There's something about watching his children play soccer that makes Craig Willits's blood boil. He'll never start a fight with another parent or make a negative comment -- but he said it's not always easy controlling his emotions.
"Sometimes it can get intense. I'm my sons' biggest fan and I want to see them succeed, and I get frustrated when they don't play as well as they should," said Willits, who lives in Montclair. "We try to step back. Sometimes it's hard. It's real easy to get wrapped up as a parent in winning and wanting your kids to be successful. Sometimes you need a reality check."
Prince William Soccer Inc. is providing just such a check. Lincoln Phillips, PWSI's director of player and coaching development, is trying to prevent the unseemly incidents other youth soccer leagues have seen, such as parents fighting with one another or abusing referees.
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He brought in sports psychologist Alan Goldberg on Thursday for a seminar titled "How to Be a Successful Soccer Parent" at Veterans Park Gymnasium in Woodbridge. The seminar is part of PWSI's education process for parents and coaches, which also includes coaching clinics.
"It works backward," Goldberg said. "If you teach kids to have fun and to develop skills, they'll win. That's what it's about. When coaches and parents get kids focusing too much on winning, they don't. They'll win less. That's what really causes a lot of the performance blocks."
That's something Phillips discovered about 10 years ago, while listening to Goldberg speak. Phillips played for the now-defunct professional North American Soccer League during the late 1960s. His coaching experience includes 10 years at Howard University and two years with the U.S. National Team.
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He said he used to get angry at losses and "literally die." Now he focuses on how his team lost and what he can do better. Once he started doing that, he felt better as a coach and became more likable to his players.
"The education of the parent is just as important as the education program for the coaches and the athletes," he said. "That's why I feel the parents are getting a bad rap. Nobody is really instituting any training program for them. We hope we become trendsetters in that sense."
Willits has three sons and has been a coach and a manager. He said just being a parent cheering for your children is often easier than coaching or managing, because you don't have to deal with other parents' frustrations. But it can be very difficult, too.
"It brings out feelings, memories and frustrations," Willits said. "Your emotions are tied together watching. If you can get past all the competitive stuff and just go out and watch . . . and enjoy your kid for what they're doing and the fact that they're having fun -- that's what makes it worthwhile for me."
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Parents don't always act that way. Goldberg began his seminar recounting the details from an e-mail he recently received from a New Jersey coach. The coach described an incident in which an adult started a fight with a 14-year-old referee during a soccer game for 6-year-olds.
Later, Goldberg asked seminar participants to stand up and hold out both hands. They were to hold their left hand palm up and make a fist with their right hand, sticking their thumb straight up.
He then asked the audience to imagine the left hand was holding a heavy dictionary and the right was holding a helium-filled balloon.
After a few minutes, he asked participants to open their eyes. About three-quarters of the room said there was a noticeable difference in the weight of the two hands. Some even had let their left hand drop to their thigh.
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"The purpose of that drill was to show how powerful your imagination is," Goldberg said. "Because that's really an exercise about your imagination creating reality that didn't exist before. In sports, you see that happening all the time."
PWSI President Ed Foster-Simeon said he hopes that parents will use their imagination to avoid the situations that have plagued some youth sports leagues.
"We recognize that this is an issue nationally, so we're trying to make sure that we're giving our parents and our families the information they need to have an enjoyable experience with soccer," Foster-Simeon said. "We all heard the horror stories with little league baseball. We're just trying to make sure that we don't have those things, and that the kids at the end of the day are the most important thing." CAPTION: Sports psychologist Alan Goldberg, who spoke to PWSI parents Thursday, said, "When coaches and parents get kids focusing too much on winning, they don't." ec
