It is parent teacher conference night at your child’s school. Excited to hear about what your child has been doing so far this year, you enter the classroom with the other parents and wait to meet the teacher. As you are waiting, you look around the room at all the posters on the walls and notes on the board. It looks like the kids have been busy, and it is a great environment for your child to learn and grow. You see different lesson plans, motivational quotes on the wall, and the entire classroom looks very organized. Impressed with what you see, you assume your child has a great teacher this year.

The teacher enters the room and heads right to the front of the class, like he does every day, and prepares to address the parents. The teacher scans the room and welcomes the parents saying, “Thank you all for coming. It has been a great start of the year and I think you will be impressed with what we are doing each day in this classroom.” 

The teacher walks over to a switch on the wall to dim the lights. Turning on his IPAD, a PowerPoint presentation comes up on the big screen in the front of the room. The first slide reads, “Welcome to Mr. Smith’s Classroom.” The teacher begins by talking a little about himself and his teaching experience. Again, everything sounds great, and you are impressed with his credentials. On the next slide, Mr. Smith introduces his approach to teaching the kids this year. He describes his focus with the kids as a “balance between learning and getting high test scores.”

A stunned silence consumes the room and as you look around, you can see other parents who share your same perplexed look. The silence is broken by a mom blurting out, “What does that mean?” With confidence, the teacher replies, “Well through the year we will be doing as much learning as possible, but will need to take time to make sure your child gets high test scores as well. So, at times, I will be skipping some “less important” things to focus more time on making sure your child will score higher on the test. We will spend time on test taking strategies and focus only on what will be asked on the test. This will take away from some other things they need to learn, but their test scores will be higher.”

Bewildered by what you just heard, you raise your hand quickly. When called upon, you ask, “I thought the point of school was to teach and for my kid to learn. Shouldn’t that be the only priority for you?” The teacher quickly snaps back, “You want your child to fail the test?”

Although this is a hypothetical, the point of it is to show how we may want a different approach in the classroom for our kids. As a coach, I consistently read articles and hear coaches talk about a legitimate need to balance development and winning with their teams. It makes as much sense as a teacher defending a need to balance a child learning and getting high test scores in the classroom. We want kids to learn and have success whether on a test or in a game, but there is not a need for a balance between the two. There needs to be a strong focus on just one!

Like a teacher, the critical job of a youth coach is to teach and develop young kids. Each day, each practice (or lesson),  is about what the players need to learn today that will help them learn what they need to learn tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. Just like in the classroom, on the soccer field, or in any sport, the goal is to learn and get better. The goal is for the kids to have the opportunity to expand their understanding and knowledge of a subject in order to continue to grow. The hope is that their ability over time will vastly exceed our own. I hope our goal is not as naive and short-sighted as just doing well on a test or winning a game. The focus of anyone who is trusted to teach young kids should be much bigger and more influential on the kids’ entire lives. 

Besides, and not to openly state the obvious, but when learning and development is truly the goal of the approach, the top priority, higher test scores or winning will occur naturally overtime because  the kids are actually learning and getting better. But the reverse, taking the backwards approach by focusing on only teaching to a test or to get a win, the kids often do not learn much or grow much further beyond their current abilities and skills.

If a teacher teaches to a test, in essence the teacher is asking the kids to memorize material and regurgitate it back when asked in multiple-choice format. A kid can do well on the test by memorizing the material but have no true understanding of the information and will most likely forget it quickly afterwards. The same is true on the soccer field. 

A coach can have the players play in a manner that will help them win without really teaching and giving them a better understanding of how to play the game. Strategies like, “Kick it forward up field” or “just kick it out” are ways to help getter better results without the kids learning much. Not letting the kids take risks and try skills in games is a way to avoid mistakes that lead to a team getting scored on. A fast, aggressive, big and strong, group of 9 year olds who just kick the ball forward and chase after it, who rarely try to pass or control the ball, and who avoid taking risks WILL WIN A LOT. But at the end of the season, despite a shelf full of trophies, there will be little improvement or grow. 

Some coaches may say the balance is in when, or the situation, that the team tries to play the right way versus just trying to win the game. If it is a “big game” like a championship game in a tournament or a “rival club,” they will coach the game differently. They will coach the game to get the win than to teach. The other games that do not “mean as much,” the coaches let the kids try to play the game more, allow them to take more risks and work on weaknesses of each player and the team. 

For me this is why there is no such thing as a balance between winning and development. In this example, that coaches give all the time, shows a severe lack of balance. In reality, the coaches are teaching their players skills and how to play the game, but when it “really counts” the players are not given the chance to use the skill taught. The only time the coach is allowing the players to try to play the game in a way to help them develop is when the game is easy enough to ensure a win. That is not a balance. It is very strong bias towards getting a win. So, in both situations, the focus is still winning. It is never about the development, as it never gets to be the priority. If it was the priority, the “stakes” of the game would be irrelevant. The focus of the coach would always be the same.

The next time your child brings home an “A” on a test, ask him to explain what he learned or the information the test was about. You may be a surprised by the response or lack of response depending on the approach leading up to the test. The next time your child wins a soccer game, ask him, “What did you get better at today?”  Again, depending on the approach, there might not be a good answer.

We become fixated on measuring success in artificial ways that give us a false sense of accomplishment or indication of growth. When in reality, the only measure of success and growth that is accurate is IF you can do something you could not do before, understand something that was previously beyond your comprehension, or attained the tools to use that skill and knowledge together in way you could not before. 

There is no need for balance between development and winning. Just teach and develop players. If that is your goal, the winning will take care of itself (in time). More importantly, your impact on the players will last much longer than a single win or single season. When a coach talks about a balance between winning and development, all I hear is “I really do not understand the point of my job.”  The “balance” is just a somewhat ridiculous way to try to hide the fact that the coach is not that interested in teaching and developing players as much as the final score of each game.