“What am I supposed to do? Tell my players to stop scoring?”
YES! That’s exactly what you should tell them!
The goal of youth sports “should” be….development, teamwork, sportsmanship, and fun. How does winning a soccer game 15-0 help with any of those things? It doesn’t. You can develop players, teach teamwork, show great sportsmanship and have a lot of fun doing it and not run up the score.
For our club, we have decided winning by 9 is enough. We believe that winning by double digits does not show great sportsmanship and it also actually hinders our player’s development. By keeping the winning margin at 9 or less, our coaches are able to 1) move players around 2) focus on teaching different parts of the game (such as passing, switching the fields, 1v1 moves, etc) 3) show the opponent that we know what it feels like.
Our teams have been on the other side of the coin many many times. It’s not fun. It’s not fun to continuously pick the ball out of the net. We don’t want other teams to feel like that. Most times the other team’s coaches and/or parents will say how they appreciate that we didn’t run up the score on them.
I hope the next time you see one of our teams win 9-0 you think….GREAT JOB Ohio Extreme…thank you for developing my soccer player and more importantly, thank you for teaching him/her to respect the game and respect the opponent.
Go Extreme!