How to Support Your Young Lacrosse Player Without Coaching From the Sideline

The average American child plays a given sport for less than three years and quits by age eleven. Almost none of them quit because they were bad at it.

I want to say something before any of the research, because it matters: the parents who yell from the sideline are almost always the parents who care the most. They are not the problem parents. They are invested parents who were handed a folding chair and no instructions.

This page is the instructions. Everything in it is sourced, most of it is counterintuitive, and the goal of all of it is one thing — a kid who is still playing at sixteen.

1. The stakes, in one number

Read that second line again. They did not quit because they were cut, or beaten, or outgrown. They quit because it stopped being fun. Which raises an obvious question that almost nobody asks the kids.

2. What kids actually mean by “fun”

Somebody did ask them. Researchers at George Washington University mapped 81 distinct determinants of fun in youth sport across 11 factors, working from 142 players, 57 parents and 37 coaches. Source: Visek et al., Journal of Physical Activity and Health 12(3), 2015 — George Washington University.

2.1 Where winning ranked

The thing adults organize the entire enterprise around is not in the players’ top twenty. That gap — between what we optimize for and what they actually want — is most of what this article is about.

3. The car ride home

Bruce Brown and Rob Miller are two longtime coaches who spent decades asking college athletes about their youth sports experience. This is not a peer-reviewed study and I am not going to present it as one. It is what two experienced people heard, over and over, from hundreds of athletes.

When they asked what the worst part of playing organized sports was, the most common answer was the ride home from games with their parents.

When they asked what a parent said that felt best, the answer was six words.

3.1 What to say instead

If the car is where it goes wrong, here is what works in it:

• “I love to watch you play.” Say it and stop. Do not add a clause.
• “Did you have fun?” — and accept the answer, whatever it is.
• “What was the best part?” Lets them pick the subject.
• “I’m proud of how hard you worked.” Effort, not outcome.
• “Want to talk about it, or want music?” Gives them an exit. They will often take it, and then bring it up themselves an hour later.
• Nothing at all. Silence in the car is allowed. It is not a wasted coaching opportunity.

3.2 The 24-hour rule

Most high school programs run some version of this, and mine does. No performance conversation within twenty-four hours of a game — from either direction. Not parent to player, not parent to coach.

Nothing said in the ninety minutes after a loss has ever improved anything. A day later, the same sentence lands completely differently.

4. Why sideline coaching does not work

This is a mechanical objection, not a moral one.

A player who is listening for a voice in the stands is a half-second late on every read. Lacrosse is a game of half-seconds. The slide, the dodge, the pass into space — all of it happens faster than a kid can hear an instruction, process who said it, and decide whether to obey.

4.1 The two-coach problem

It gets worse when the instruction from the fence contradicts the instruction from the bench. A kid hearing two coaches stops making decisions and starts obeying, and obedience is the opposite of what this sport teaches.

I have never once, in a decade of coaching, seen a player improve because a parent shouted a tactical instruction across a field. I have seen dozens of players hesitate because one did.

5. The officials — and why this is a parent problem

There is a referee shortage in every youth sport in America, and it is measurable.

5.1 What that actually costs your kid

Not an abstraction. Fewer officials means fewer games get scheduled, longer travel to find a crew, and more games run by a first-year official learning the job on your child’s field.

The parent screaming at a referee in a 10U game is, in the most direct possible way, shortening his own kid’s season.

6. The money trap

This one is uncomfortable and it is well documented.

You do not have to say a word about what the season cost. A ten-year-old can do the math on a hotel room and a tournament entry fee, and they carry it onto the field.

None of that is an argument for spending less. It is an argument for spending quietly, and for knowing the number yourself before you commit to it — what a season actually costs is written out season by season.

7. One sport, all year

Highly specialized young athletes had 1.46 times the odds of an overuse injury compared to low-specialization athletes. Moderately specialized athletes: 1.58 times. Source: Jayanthi et al., Orthopaedic Journal of Sports Medicine, 2020.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends at least one full rest day a week, and two to three months off a single sport every year. Source: AAP Clinical Report, Pediatrics, 2024.

I will put it more plainly than the journals do. The kid playing lacrosse twelve months a year at eleven is more likely to be hurt and more likely to be done than the kid who plays three sports. Every college coach I know says the same thing.

8. Talking to the coach

You are allowed to. Here is how it goes well:

• Wait twenty-four hours. Always.
• Ask about your own child, never another family’s.
• Ask what he needs to work on, not why he is not playing more. You will usually get the same information and a much better conversation.
• Let older players speak for themselves. A high school player who can ask his coach a direct question has learned something worth more than the answer.
• The one topic to never open: another kid’s playing time. There is no version of that conversation that ends well for your child.

9. Ask what training your child’s coach has

It is a completely fair question to ask any program, and a good one will answer it happily. Coaching certification, background check, concussion training, first aid. If a program gets defensive about that question, that is your answer.

10. What your kid needs from you, by age

The job changes as they get older, and most of the friction between parents and this sport comes from doing the right thing at the wrong stage. Here is roughly how it moves.

Read down the last column. Almost everything in it is something a parent does out of care, and almost all of it lands as pressure. That is the whole difficulty of this job, and naming it is most of the fix.

11. What this looks like on a Saturday

Cheer for everyone, including the other team’s kid who just made a great play. Coach nobody. Let the officials be wrong sometimes — and if you are not sure what a whistle was for, the rules page exists for exactly that. Say the six words in the car, and then let it be quiet.

Your child will remember almost nothing about the score of a game they played at ten. They will remember, with total clarity, what your face looked like when they came off the field.

A kid who still loves this game at sixteen is the only outcome that compounds. Everything else — the trophies, the tournaments, the highlight reels — is downstream of that one thing.