considerable practice. American coaches maintain that we would never be able to do this in this country and to a good extent they are right. We have become too indoctrinated with the idea that playing and having fun is more important than learning the basic skills of the game to become the best possible in relation to the youngsters’ potential.
If we continue with more playing beginning with younger and younger ages, we would still develop some high-level athletes but only if there are a sufficient number of athletes participating in the sport. This is not however,the most effective way to develop an athlete nor does it produce the best results in regard to the manpower invested. And it is certainly not the best way to produce athletes in what many consider to be the minor sports.
Although we may criticize other countries for the way they develop their athletes it must be recognized that their methods are extremely effective, especially when the sporting base is relatively small. But because we still develop high-level athletes in sports such as football, baseball and basketball from playing more, we tend to believe that we are developing all athletes to the highest level.
In reality we are not. The losers in this are the youngsters, many of whom have the potential to be great athletes but never get the opportunity to truly develop themselves. This is not only a tremendous waste, but a national disgrace.