I was writing an email to my soccer team on the Friday
before Halloween and I was having fun with the words because in reality I was
very frustrated. I didn't want the email to be filled with a negative energy
and so I attempted to be funny and hoped that my teammates would enjoy it. That
did nothing of course to resolve the source of my frustration: how to motivate
a group of adults to improve their participation and involvement within the team.
Adults have many conflicting priorities that can and will take ascendency over
attending a scheduled practice. Finding/paying for childcare, attending classes
and professional development events, work shifts and self-care particularly as
age slows down recovery times. The difficulty, as it was pointed out to me, is
managing expectations.
My expectation when joining the soccer team was that the
time commitment was two days a week: one game on a weekend and practices on
Mondays. During my time with an adult team we have never had the full roster
show up for games or for practices. Indeed, we would not really want a full
roster to turn up for a game since we’d have a lot of time managing
substitutions with a full team on the bench and on the field. The need for that
large a roster of course is due to the schedules of adults who are recreational
athletes. Particularly when the season runs from September through all the rain
Vancouver can throw at us till March. The conditions however, should come as no
surprise to anyone who does anything outside in the fall/winter months of the
Pacific Northwest.
So we come to expectations. We have accepted players on the
team who are unable to attend practices due to other commitments because we
need the numbers for games as the weather and time wears down our attendance
numbers. This is a compromise that we have decided to make as a team in order
to play games. So an expectation is established that for some members of the
team, practice is optional. There are also players who must work or attend
classes or have no childcare, obviously they are unable to come to practice so
it is once again optional. At this point, how much of the team has been told
practice is optional? Perhaps a third.
Then we come to new players who are available – keen to get
back into the game and perhaps also use the sport as a portion of their
personal fitness regime. These players come out to practice and make it fit
into their schedules for perhaps a few weeks. And then the consistently low
numbers reduce that enthusiasm and they begin to look for other means to
maintain their fitness. Or perhaps they begin to make plans on the date of
practice assuming that it will be cancelled. Now another third of the team
believes that practice is optional.
Even so, with our roster of twenty-four this should leave us
with the meagre eight we have set as our minimum to hold a practice. Yet that
does not account for an incidental illnesses, last minute work projects or
injuries from the prior weekend’s games. In the end we have three or four
individuals who make the time to participate in practice.
If we were to use negative consequences for poor attendance,
such as the common linking of game time to attendance at practices, we’d run
the risk of being unable to field a full team. Also, these consequences could
not be applied universally as it would be unfair to punish those whose
work/school/childcare schedules cannot be changed. Our team is not a
competitive team – we are in one of lowest tiers of the league. Some may expect
that a recreational team will not always or may never hold practices but there
are other leagues which are strictly recreational with only games.
The first positive reinforcement that I thought of was
something straight from third grade – an ice cream social. Which probably isn't
very motivating for adults so then I thought perhaps a few drinks covered by
the team budget for those who regularly attended a set percentage of practices
and games. However not everyone likes to drink and I wouldn't want to put
pressure on folks for whom this in not a good fit.
In reality, such a “prize”
isn't the motivator that I am looking for. We need to address team expectations
and also what the players ultimately want to get out of being a part of the
team. It makes me think of what my friend Jean, a certified life coach, is
always asking – where do you find your joy? I think there has to be a
meaningful conversation had with everyone on the team about what they want to
get out of our team. And a part of that conversation has to be a reflection on
whether we are a team that practices or a team that doesn't. If it is the
latter then we don’t need to throw away a quarter of the fall budget on a
resource we don’t use. The practice pitch we have, while gravel, is still not
free and becomes more expensive the less we use it.
Of course, I'm doubtful that we could gather the team
together for such a conversation so I think that the best bet will be an
anonymous survey. It would allow people to speak their minds freely without
concern that there will be negative repercussions towards anything reported. There
needs to be a metacognitive approach to the questions so that people take them
seriously and hopefully it will promote more honest and thoughtful responses.
Why do you play soccer?
How do you perform differently when taking part of a team
sport or a solo sport?
What qualities does a good team exhibit?
What do you like best about playing with our team?
What do you like least about playing with our team?
If there was one thing you could change about the team,
what would it be?
What is a reasonable expectation for player attendance at
games? At practices?
What would motivate you to attend more practices?
What would motivate you to attend more practices?
What do you want to achieve at practices?
I think I’ll try answering these questions later and see
if in so doing, I can refine them or find other questions that might be more
appropriate.
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