Ex-Celt offers youth sports solutions

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BREWER – Imagine a youth sports system in which the next Michael Jordan goes undiscovered.

Instead of lighting up NBA arenas and rewriting record books, he becomes an accountant and a men’s league basketball star in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Now imagine a father and part-time Little League coach who believes the best years of his sports life were in middle school and his son is the next Pedro Martinez.

It’s not hard for public speaker and former Boston Celtic Bob Bigelow to imagine either scenario.

Bigelow spoke before a small crowd of parents, coaches, and youth league volunteers and officials at the Brewer Auditorium Tuesday night to educate parents about the dangers of overemphasizing competiton and winning in youth sports.

It was one of 300 or so talks he has conducted since 1988, when he realized he was trying to teach the pick-and-roll to fifth-graders much too young to understand its concept.

The presentation, sponsored by both the Bangor and Brewer Parks and Recreation Departments, certainly didn’t sugarcoat some of the more unsavory aspects of youth sports competition, but Bigelow doesn’t care how people perceive his message. He’s out to win converts, not fans.

“Some of you may not like everything I have to say,” Bigelow said. “But we’re emphasizing the wrong things in youth soccer, baseball, football, hockey… whatever. And it needs to change.”

Bigelow’s point is children are being driven away from team sports at too young an age because of a heavy emphasis on competition, winning games, and picking the best teams.

“The biggest problem in youth sports is rating kids way too early,” said Bigelow. “Projecting a child’s athletic ability before they reach puberty is meaningless.”

To buttress his point, Bigelow told a story:

“When I was in junior high, I knew a kid who was the best 12-year-old athlete on the planet. Not only that, he had a natural aptitude for music, he was smart and he was handsome, so all the girls loved him, and he even shaved.

“He kicked our butts in every sport. But by high school, some of us had caught up and gone past him. Now we were kicking his butt. I didn’t start playing organized basketball until my freshman year in high school, and I became a first round NBA draft pick [No. 13 overall] eight years later.”

Bigelow offered other examples:

A 5-foot-9 high school sophomore is cut from the varsity team in 1978. Three years later, that same student has grown eight inches and is widely considered an NBA-caliber player. That player was Michael Jordan.

A high-schooler doesn’t play varsity ball, but grows 10 inches in two years and lands a college scholarship because he’s 6-8. That player goes on to lead the University of San Francisco to 56 straight victories and two national championships, and the Boston Celtics to 11 world titles in 13 years. His name is Bill Russell.

Despite not having played a single game of basketball before turning 18, Hakeem Olajuwon becomes a college star and future NBA Hall-of-Famer.

Seven-time NBA rebounding leader Dennis Rodman never played organized basketball until age 21.

Flamethrowing Houston Astros reliever Billy Wagner goes from 5-3 and 130 pounds at his high school graduation to 5-11 with a 100-miles-per-hour fastball in two years.

What does it all mean?

“The vast majority of our superstar athletes are late bloomers,” Bigelow said simply. “So how can you justify cutting kids from teams when they’re 9, 10, 11 years old?”

That said, Bigelow offered some solutions or “prescriptions,” as he calls them, for youth sports. Some of them, he admits, are “fantasy prescriptions:”

No travel, select, or all-star team selections should be allowed until seventh grade.

Coaches must a) have infinite patience, b) like kids, c) be able to act like the kids they’re coaching, d) avoid becoming obsessed with their own coaching competence.

Coaches should switch teams at halftime to take ego and winning out of the equation.

People on the sidelines who are not smiling 90 percent of the time should leave.

Conduct blind drafts so ultra-more competitive coaches are unable to load their teams with talent and create an unbalanced league.

Failing all that, Bigelow has another, simpler formula for any adult involved in youth sports.