Great Players – or Dominant Players?

Most pre-adolescent sports teams have a man in them. Or a woman.  The early maturing child who is bigger, faster and more powerful than anyone else.  Those teams that don’t have one are destined to a weekly diet of trauma at the hands of the teams that do. 

The man-child is the enemy of competitiveness in children’s sport, typically up to about the age of 14, when maturity evens it all out and changes the landscape.  Until then, the giant player enjoys undue advantage and dominates all before him.  He scores five tries every week in a Rugby match - a where his advantage is perhaps greatest. However, early maturing girls hit Hockey balls harder, score four goals every week or dominate the scoring in a Netball match.  The influence of these children is not just in winter games. In the summer term, they bowl faster and hit Rounders and Cricket balls harder and further.  They despatch shot and javelin twice as far as those who drew the wrong ticket in the maturity lottery.

It’s a fact of life. It was always like that, and these children will always exist.  That much is inevitable.  However, other dimensions are a matter of choice.  How schools deal with these children is a matter of preference, philosophy and success criteria.

If a school’s aim is to win the Under 13 World Cup, then its policy is clear.  It devises strategies to give the ball to the woman-child as often as possible and instructs her never to pass.  Coaches invent their own strategies to put their player in the position (or positions) that allow them to dominate the game. And then give them an additional prize at the end of the season for breaking the goal scoring record. 

It is easy to enable the early maturer to be the dominant.  It is much less easy to encourage them to be great players.  For this to happen, a much wider skill set would have to be developed.  Post maturation no-one dominates the game to the same extent.  This brings a different skill set to the fore, demanding vision, distribution and creativity.  In addition, personal qualities such as empathy, work rate, selflessness and team work become part of the great player’s portfolio. Nothing in a career of straightforward physical dominance prepares a player for the time when his physical advantage is eroded. 

How a school chooses to use the pre-adolsecent early maturer is a reflection of its priorities.  A short term ambition of winning school matches against local rivals requires optimising the giant.  But this is not in the interests of the player.  It does nothing to allow him to develop the physical and emotional skills required to become a great player. One of skill, vision and creativity.  A school can act according to short term interests, or it can focus on the medium term.  The science of talent development is quite clear about the type of environment that gives the best chance of creating great players.  It would require compromising some dominance in the interests of developing medium term greatness. 

Do schools exist for the benefit of the players, or are the players there for the benefit of the school?