The challenge of the littlest athlete

If you have children, there are many rites of passage you must pass through as they grow.

It begins with walking and talking and in the blink of an eye, your toddler is getting his driver's license.

Somewhere in between those two stages, many parents encounter another inevitable step in the growing-up process: Coaching their small child plus a dozen other children of the same age and attention span.

Personally, all parents should be required to coach their own child at least once during the childhood years rather than just being the parent who provides snacks. Not only will this eliminate the desperate need for youth coaches, but all parents would then have a better comprehension of what the coach goes through during a typical sports season.

After all, ask any coach of youth sports what the most difficult aspect of the game is and the reason will vary from learning the basics to keeping the kids' attention. But always near the top of the list will be dealing with the parents.

If coaches were able to work with just the kids and avoid the parents, the entire process would be a lot easier. But since parents provide the kids to be coached, they'll always be involved and will be another variable of the game just like field conditions, the weather, the all-important color of the T-shirts.

While most people limit themselves to coaching the age group of their own child, it is possible to coach teams which are older or younger than your own children -- or don't even involve your own child.

Since I'm blessed with children in a variety of age levels, I like to stick with the kids in the lower age groups.

There are advantages to coaching the older grades. They generally know where first base is located, can remember which direction they are headed on the field and they have watched enough sports on TV to have a general comprehension of the game. But at some point as the young athletes advance in age, volunteer coaches come to the game with a disadvantage: The young players know more about the game than the coaches and are better at the game. That's when the coach returns to the younger levels.

It's true that a coach of the younger kids has to start with the basics that many people may take for granted such as the placement of first base (third base always looks more appealing right after batting), the direction of our team's soccer goal (just point them in the right direction and they'll figure it out), or that the ball isn't allowed to touch the ground once, much less three or four times, before going back over the net in volleyball.

But if a coach can grab their attention in at least 30-second blocks, younger kids will at least pretend like they are listening. If the coach tells them to run a lap, the kids think it is a fun game, not a punishment.

And the younger athletes don't think they know everything about the game -- at least not yet.

Finally, as anyone who has coached small children knows, preparation for the season involves learning the game, explaining the basic rules and copying the game schedule. But the young team is not truly ready until one final task is complete: The snack schedule.

Forgetting the snack schedule is taboo and I learned this the hard way. I actually coached youth sports the first time when I was pregnant with my first child, so I hadn't yet had the experience with the required snacks. Only during the last practice before the first game did a mother ask me when she was scheduled to bring snacks.

Little did I realize that I would have a mutiny on my hands if the kids didn't have a juice box and crackers waiting for them on the sidelines after they had completed their "Good Game" handshakes with the other team. The sole motivation for some young athletes are those fruit chews after the game.

Now, the first thing I do with the team schedule is mark down who is bringing snacks. Better to head of any controversy at the beginning of the season rather than invite trouble by not having Little Debbie snack cakes.

***

On a completely separate note, a rarity happened Thursday night: I stayed up past dark, long enough to catch "Headlines" on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Of course, the show was a rerun from early May, but that segment of the program doesn't date itself.

As anyone who has seen the program knows, viewers send in quirky headlines, questionable photos, suggestive engagement announcements, etc.

One of the clippings (re)broadcast was from a police log for a "chicken at large."

Now, I'm not positive, but the typeface, the style, the South U.S. Highway 83 in the preceding and following en-tries all looked very familiar.

I have no idea whether the Gazette ran an entry on a chicken running amok be-cause I'll be the first to admit that I don't read the police log every day, but I would love to know if someone from the area is also a fan of the "Headlines" and is always on the lookout for something to send in.

-- Ronda Graff is correct; the "chicken at large" entry was from the Gazette's "On The Record" earlier this year.