[ARETE] For the love of the game

Mon Aug 24 19:29:53 CDT 2020

All, Please find below and attached Alan Zaremba's review of Jennifer
Etnier's *For the love of the game.*
Thanks
Duncan

Review

*Coaching for the Love of the Game*—Jennifer Etnier.

University of North Carolina Press

Alan Zaremba

Northeastern University

*Coaching for the Love of the Game *is a book for coaches who work with
young athletes.  The author contends that the key to coaching success is
acknowledging that the reason kids play sports is to have fun.
Consequently, that foundational plank should be the basis for all coaching
activities and decisions.

There are several strengths to the book. It is highly readable; addresses
several issues that pertain to coaching; and also discusses matters that
are peripheral to coaching but important nevertheless, like dealing with
different types of parents.  Another value is that the book has interactive
components. Readers are given questions to respond to and there is space in
the book for answers to be written down. While the book is not a workbook,
these fill-in sections require the serious reader to consider and
articulate perspectives on coaching issues.

In addition, the author takes on—head on--right from the beginning the
problematic tendency to judge coaching success on the basis of team wins
and losses.  Dr. Etnier is committed to undermining the notion that winning
is a meaningful criterion for determining coaching success.  The book has
two major components; and one envelopes the other. The over-arching one is
the author’s central argument: “If you want to be a great coach, then it’s
not about your won loss record…Being a great coach requires that you
put…athletes’ development as people above all else when you are working
with them.” The other component of the book includes sections about
coaching perspective and technique that facilitates “putting athletes’
development as people above all else when you are working with them.”

There are parts of the book that could be valuable or at least interesting
for coaches at all levels, but the author directs the book towards youth
coaches, and—it seemed to me--towards those who are just beginning to coach.
It reads a bit like a primer for novices or perhaps a remedial for those
who have had an initial bumpy year or two and need some guidance about how
to proceed.  The chapters dealing with gender differences, young athletes’
parents, and specialization vs. diversification may be particularly helpful.
Also, Dr. Etnier includes activities and drills that may be valuable to
young coaches who are looking for specific ways to improve or restructure
practices.

I have some constructive criticisms.  There are citations to support claims
throughout the book, but the support is spotty.  There are times when
citations are supplied and other times when it is puzzling why one comment
has a citation and other similar comments do not.  In one section about
diversification vs. specialization the author lists Michael Jordan, LeBron
James, Alex Morgan, Annika Sörenstam and Wayne Gretzky as athletes who as
youths pursued multiple sports.  For some reason there is a citation for
the statement about Morgan but nothing for the others.  I’m not sure
Morgan’s activity needs a citation, but if it does so do the others. There
is a very interesting anecdote the author’s dissertation adviser relayed
regarding youngster motivation for participating in sports. However, there
needs to be some evidence provided beyond the anecdote to support the
conclusion the author derives from the anecdote.  Early in the book the
author comments that at a big ten institution only 2 per cent of athletes
earn sports scholarships but 70 percent earn academic scholarships. That
stat seemed particularly odd to me so I went and checked the source cited.
He did indeed make the claim.  However, I went to other sources and
discovered that the 70l% figure is misleading.  It is possible that at some
schools 70% of students or higher get some form of financial aid based on
academic achievement, but this aid could be relatively minor. It is
misleading to suggest that the 2% athletic scholarship stat can be
meaningfully juxtaposed with the alleged 70% who may obtain some support
based on academic achievement.  What might be meaningful to make this point
is a stat regarding the percentage of students on academic scholarships
that are full rides vs the percentage of athletic scholarships that are
full rides. Or the percentage of students on athletic scholarships that
provide for a majority of university costs, vs the percentage of students
on academic scholarships that provide that same or similar amount.

The author is to be commended for taking on squarely what she calls “the
elephant in the room” that is, the idea that winning is central to coaching
success. I can remember as a high school freshman basketball player being
stunned when walking into an away gym’s locker room I saw the oft cited
(and oft misused) Vince Lombardi comment *Winning Isn’t Everything. It’s
the Only Thing* plastered in a huge banner around the entirety of the
locker room.

Winning is, of course, not “the only thing” and promulgating this
philosophy can be detrimental to young athletes’ enjoyment of games.  In
fact, Lombardi did not really mean that winning is the only thing. The
author points this out by citing another quote of Lombardi’s “Winning isn’t
everything, trying to win is everything.”

Dr. Etnier comments that the second quote is a “more suitable mantra” but
her argument throughout the book does not support that “trying to win is
everything.”   She contends that striving to have fun is everything.
Focusing on the love of the game is the only thing.  Yes, defining success
only in terms of winning as opposed to improvement is unhealthy, but it is
natural to be happy when one wins. I walk around the park near my home and
when little leaguers who haul around bats about their own size are
victorious they sure seem happier than those who did not prevail.  It is
natural to enjoy winning and for winning to be a motivator for continued
activity in sports.  Attempting to deprogram that requires walking into a
stiff headwind and, while I liked the book’s approach and consider it to be
a necessary antidote to one dimensional coaching, I think acknowledging the
power of winning toward the end of sports enjoyment needed to be
acknowledged more explicitly.

Overall, the book has merit and I am glad I read it.  There were times when
the tone sounded a bit patronizing as if the readers were the children and
not the coaches of children, but that was not consistent throughout the
book. I think the book will be of value for those who have just started out
and want some ideas about what works to improve coaching and what
facilitates playing and coaching sports for the love of the game.

Remember to smell the roses as you recumber past

Duncan R. Jamieson, Ph. D.
Professor of History
Book Review Editor
*AETHLON: The Journal of Sport Literature*
Ashland University
Ashland, OH  44805
USA
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.ku.edu/pipermail/sport_literature_association/attachments/20200824/c9d13ea5/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Love of  the game.docx
Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document
Size: 16739 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://lists.ku.edu/pipermail/sport_literature_association/attachments/20200824/c9d13ea5/attachment.docx>