Structured play

Don't get me wrong with this post. I am an advocate of unstructured play time for kids as much as the other. Growing up, my small little life was full of unstructured play. Whether I was stranded on a deserted island or kicking around a football in the front yard or racing straws in the gutter after it rained, I was often left to my own devices, along with friends, to create games and rules etc. However, I also had a lot of structured play time in the form of organized sports and I think that structure and organization allowed my unstructured play be, well, more structured and I guess fair to all parties involved. I learned how to play on a team, make decisions with respect to those playing with me etc. That is the importance of structured and organized sports. I was working at the Sidi Moumen Cultural Center this morning. I work there every Sunday morning, running the local sports program for the center. We work with about 100 kids, splitting them up into football, lacrosse, field hockey and basketball. We were a bit short on volunteers today so we had to make due, meaning we had to let some groups play among themselves without a supervisor, an older member of the association or a coach watching them. This group was the boys football. First the older boys played and were for the most part fine. They could referee among themselves and decide who made the foul etc. Then the younger boys took the field. By younger boys, I mean between 7-14 years old. I was trying to get an organized game going so I could leave them to play while I went back to the girls when I realized that this would be impossible. They not only would not listen but started fighting among eachother, lying about who had already played, forming clicks and picking on others, crying, hitting, punching and throwing rocks. I just stood there imagining that this is how they play with eachother in the street and probably at school to. This is how they had learned how to play. That is when it dawned on me the importance of a coach, a mentor, a structure to play. The lessons that sports teach are for the most part apparent but I have also realized that they are not embedded or found naturally in the act of playing. They must be taught, shown. Playing a game or a sport can just as well teach the stronger to pick on the weaker or the more skilled to ignore the less skilled as it can teach collaboration, respect and fair play. Another testament to the importance of organized sports for young children growing up in environments where everything else around them is a little less structured. I am mostly speaking about lower income neighborhoods where the sports field might be the only place that these lessons are taught or the only place where there is a definite structure to their lives.

Needless to say, I put the boys onto teams, 4v4, let them play 10 minute games and then told them to stop acting like little children and go home to eat lunch. I am also not saying this behavior is specific to boys. Girls are just as guilty. Perhaps in slightly other ways. There is less physical violence and more just not listening and talking and giving up or throwing of tantrums but the general idea is the same.