Let Them Off The Hook...

 Our lives are mired in prediction.

Open your eyes in the morning and the shower radio will estimate your drive to work based on previous days models, the weather and the day. And speaking of the weather, perhaps rain in the afternoon, so dress accordingly. Suddenly a text from the office: the boss might be in today so please make sure you have your reports up to date. Before you have left the house, you are already draped in predications that will dictate your day.  Of course, the ONLY thing we know about predictions is sometimes they are right, sometimes they are wrong.

Turn on the news and for the past six months, everyone with a pulse will tell you who will win the 2024 presidential election and by how much. Who will win the World Series? There are thousands who want to tell you who will win and many thousands still that want you to bet your daughter's college tuition on it. Before the NBA season's first jump ball, sports betting wants you to lay down your paycheck on who you think will be the Rookie of the Year and here are the names THEY think will be in the race for that award. Wait...what?

We have gotten lost between reality and the fantasy world of prediction and it has spread to our young athletes.

On August 12th, the Florida State Seminole football team was ranked #10 in the country. Let's  be clear, there was no preseason tournament to give FSU a solid footing at #10, this was prediction. From sports writers, from media and social media posts. From perhaps players and coaches in interviews. Regardless of the stimuli, FSU was a top 10 national powerhouse on August 12th.

Then they lost their first two games. 

One month later, the folks that bet on them, based on other's predictions, now called for the coach to be fired. They were the biggest disappointment in college football, the most underwhelming team of the season. 

Tragically what is lost amongst this hyperbole is the simple fact that sometimes predictions are right, and sometimes they're wrong. It doesn't seem like FSU was as good a football team as people predicted, but rather than admit their faulty predictions, sports writers, pundits, bettors and bookmakers turned their wrath onto a coach and a group of eighty 18-23 year olds. 

In 2012, a prognosticator named Nate Silver predicted the presidential election state by state: 50 for 50! He was  a genius. Four years later, he posted on his new prediction website fivethirtyeight, the following:

Excuses, misinformation and humility in hand, Nate Silver tumbled back to earth.

ESPN, which used to be a sports network showing different sports and games for 18-20 hours a day now broadcasts a game or two each day- maybe, using the rest of their airtime for prognosticators, prediction and advice to gamblers. Some of the content will be right, some will be wrong. But as long as the public consumes these opinions, don't look for the network to go back to broadcasting sports anytime soon on their main channel.

There are some "rules" that we, as sports fans, know. First, no matter what we think, sports are random. Half of teams win and half of teams lose  and that is the only certainty we can count on. Even sports that allow ties will have teams helped and hurt by the outcome.

At the root of a lot of this crystal ball gazing is the growth in online sports gambling, a prediction that was easy to see coming. But the speed of which it is growing is staggering. It is estimated by 2029, the total revenue of online gambling will exceed $65b from over 180 million users. It's no wonder websites, tv networks and prognosticators alike want a piece of this cash cow. And thus we see ESPN go from a sports network to one of prediction, criticism when they are wrong and gloating when they get one right!

Often, the person giving you their prediction isn't qualified. There are some excellent TV hosts who have never played the sport they are reporting on, never been in the locker room or chatted with a coach or players, and yet they are deemed the "expert" because they have the one quality the networks put above all others...they are good on TV!

Our Arizona Region, like so many others, will put together a seeding committee to place teams where they think they should be for the upcoming season. It's a small group who have no way of knowing all 13,000 members of our Arizona Region, who all the coaches are, which clubs are new, etc. They have only the self prediction of the team's coach or club director to base their information on. To no one's surprise, it is an imperfect science. And yet every season, Parents and coaches will use these anemic predictions to label their teams' seasons successful or disappointing.

Can we all agree that this is just wreckless and without merit?

Walk into a National Qualifier this season and listen to Parents talk about their son's team and the other teams in his pool. They talk as if they have been hired by the Youth Volleyball Network. "We shouldn't have any trouble with this team, they are small and their setter can't block." And when the final whistle blows and they do lose,  instinctively the coach doesn't know what he's doing, the players didn't try or work hard enough, the officials wanted the other team to win, etc. All of this vitriol because we can't reconcile that our predictions are just that: a guess!

The tidal wave that is sports gambling and prediction is too seismic to thwart. It will be with us forever. Too many names are made with the outlandish prediction that comes true, (never mind the sweeping under the field of the dozens they missed). This isn't a call to disarm those with the microphones to start doing their jobs and actually dig, find and report true news stories: the advent of social media has left that in the rearview in the early 2000's. 

But let's let kids off the hook. Let games be played, appreciate the effort and growth and the fun they re having. There is plenty of time to make them the bullseye of misinformed rhetoric by those with oversized vocal chords or a large microphone at their disposal.

Your athletes don't deserve to be favorites or underdogs. They don't deserve the added pressure of odds in or out of their favor. 

They just deserve to be young athletes learning a sport. Please...

Opportunities Lost...

She stood there listening intently. Granted, it was spoken in English and she was not, but a team of translators got the point across. Game like training! Don't waste valuable practice time on things that will have NO transfer to the game of volleyball. 

She was a former professional club coach who had years of experience. And she nodded enthusiastically as the conversation encompassed practice: drill design, warm ups, transfer, engagement and retention. She looked like she understood!

When the clinic ended and her U18 girls team took the court, she instructed them on their warm up. And 15 girls grabbed a volleyball and began to dribble it as they ran around the court several times. The athletes, just following orders, seemed unengaged and for sure had done this warm up before.

Opportunity lost.

How about the pickleball instructor at the indoor facility in the west valley. What a gig! With your pink shoes displaying your brand, you have 8 kids, ages 7-12 maybe and teach them a sport that they can play with their parents for years to come. 

And how did pink shoes start practice?

First, of course, they ran around the facility. Jogging a few times around 12 or so courts when the actual pickleball court is the size of a large dining room table seemed to be overkill but it took 10 minutes of his one hour of lesson time. 

Next, he put cones down the middle of one side of the court, and with the kids standing on the sidelines, shuffled to the cones, touching the top and shuffling back. Over and over. Then they stood the other direction to make sure they were shuffling from both sides of their bodies.

The time at the end of this "warm up" was 19 after the hour. As we left, there was still not a single racquet or pickleball taken out or on the court.

Opportunity lost.

There is no telling how many kids will go through these worthless practice session and realize that pickleball is  not the game for them. ALL because a coach doesn't understand simple skill acquisition! 

Dear Parents. How are you okay with this? How are you good with a coach who uses 1/3 of the hour YOU are paying handsomely for to reinforce movements that quite simple could be better transferred and retained if done within a game like scenario? How is this okay?

Parents will complain of having to drive 45 minutes to a tournament to watch their daughter play, but they are okay getting ripped off by coaches pretending to be good trainers yet NOT training the game they are being paid for?

Parents, hold your coaches accountable! Learn more about how athletes acquire skill. Look into the ideas of motor learning and ask lots of questions. You may find those club dues you have worked so hard for have gone to waste with a coach who is pulling his drills off of Instagram and has no concept of how to actually train a sport.

Coaches, when will you stop following the path of dependency, doing what YOUR coach did to you training, practice and discipline wise because it is the easiest road to travel? What has to click in you that if you are asking your athletes to come out of their comfort zones, to try new things, to fail and learn, why are you taking the hypocrite's way and doing just the opposite?

For parents and coaches that fall under these categories, your young athletes will be the ones that pay the price. Maybe quitting the sport, maybe never reaching their potential, maybe both.

Opportunity Lost.

Stewie, Rafi and three in between....

As new books, new research and more podcasts pop up, there are even more great quotes from people way smarter than us. Take a look at what grabbed our attention the last couple of weeks.

Dr. Michael Gervais is a successful author, podcaster, speaker and of course high performance sports psychologist. Here, Dr. Mike talks about the five psychological skills he works with his athletes and clients on.

"So there's a whole process to better understand who you are. What is the vision of a compelling future? What are your first principles? Can you articulate your purpose? And so there's a self discovery process that's the first thing, The second is there are very clear mental skills that you can train, just like you train your physical body. You can train your these mental skills. It's kind of sets and reps, if you will. So, deep focus, being calm, confident. Those are a handful of the big ones that we would train. Then there's the third component, the third factor, if you will, which is psychological frameworks. So developing your psychological framework, are you optimistic or pessimistic? Do you approach success or avoid failure? Do you see things as an opportunity or a threat? Have you mastered or are you mastering the ability to control what's in your control? Have you a deep framework to understand how to live with passion in any environment, not just the ones that are easy? I love playing the guitar, but I also need to have passion in other parts of my life as well. So understanding how to do that with a sense of resilience or grit. And and then there's a whole set of recovery practices. Those are also skills that you can build, and it's the basic ones everyone knows, but it's just making sure that they hold a seat at the table of high performance. And then the last is the concept of mindfulness. So mindfulness is the golden thread that runs through everything. It is a skill, it is a state of being, and over time, it is an enduring trait. And mindfulness is the practice of being a bit more aware so that you can live in the present moment more often. And the present moment is where all the psychological skills are trained and expressed and that's where everything amazing takes place."

New York Liberty All Star Breanna Stewart had her chances in game one of the WNBA finals v. the Minnesota Lynx. But in the closing minutes, Stewie missed a couple of open shots and a free throw which would have put the Liberty up late in the game. 

Stewart said after the game, “I want to be taking these shots. I feel like knowing my teammates and that everyone has confidence in me is important. It’s kind of like on to the next and still making sure I’m aggressive any time on the court. Obviously as a player, it’s very frustrating. But bounce back for Game 2.”

It's a standard athlete trope, bounce back for game two. But the reality is, what good is it to dwell on what has happened in the past? Learn from it, be better going forward. Sports writers and pundits eviscerated Stewart but she is at the elite end of her sport for a reason. Sometimes they go in, sometimes they don't. Winning and losing is random and your job, as an athlete, is to be ready the next time you are put into that situation with your body, mind and heart. While no one here is a prognosticator, don't be surprised to see Stewart rise to the occasion in game two.

"I think that feeling is that idea to trust your discomfort. I'm in this situation right now and I'm uncomfortable, and I've just got to find a way to articulate for myself why it's making me uncomfortable and why I need to make a change, and hopefully, the act of making change is the antidote to that discomfort and anxiety. Now, do you know that that change will be successful? you have no idea. But the act of doing it teaches you in some respect, that you are not a prisoner of your circumstance, your situation, any of those things. Your fate has not been written."

Actor, comedian John Stewart explains on a podcast how he deals with the idea of handling adversity. His idea of trusting discomfort is a staple of what great coaches ask of their athletes.

Dr. Keith Davids is a pioneer in Motor Learning and Skill Acquisition circles and he was asked about how weight lifters learn technique using Ecological Dynamics.

One of the things I'm really interested in now is that understanding has important implications for the way that we practice. Practice is not blind repetition, automatization of a movement or a technique that's been handed down. I saw somebody perform that way and it was great, and I want to replicate that. That's not how athletes should function. It's really about getting them to understand, how do they achieve their intended task goal which is to lift the bar with a certain weight above their head and the elbow joints have to reveal a certain angle, but they've just sort of slipped a bit of the conscious move so the way they address the environment is different when you're just repeating, rehearsing and complying with a movement pattern that you've got in your mind, compared to you actively engaging with the environment and interacting with these weights."

And finally, this week one of tennis' legends announced his retirement at the end of the 2024 season. Rafael Nadal has been at the top of his sport for 20 years and in this quote from USOC Sport Psychologist Peter Haberl, you might understand why Nadal was so consistently good for so long.

"When you hear him after the first round, and he's being asked about his opponent the next round, in the second round, his answer is very consistent. 'It's a test and will be the toughest match ever.' And in a third round, 'This should be the toughest match ever.' And to a fourth round, 'Toughest match ever.' In qualifying, 'Toughest match ever.' He's trying to find the toughest match ever. And what that tells me is, by approaching it that way, he never falls into the trap of thinking things will be easy. And then when they're hard, not being able to adjust to that. So, once he expects things to be difficult, he'll come fully prepared. And that way, he's never surprised by an opponent."