Girls (and Boys) Just Want to Have Fun

The “F Word” has again surfaced in youth sports. That’s “fun,” of course.

As reported in today’s New York Times Peter Barston, a sophomore at Fairfield prep in Connecticut, has conducted a research project – by his own admission not scientific – that shows young athletes play sports for fun more than any other reason.

Barston began the project after taking a survey at the urging of his father, Mike, a board member of a local junior football league. He thought it would be interesting to localize the survey.

His questionnaire is a single page listing 11 reasons children might have for playing sports, including having fun and making friends to the more serious: to win and to earn a college scholarship. Like the survey he took, which was from Michigan State researchers, Barston asked the local players to assign points based on the importance of the reasons for a total of 100.

So far Barston has polled about 255 members of the Darien Junior Football League, who range from fourth grade to eighth grade, and 470 boys and girls in the same grades from the Darien basketball league. He plans to continue with other sports this spring.

The Times says: “From the mound of data he gathered, Barston found a striking pattern. No matter how he categorized the responses, the most important reason youngsters gave for playing sports was the same: to have fun. That was the top response from football and basketball players, from boys and from girls, and from players in each grade from fourth to eighth. In the basketball survey, 95 percent of boys and 98 percent of girls cited fun as a reason for playing, nearly twice the number who mentioned winning.”

The results thus far of Barston’s survey seem to mirror those of the Michigan State researchers Martha Ewing and Vern Seefeldt back in 1989. Their study of 28,000 boys and girls around the country asked, Why do you play sports? The top answer then was “fun,” followed by “to do something I’m good at” and “to improve my skills.” “Winning” did not crack the top 10.

The article reminded me of two recent conversations: one was with a woman I coached in soccer when she was 15. She left the team after 9th grade to concentrate on lacrosse and went on to play for a nationally ranked Division 1 school. But “It just isn’t fun at that level,” she told me. The other was of a friend whose daughter played soccer at a Division 1 school a year ago and did well enough to crack the starting line-up by the end of freshman year. But last year she transferred to a Division 3 school (where she was all-conference) for sophomore year. I asked her father why. “She wasn’t having fun,” he said.

The Setting of the Sol

It’s probably not a good sign when your most popular team folds less than 90 days before the start of the season.

Women’s Professional Soccer announced yesterday that it was folding the Los Angeles Sol, the 2009 regular season champion and runner-up in the play-offs. The Sol’s average home attendance of 6,300 was significantly better than the 4,600 for the rest of the league.

Commissioner Tonya Antonucci said the Sol was one of the stronger franchises in what last year was a seven-team league. Since then the league added teams in Philadelphia and Atlanta. But the Sol’s original owner, Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG) wanted out and gave the franchise back to WPS last November after being unable to sell. AEG owns L.A. Galaxy and Houston Dynamos of Major League Soccer as well a team in Sweden, the NHL’s L.A. Kings and several minor league and European hockey teams.

The New York Tmes reported that talks with a prospective buyer for the Sol broke down over price last weekend. Which raises the question whether it was better to have no team in a market the size of Los Angeles than a team that sold for less than the league wanted.

“It’s unfortunate when this happens to any league, but it is more amplified for a young league,” Antonucci told the New York Times. “It doesn’t speak to the viability to the L.A. market. We want to get back into L.A. in 2011.”

My old friend, Charlie Naimo, a former Medford Strikers trainer, was general manager and acting coach of the Sol, having been appointed to the latter position less than three weeks ago. "It is a sad day for the franchise, staff, players and fans," Naimo said in a press release.

League officials gave the predictable quotes about the viability of the league.

“All the team owners and members of the Board are confident that this setback will be quickly overcome by the exciting developments that the league has in store for the 2010 WPS Season,” said WPS Board Member and Atlanta Beat Chairman T. Fitz Johnson in a press release. “This includes two new franchises, the debut of a brand new stadium built specifically for WPS, a longer regular season and an even better product on the field with incoming talent from the college ranks and the many top internationals that have been signed in the off-season. Without question, this season is poised to build on our successful launch year.”

“Ownership changes are part of pro sports, particularly in a young league, and we have made solid progress in growing WPS from where we were last season,” said Antonucci. “We believe Los Angeles is a healthy, viable market for women’s pro soccer and a city where our league can again thrive with an LA franchise in the future.”

Ironically, the Sol signed three international players, including Pavlina Scasna who played for the Philadelphia Charge in the WUSA, just 10 days ago. The 19 players on the roster, including the Brazilian, Marta, considered by many to be the world’s top female player, and U.S. National Team player Shannon Boxx, will be selected by the eight remaining teams in a dispersal draft February 4. The expansion Atlanta Beat will have the first pick and will presumably grab Marta. The new Philadelphia Independence will pick second.

The Times article is here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/sports/soccer/29woman.html?ref=soccer

The league’s press release: http://www.womensprosoccer.com/la

The Long And the Short of It

An article in today’s New York Times reports that two German scientists and researchers at the Rotterdam School of Management at Erasmus University in the Netherlands claim in a soon-to-be published paper that shorter players are called for less fouls. I don’t buy it.

The article says that the study is based on data compiled by Impire AG, a German company that catalogs statistics on major European sports, including seven soccer seasons of the Bundesliga (85,262 fouls) and Champions League (32,142), and three World Cups (6,440), a tally of more than 100,000 fouls. But it does not say how the fouls are broken down by size of player (or position) and gives no other details.

The story focuses on German national team player Phillip Lahm, a 5’-7” defender (who I think is a great player). “Lahm hardly has a foul called against him,” one of the researchers, Dr. Steffan Giessner, told the Times in a telephone interview. “He plays tough. People pick up on small players and say they are really tough guys.” Lahm, a defender for Bayern München, has 63 caps for Germany. (Thomas Hässler, a midfielder with 101 caps for Germany who played through 2004, is 5’-5 1/2”. He is not mentioned.)

Being all of 5’-5” I am probably qualified to address this topic and I do not agree with the researchers’ theory. On the contrary, I find that smaller players tend to get beat up more by larger players who are then not called for the fouls. Then when the smaller player retaliates, fans and other players - and often the referee - react with shock. A tall player who flattens someone from behind is being aggressive. A short player doing the same thing is called a dirty player. Maybe this is just in the club and school games and not at the professional level. But the Times article lacks specifics so it’s impossible to judge.

Here is the link to the story: http://goal.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/25/refs-are-gunning-for-tall-guys-new-report-asserts/

Back after a month

I know, Coach P has been pretty quiet lately – for more than a month. Not for lack of soccer news. We had the NSCAA Convention in Philadelphia a week ago (but the organization never responded to my request for information on attending), the MLS and WPS drafts and our two new pro teams stocking their rosters. Rather it’s been wedding plans (the date is set for March 13), work and house renovations – I haven’t had a kitchen for six week snow.

I’ll have more tomorrow after the HMHS Girls annual banquet. The food always tastes better when you’re state champs! I’m looking forward to seeing what is a great group of parents and kids.

Meanwhile, some things never change. Bayern München is in first place in the Bundesliga by one point over Bayer Leverkusen, which plays 1899 Hoffenheim tomorrow. At the other end of the standings, things don’t look good for Hertha Berlin, which I saw play Bayern back in ’01. If you’re a pro soccer fan, you haven’t lived until you’ve heard 50,000 Germans singing Nur Nach Hause. But Berlin has fallen since then and if they finish 16^th or 17^th will be demoted to the second division next season, an embarrassment for Germany’s capital and largest city.

Coach P Is Getting Married!

Dec. 8, 2009 -- Debbie wanted me to mention her on my blog, so I'll officially announce what all my soccer (and other) friends already know: sometime in 2010 - sooner rather than later - my long-time friend, Debbie Denslow, and I are getting married. We officially made the decision on the front porch of the Castine Inn, Castine, Maine on the evening of August 20 and I gave her a ring in St. Paul, MN on October 23.

This is an exciting time for me, since my favorite female soccer player, my daughter Kirsten, gave birth to my first grandchild, Oliver Chesla, back on Sept, 29 in Stillwater, MN. My favorite male player, my son, Scott, has been having a good fall teaching 5th grade in neighboring Haddon Twp., NJ. And now I will have someone with whom to share my life. I can't wait!!

It's been three years since the tragic death of Kirsten and Scott's mother, my favorite soccer mom, my wife, Louise Harbach. She died just 16 days before our 37th anniversary. But she would be happy to know that I am marrying Debbie, whom she knew well.

Debbie and I first met at the Episcopal Church of the Messiah in Gwynedd, PA (just outside Philadelphia) not quite 50 years ago and our families knew each other there. Debbie and I went out on occasion in high school, went to some of the same parties, had some friends in common and we stayed in touch over the years. She was married long ago and it didn't work out, but she had a wonderful daughter who is now married to a great guy and she has two lovely grandchildren ages 5 and 3.

Debbie has two masters degrees and is an elementary school teacher of remedial math who is devoted to her teaching, but also to her own family and to our expanding family. She has a great sense of humor, loves theater and loves to travel. Already we've been to England, Canada, Minnesota three times and New England four times.

We hope to hold the wedding at Messiah and to have the ceremony performed by my brother, Gary, another former soccer player (at Penn Charter) and coach at Northfield-Mount Hermon School, who also happens to be an Episcopal priest. He had practice for a family wedding by doing Kirsten's in 2008.

Friends have asked me if Debbie is a soccer fan. She is now. I think her first exposure to the sport was going to a farewell party for Carli Lloyd before the '08 World Cup. She has been to dinner with many of my Haddonfield soccer friends - including Coach Gess - and attended the wedding of a former player of mine last year. She and I watched the U.S. play Argentina at the Meadowlands, and Debbie came to two of our Haddonfield H.S. games this fall, including the exciting state championship match at TCNJ a few weeks back. Plus she flew up to Portland with me for the Bowdoin-Wheaton women's game back in September. So she is building her soccer credentials. There are a lot of games left in this story.

We Lucked Out

Dec. 5, 2009 -- The early word is the U.S. got off easy in yesterday's World Cup draw, so easy in fact, that a berth in the second round is all but guaranteed.

That may be an overstatement, and of course there is a reason they play the games. But let's face it, we could have done worse than England, Slovenia and Algeria. And don't forget - the top two team go through. So a loss to England does not end the hopes of advancement.

So here is the schedule for Group C: June 12 - England; June 18 - Slovenia; June 23 - Algeria. Mark your calendars.

Soccer journalists always pick a "Group of Death," that considered the toughest of the eight groups of four. This year that honor goes to Group G with Brazil, Ivory Coast, North Korea and Portugal.

The last time the U.S. played England in the World Cup was 1950 when the Americans pulled off a stunning 1-0 upset in Belo Horizonte, Brazil as Joey Gaetjens headed in a cross from Philadelphia's Walt Bahr. The game was the subject of the 1995 film, "The Game of Their Lives."

For Jere Longman's excellent coverage of the draw in the New York Times, see: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/05/sports/soccer/05draw.html?ref=sports

Jordan's Perserverance Gives HMHS Group 2 Title

EWING, Nov. 21, 2009 – When senior Kathleen Jordan blew a chance to win the state championship in the 2nd minute of the first “golden goal” overtime, Haddonfield fans weren’t worried. They knew it would just make her more determined.

Jordan broke free and took a clear shot on the goal from about 15 yards out. A goal and Haddonfield wins the State Cup. But Jordan’s shot clanked off the left post and play continued. No problem. Less than five minutes later Jordan used her speed and strength to win a ball after a shot was blocked, and crossed it to sophomore Kate Johnston who was wide open in front of the net.

Johnston had plenty of time to set for the ball – and probably to check her e-mail while she was at it – and easily put it in the back of the net for a thrilling 2-1 win and Haddonfield's fourth state championship since 1997.

"I didn't know why they didn't mark me,” Johnston said to the Courier-Post, “but I had missed a shot like that beforehand. I was like, ‘This time I have to put it in.' I just did it calmly and didn't rush it. The goalie was coming at me, but I didn't want to hit it over, so I had to set myself to get it down."

“That was awful. I should have put it away,” Jordan said after the game to the Inquirer’s Marc Narducci of her first miss.

The match was played before a nice crowd on a cool night in The College of New Jerse's football stadium. Haddonfield generally had the better of the play against a good Mahwah team in the first half, but could have been on the short end of the score at half had keeper Tina Davis not tipped a long shot over the crossbar.

Just 1:26 into the second half, midfielder Sarah Dudek beat her defender and took a shot from the left that bounced off Mahwah keeper Emily Secor and Jordan took advantage to put the Bulldawgs up, 1-0. But nine minutes later the Thunderbirds followed up two corner kicks and a throw-in with a cross from the right side by Nicole Lee that Kristyn Tremblay headed in for the equalizer.

Haddonfield had one last chance to win it in regulation, but Secor fell on an Emily Grabiak corner kick from the left with 6 seconds to play before anyone could put it in the net.

Haddonfield used 14 players in winning the Cup. Mahwah went the whole way with its starting 11.

The Bulldawgs have not lost since the second game of the season when they were defeated, 2-1, by Williamstown. They have won 21 straight since a scoreless tie with Haddon Heights on Sept. 17. The program was co-champions in 1997 after a scoreless tie with Morris Catholic in Group 1, and co-champions again in 2005, this time in Group 2 with Pascack Valley. They won the title outright in Group 2 in 2007 with a 1-0 victory over Pascack Hills. In 2006 River Dell edged Haddonfield in the Group 2 final.

The championship was followed by a Haddonfield tradition – a parade through town and over Kings Highway to the high school with fire engines and a police car escorting the team bus. It sounds hokie and small-town, but having ridden in the parade two of the last three years, I can tell you it’s pure magic. I was amazed at people standing outside their homes on Warwick Road, and along Kings Highway waving to us as the sirens wailed and parents blew their horns. And I saw some young girls in soccer uniforms watching, thinking no doubt, “that will be me some day.”

Some day it will be.