How to handle youth sports playing time

Somewhere around the second inning, or the end of the first quarter, you look down at the lineup card and start doing math in your head. Who sat last week. Who's already sat twice today. Whether the kid who can really hit is due up while the game's still close. You'd never say any of it out loud.

Have a written policy

Every youth coach wrestles with this. Creating a playing time policy is deciding to quit running those numbers in your head and put them on paper, where a parent can read them. The challenge is that nobody agrees on what the numbers should add up to. Equal minutes for everybody? More for the kids who work the hardest? More for the best kids? It depends on how old the players are, what your league requires, and what the families thought they signed up for. I can tell you how I'd weigh it.

Understand the rulebook

Most leagues have a minimum requirement for playing time. It beats whatever you write, and a surprising number of coaches have never opened it.

The floors vary a lot. Little League's regular-season mandatory play rule requires every player to take the field for six defensive outs and bat at least once. AYSO's Everyone Plays philosophy sets a floor of 50 percent of every game. Travel ball operates on a competition driven philosophy where the best players play, period. Those are different promises, and none of them are "equal."

At the end of the day, you can fall back on the rulebook to let parents know what they signed up for in that league. Obviously, our desire as coaches is to see every player thrive and contribute in every game, but that simply is not the real world.

Understand your team

Say you coach a rec team of five-year-olds. Half of them can't tell you the score, and one is picking dandelions in right field. Equal time is easy here.

Now say you coach a travel team of eleven-year-olds who tried out, whose families drive an hour each way, and who know the score all too well. This is harder, and I won't pretend otherwise. Equal minutes can cost you games, and some of those families will feel cheated. Earned time can cost you the kid at the back of the lineup who works hard and never gets a shot. There isn't an easy option, so you have to do the best you can.

For the teams somewhere in the middle, if you're in a competitive league with younger kids that are still developing, this can be even more tricky. This is where things get philosophical.

Winning vs. having fun

So why are we out here? To win? Or to sit in a circle and sing Kumbaya? Honestly, both. It's okay to want to win. It's okay to play to win. And you can still have fun while you do it. The question is how.

You get there by developing players. Every practice and every drill is a chance for a kid to get better, and the goal is to build every player into someone who can really help the team. If we're not working toward that, we're not doing our job.

Does that mean we toss kids into spots where they're going to fail? No. We look for the spot where they can succeed. Maybe it's left field, where the ball doesn't come very often, but the kid is still part of the game. Maybe it's a role that doesn't take a ton of skill but still helps the team win. We get as many kids in the game as we can, just not at the cost of the team. The best players will usually be out there when the game is on the line. That's the real world. But every kid on your roster still gets your attention and your effort, and we help each one get a little better however we can.

The complaint is coming, so be ready for it

Sooner or later a parent is going to be upset about playing time. Maybe it's about Saturday, maybe about three Saturdays ago. The best time to get ready for that conversation is before the season, when nobody's mad.

Put your policy on paper and keep it short. Say how playing time works, what the league requires, and that the league's rules win if they ever differ from yours. Equal time fits a rec team of young kids. Earned time, with the specifics spelled out, fits an older or selective team. Read it out loud at the parent meeting, take questions once, and hand everybody a copy.

Add one more rule: if a parent has a question about their child's time, they wait 24 hours after the game before bringing it to you. Coaches skip this one, and it does the most work. As tired as you are, as hot as it is, as sore as you are about the loss, nothing good comes out of a parking lot argument.

When the conversation does come, stay calm and keep it about their child. Call them the next day and stick to facts: minutes played, attendance, what you've seen at practice. Leave out feelings, and leave out comparisons to other kids. Offer one meeting about their child, and don't discuss anybody else's time. If they keep pushing, go back to the policy.

There are no easy answers, and every team is different. But lean on your league's rules, set clear expectations before the first game, and keep working to develop every player on your roster, and you'll be ready for whatever comes your way. Then on Saturday the lineup card is just a lineup card, and you get to go coach.

Sources

• Aspen Institute national survey of youth and sports: 15 key findings
• Why Project Play recommends equal playing time for kids
• Good youth coaches get players into the game (USA Football blog, tips from Positive Coaching Alliance)
• Little League: Mandatory play, what parents need to know
• AYSO: Six Philosophies