I usually do not comment on current events, but my thoughts turn to the nightmare scenarios we are hearing concerning the sexual abuse allegations against college coaches. When the victims are kids, any abuse seems worse to me. Intentionally doing lasting physical or mental harm to a child is beyond despicable. We, who deal with youth sports, must look after the kids.
Coaches have a special responsibility to protect the children they work with. Parents trust their most precious possession, their child, to us and we are honor bound to help kids, not take advantage of them. Sometimes, we are lucky enough to be considered “second parents” to our players. That speaks of healthy love and respect. Whatever our relationship is with players, we must behave as most medical professionals are charged: “do no harm.”
When I speak to groups of interscholastic coaches, the administrators always want me to stress the moral and ethical aspects of a coach’s job. Not everyone understands that the personal relationships between coaches and players must remain on a professional level. If you ask a young man why he wants to coach football and his answer is, “to get a chance to date a cheerleader,” the warning siren is activated.

The vast majority of parents involved in youth sports try the best they know how to help their children. They want their kids to have fun, learn good character traits and have a positive experience when playing a sport. In the last few years, sport parents have made the news for the wrong reasons: fighting with other parents, verbally and physically abusing officials, harassing coaches and putting too much pressure on their children.
These people are not the majority. They are ones who have lost perspective about what’s important. They’re teaching some very bad lessons, but the bottom line is that they are damaging their children. The “winning at all costs” mentality carries a very high cost indeed. It’s not the parent’s job to endorse that mentality; but to prevent it.

I won’t enumerate all the facets of a youth coach’s job. It would take an entire book and more. I will argue, however, that a coach’s primary job is to teach. No, it is not to win; it is to teach kids how to win. Most of that teaching goes on at practice, and I’m going to focus on just one part of coaching: teaching a skill. If you are new coach or a parent trying to help your child learn, these techniques will help make the teaching easier and more successful. Coaching is harder than it looks.
It should be obvious, but it is real important to be sure you are teaching the right thing! Techniques may be different from when you learned or from what you see at the college or pro level. You can find all kinds of sources to help with what to teach. Books, videos, and clinics are readily available. Assistants and parents should all be teaching the same skill basics. Head coaches should not assume everyone is on the same page. Teach the adults on your team too.

“Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound! Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane It's Superman.” Yes, it's Superman ... strange visitor from another planet who came to Earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men! Superman — who can change the course of mighty rivers, bend steel in his bare hands, and who, disguised as Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper, fights a never-ending battle for truth, justice, and the American way!
Between the radio and later television, I memorized those words at a very early age — not that I tried. Along with the Saturday morning movie serials and the comic books, that radio and TV intro was memorized — without any effort — by all of my playmates. We all followed the exploits of Superman in his “never-ending battle for truth, justice, and the American way.”
Recently, early one morning as I attended to my daily perusal of the nation’s newspapers, it was reported that Superman, the icon of “truth, justice and the American way” for 80 years will be renouncing his American citizenship. The publishers have decided that having Superman fight for “truth, justice and the American way” was offensive to some nations like Iran so the 900th issue of Superman comics will find Superman rushing to the UN to renounce his American citizenship, pledging to fight the good fight on a global scale. Superman even questions his longtime motto. "Truth, justice, and the American way — it's not enough anymore," he states.

Recently I received an e-mail reminding me of a summer I spent in Oregon half a century ago. Fifty years ago, in the summer of 1961, I served as a chaplain and cave guide at Oregon Cave National Park. Four or five times a day, seven days a week, during my three months there, I guided groups of tourists on an hour and a half tour of the cave. It was my job as cave guide to point out stalactite, stalagmite and flowstone formations, fungus and algae, bats and all the other material, plant and animal life in the cave.

Toward the end of the tour, we'd come to a large room -- about one-third the size of a football field. The room was 3,300 feet into the cave (more than a half mile) and 186 feet below the surface of the ground. When everyone was in position in the room, we would turn off the lights and show people what that portion of the cave was really like in its natural condition … in total darkness.