Soccer with five-year-olds
POST written BY pastor MATT MCCOY
For the last few weeks, I’ve been writing about the Great Commission, and I’ve translated it as: Wherever you find yourselves, disciple the tribes you find there. Rather than stopping my Normal Life to do the things commanded in my Great Commission Life, I’ve been exploring themes of what this looks like when they’re integrated together. Few things illustrate an integrated life like youth soccer, and I love how youth soccer illustrates how much I have to learn from the youth. I don’t want to be a part of a church that does things FOR the youth, I want to be a part of of a church that does things WITH the youth. I discovered this, in part, while coaching my kids soccer teams. You can find the previous blog posts here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
I coached youth soccer (ages 5-11) for seven years, and as a coach I had about an 85% winning average. I know, I know, youth soccer isn’t about winning, it’s about having fun. And winning is a lot more fun than losing.
In this blog post, I’m going to teach you how to coach 5-11 year olds to have fun and win soccer games, which might seem odd for two reasons:
1. Youth soccer is often one of the most disorganized sports on the planet. Have you ever seen eight 5-year-olds running after a single soccer ball, like a pack of hyenas chasing down a wounded deer? On the face of it, this can feel hopeless. I get it. Stay with me.
2. This is a blog for a church.
But here's the thing: Coaching youth soccer and “walking in the direction Jesus is walking” (our definition of ‘discipleship') is incredibly similar. They are almost the same thing.
Before we begin, you should know that I’m not a soccer player, I’m not an athlete, I’m just a dad who wanted to be involved with my kids. I never really intended to coach soccer. Also, you need to know that I would make a terrible coach for older kids, because I don’t really know how to coach soccer at all. See, I had the opportunity to coach with some amazing youth soccer coaches who knew what they were doing, and I mostly got to draft on their expertise. In Vancouver, I am in debt to Steven Merritt and Hagan Ainsworth, and in Bellingham I owe so much to Jody Mason and Ron Marks. What a joy to get to raise our kids together on the soccer field!
Look, even if you don’t know how to coach soccer at all, it’s ok. At the youth level, everyone just needs to know the same basic stuff (our church calls this ‘common discipleship, but I’m getting ahead of myself). What made me the best soccer coach I could be (which wasn’t great, but good enough) with 5-year-olds was learning how to integrate my Great Commission Life and my Normal Life.
Youth Soccer Principle #1 - There are only three things you can do with the ball: Dribble, pass, and shoot.
That’s it. When a kid has the ball, there is not a fourth item on the agenda. As a kid gets older, and plays on more advanced teams, there are more options. But all soccer players, from the 5-year-old all the way up to Lionel Messi, do these three things all the time. So, when I coached, we would chant “dribble-pass-shoot” all the time, we would run drills that would focus on one of these elements, and I tried to tattoo “dribble-pass-shoot” onto their very souls.
Common Discipleship Principle #1 - All Christians everywhere are invited into three things: a life with scripture, a life with prayer, and a life with the church.
This is where it all begins. These three things. As a Christian gets older, there are more options. But all Christians, from the youngest to the oldest, do these three things all the time. And, it seems, God wants to tattoo this on our souls, too:
Deuteronomy 6:6-9:
Write these commandments that I’ve given you today on your hearts. Get them inside of you and then get them inside your children. Talk about them wherever you are, sitting at home or walking in the street; talk about them from the time you get up in the morning to when you fall into bed at night. Tie them on your hands and foreheads as a reminder; inscribe them on the doorposts of your homes and on your city gates.
Question: Wait a sec. I’m a Christian, but I don’t really have a life with scripture, and I don’t really care much about church. My prayers aren’t an actual “two-way, reorienting conversation with God.” Can I still be a Christian if I don’t do some of those three things?
Answer: Of course you can! Hey, can a kid be on a soccer team without dribbling, passing or shooting? Of course! I’ve coached soccer games where it felt like nobody on the field was dribbling, passing or shooting. The kids who are doing their own thing might be having a great experience as they run around without dribbling, passing, and/or shooting, but they are missing out on the experience of playing soccer. You might be having a great experience in life without prayer, scripture, and/or church, but you are missing out on the essence of the Christian life.
Youth Soccer Principle #2 - Everyone has a position, and everyone is in their position.
Most five-year-old kids start their first day of practice thinking, “I must run after the ball the entire time and see how hard I can kick it.” Sure, there are some kids who are scared, and some who don't care. And, invariably, there’s the kid who accidentally gets knocked down into the mud (I’ve accidentally knocked over more than kid, tragically enough). However, most kids show up on Day One with an unhelpful definition of success: Run after the ball and kick the ball as hard as I can. This definition of success does not even include other people OR the direction the ball should be kicked (ideally, in the opponent’s goal). Just running and kicking. Simple, yet unhelpful.
By the end of the first year we want to have a definition of success that sounds more like: working as a team to get the ball into the opponent’s goal.
Have you ever tried to prove to a five-year-old that standing in their position can actually be more fun than running wherever the ball bounces?
That’s what practice is all about.
It takes a lot of discipline to not do what feels good in a particular moment, it takes a lot of trust that the other teammates are working together, and it takes a lot of time to learn that there is a common goal we are all working towards. We make a lot of mistakes along the way, but the mistakes are often hilarious, and we learn to trust each other and enjoy being with each other as we do it.
Helping a kid to enjoy playing a specific position, because they want to help the team get the ball into the opponent’s goal, is a beautiful and slow process. This usually takes about a year.
Discipleship Principle #2 - Everyone has a vocation, and everyone is in their vocation.
Some people struggle with comparison, wishing their life was more like someone else’s life. Some people struggle with shame, wishing their life was different. Some people struggle with anger, wishing that the world around us was better. Many of us show up to life with an unhelpful definition of success.
Have you ever tried to live into your vocation rather than running wherever the wind blows? And I have a very broad understanding of vocation here: The person with severe mental disabilities, the person with dementia, the infant, and the teenager all have a vocation. I love the way John Swinton defines vocation: “To participate faithfully in God’s providential movement toward and within creation: to find your place in God’s time.” (John Swinton, Becoming Friends with Time, p. 16). It takes a lot of discipline to not do what feels good in a particular moment, it takes a lot of trust that the church is working together, and it takes a lot of time to learn that there is a common goal we are all working towards.
Helping each other enjoy our own vocation, because we want to walk towards the goal of holiness, is a beautiful and slow process. This will take our entire lives.
Youth Soccer Principle #3 - Don’t pay attention to the ball and don’t yell at the kid with the ball; help the kids without the ball to stay in position and follow the ball out of the corner of your eye.
Have you ever thought about what goes on inside a five-year-old brain when they finally get the ball? They freak out. They panic. Whatever cognitive abilities they had have disappeared, and in that moment they have to rely on whatever impulses they possess. Well, and whatever light influence their coaching and practice they’ve retained, which points them toward teamwork, trust, and the opponent’s goal.
If your days of coaching youth soccer are ahead of you, and you only remember one thing from this blog, remember this: Don’t yell at the kid with the ball. People on the sidelines spend entire Saturday mornings yelling things that no five-year-old could ever integrate into their panic-soaked brains when the have the ball: “Shoot!” “Pass!” “Find the open player!” Or my personal favorite: “Spread out!” Even at a barbecue on a lovely summer evening, kids don’t know how to spread out. Everywhere they go, they pile on top of each other like the hilarious puppies they are.
In fact, you don’t have to pay attention to the ball at all. If you look at the ball, and you really don’t need to, just do it out of the corner of your eye. Ignoring your impulse to yell nonsense, simply talk to the kids who don’t have the ball. Those kids are calm, and they can have a conversation with you because they don’t remember they’re playing a soccer game and have probably started looking for cool bugs in the grass anyway. The time to tell a kid what to do when they get the ball is now, before the ball comes their way.
A very common game day conversation between me and a kid on the field-
Me: “What position are you in?”
Kid: “I don’t know.”
Me: “You’re playing defense right now. Can you point to where, on the field, the defender should be standing?”
Kid: Looking around. “I give up. Where?”
Me: “Over there, in front of our goalie. As you go there, what will you do when the ball comes your way?”
Kid: “Boot it as hard as I can!”
Me: “What are the three things you can do with the ball?”
Kid: “Dribble-pass-shoot! Oh, I can pass the ball.”
Coaching youth soccer is finding joy in having this conversation over and over again.
Discipleship Principle #3 - Don’t give advice to the person going through a crisis, but stay with the person in crisis. Help the church members stay in their vocations, and pay attention to what the Spirit is doing.
Have you ever tried to introduce a new spiritual practice to someone going through a crisis? It usually doesn’t work. Usually, when we are going through a crisis, we freak out. We panic. Whatever cognitive abilities we have just disappear, and in that moment we have to rely on whatever spiritual practices we’ve already cultivated.
As the church comes around people in crisis, we bring who we are and our vocations to those people and places. I can be tempted to step outside my vocation and become a hero, and I’ve seen others be tempted to step outside their vocations and become withdrawn, or fearful, or something other what what God is calling us to be in God’s time. We remind each other of who we are and whose we are, and we pay attention to what the Spirit is doing in the broken places in our lives. The time to cultivate spiritual practices is before the crisis comes.
In this analogy, we’re all the 5-year-olds, and we’re getting yelled at ALL THE TIME by all sorts of voices. And I’ve found that the unhelpful voices around me are much weaker than the unhelpful voices inside me. As I run around on this youth soccer field we call Life, my spiritual practices of prayer, scripture and the life of the Church help me stay in my vocation, delight in the life Jesus has given me, and trust my friends even when I’d rather run around screaming and kicking. But, honestly, my first impulse when I’m in a crisis is to “boot it” away from me, rather than “prayer-scripture-church,” and I need my community to remind me of who I am. And, just as I was the youth soccer player who would play with the flowers, I still get distracted in life.
And so I come back to a life with prayer, a life with scriptures, and a life with my uncommon friends who are called out to worship Jesus. Our common discipleship, which is walking in the direction Jesus is walking, is finding joy in cultivating these practices over and over again.