Sign up and pay your registration fee by 7/1/2013 and be entered to win free entry into the 2014 tournament!

Register Now | Print the Flyer

August 24th-25th, 2013
Raymond Fields
94 Essex Road
Ipswich, MA 01938 | Map

Women’s Open Division:

• Regular registration fee: non-refundable $1,200 due 8/21/13
• Up to 12 teams total
• Guaranteed 3+ games on Saturday, playoffs-only on Sunday

Men’s Open Division:

• Regular registration fee: non-refundable $1,200 due 8/22/12
• Up to 30 teams total
• Guaranteed 3+ games on Saturday, playoffs-only on Sunday

Payment may be made online or by check.

Register Now | Print the Flyer

Checks should be made payable to MetroLacrosse and sent to:
MetroLacrosse, 25 Thomson Place, First Floor, Boston, MA 02210

Questions?

Contact: Alex Maeder, amaeder@metrolacrosse.com, 617.979.9208

The recent news surrounding Rutgers basketball coach Mike Rice reminds us that much of college athletics has lost touch with the educational mission of a coach.  A friend shared this story with me, about Pacific Lutheran football coach, Frosty Westering, who recently passed away.

This story is truly inspiring and reminds us how beautiful sports can be.  I had never heard of Frosty Westering of Pacific Lutheran but it is clear to me that he represents what is great about sports and about college sports.  It’s a shame that we hear a lot more about Mike Rice than we do about Frosty Westering.

READ MORE BLOG POSTS AT BEYOND LACROSSE

MetroLacrosse exists because sports are uniquely capable of changing the lives of young people in very positive ways.  Watching the video of former Rutgers basketball coach, Mike Rice, abuse his players is a tragic and frustrating experience for me.  Not only do I feel sympathy for the victims of the abuse but I am angered by Rice’s abuse of sport as a tool for the development of young people.  At a time when Rice could be nurturing skills like grit or developing the growth mindset in his players, he is restricting their development into young men with abusive behavior.  He offends me because he uses the power of sport to enhance negative outcomes when sport is capable of such beautiful things.  I consider his actions to be a betrayal of the very notion of coaching.

But I am struck by Rice’s firing for other reasons as well, primarily the weak morality displayed by Rutgers University.  I’m a big fan of famed educator, Rafe Esquith (Wiki | Official Site | Amazon), and his use of Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development in his 5^th grade classroom.  In Rafe’s classroom the 6 levels of moral development are explained like this:

• Level 1: I Don’t Want to Get In Trouble
• Level 2: I Want a Reward
• Level 3: I Want to Please Somebody
• Level 4: I Follow the Rules
• Level 5: I am Considerate of Other People
• Level 6: I have a Personal Code of Conduct and I am Going to Live It (the Atticus Finch stage according to Esquith)

The MetroLacrosse team that I coach has been spending a lot of time lately talking about Level 6 and what it means on our team.  Clearly, Mike Rice is not a believer in Lawrence Kohlberg.  It seemed that he expected his players to perform because they didn’t want to get verbally or physically abused.  I’d call that Level 0.

But I expect more from Rutgers University as an institution.  University administrators were shown the now infamous video of Rice abusing his players in November.  It’s likely that they were aware of the behavior before then.  Yet Rice was terminated only when the story became public via ESPN.  To me, this represents a Level 1 response.  Only when Rice’s behavior would mean “trouble” for the university, did it prompt his termination.  Had Rutgers administration been operating at Level 6 or even Level 5, clearly termination would have been warranted on the spot.

I’m disappointed and offended in the way that Mike Rice abused the art of coaching and in the way that Rutgers University responded.  I hope that if we all strive to coach at Level 6 we can truly utilize the power of athletics for youth development.

READ MORE BLOG POSTS AT BEYOND LACROSSE

Click on the image to view the article full sized.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This is an award winning radio piece from Radio Diaries about Cleressa Shields, the youngest athlete to compete for a spot on the first ever US Olympic Women’s Boxing Team in 2012.  At the time, Claressa was a 16 year old junior at Northwestern High School in Flint, Michigan. She went on to win a gold medal at the 2012 London Summer Olympics!

The story is a great reminder of the power of sport.  It is inspiring that Claressa has achieved so much as a boxer but I am even more impressed by the impact that boxing has had on her personal development.

Claressa embodies the growth mindset.  She has faced some significant challenges in her life and has learned from sports exactly what she needed to in order to overcome those challenges.  Her levels of focus and grit are off the charts.  Sports are powerful because they can teach these things in ways that few other activities can.

We just started the MetroLacrosse season.  When I look out at the faces on the field, I wonder who will be the Claressa Shields of our group.  I can’t imagine a better way to spend my life than using lacrosse to develop young people like Claressa.

READ MORE BLOG POSTS AT BEYOND LACROSSE

A staff member at MetroLacrosse passed this along.  Kids are capable of amazing things and sports has a unique way of making that possible.  When we get bogged down in the day to day activities of coaching young people, it is easy to lament things that kids are not able to do.  We have to resist that trap and truly believe that kids can achieve greatness.  I hope this video reminds us all what is possible when we believe in the kids that we work with.

Click here to view the embedded video.

READ MORE BLOG POSTS AT BEYOND LACROSSE

I recently finished reading Carol Dweck’s book, Mindset, and it has many important implications for sports based youth development. Dweck is a Psychologist at Stanford and she shares many of her ideas on her website.

The book is definitely worth a read.  The basic idea is that people can either have the fixed mindset or the growth mindset.  In the fixed mindset, we believe that our abilities and our intellect are fixed and cannot really be changed. Our IQ is essentially a genetic trait. In the fixed mindset, we look at school as an opportunity to prove our intelligence, not an opportunity to develop our intelligence.  In the growth mindset, we believe that our intellect and abilities can changed with focused practice and dedication. Dweck argues that having the fixed mindset limits achievement levels and that the growth mindset itself can be taught.

As I read about the growth mindset I started to consider all of the reasons why the fixed mindset is reinforced for young people, particularly those in low-income urban neighborhoods. As coaches, we are well positioned to combat the forces that encourage the fixed mindset and the athletic field offers us the perfect opportunity to teach the growth mindset.

View the different mindsets

Many of the techniques that I see as most useful are similar to those that I mentioned in the post about coaching for grit; cheering for the right things (not goals and wins) and manipulating competition so that it teaches kids how to approach success and failure.  But I believe that there is another important element of sports and lacrosse in particular that helps us teach the growth mindset.  If we deliver effective fundamental instruction, allow kids the right opportunities to practice and maintain high standards, kids are able to do things that they were not previously able to do on a regular basis.  This could be completing a full lap around the field, running a 7-minute mile or completing 10 consecutive passes with their non-dominant hand.   There is nothing more empowering than being able to do something that was once impossible.  As coaches, we have to help kids see how powerful that experience is.

Learning a new skill, as an athlete is far more important than any particular skill, it teaches young people that with focused practice, they can develop any skill.  It teaches kids to have the growth mindset.

Read more blog posts at Beyond Lacrosse

Angela Duckworth at the University of Pennsylvania has become well known for her study of grit.  You can get a great sense of her research by watching the video below:

Click here to view the embedded video.

We know from lots of research and from intuition that grit is an absolutely critical factor for all kids but especially kids that come from low-income, urban communities.  The ability to persevere and stay committed to one’s goals, even in the face of great obstacles over a long period of time is really one of the hardest and most important things that children can learn.  Duckworth’s work takes a look at how this skill can be measured and taught in a school setting.   I’d like to take her work and apply it a team sports setting to develop best practices for coaches of urban kids.  After all, grit seems like a skill perfectly suited for young people to learn on the field.

One of the ways that we like to develop grit as coaches at MetroLacrosse is to learn to cheer for the right things when we coach.  As fans of sports, we are programmed, almost subconsciously to cheer when the ball goes in the net.  However, helping kids develop grit is not really about celebrating success, it is really about handling failure appropriately.  To help develop gritty players, we cheer them most not when they score, but when the pick their head up, manage their emotions and work hard after they’ve been scored on or after they’ve lost a game.  Additionally, we always try to recognize effort more than we recognize outcomes, particularly for young athletes.  When kids recognize maximum effort as true success, they are able to better handle failures like the loss of a game.

Another technique that we can use as coaches to develop grit is to manipulate competitive situations that are appropriate.  For young kids, this might mean a demphasis on competition all together.  Kids need to feel that it is safe to lose, that the world will not end if the game does not turn out in their favor.  We can do this in practice easily but also in games, simply by the way that we talk to the kids.  As kids get older, we give them the opportunity to practice competitive situations and the authentic emotions that come along with them.  If we practice how to win and how to lose in practice, we are better suited to react appropriately in games.  More importantly, we learn that failure is not an end in and of itself, but rather it is an opportunity to learn and to improve.  Over time, this becomes part of our identity, we are not deterred by set backs because we know how to handle them and we confidence that we can recover from them.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on coaching for grit.  To me, there is no better place to learn it than on the lacrosse field.

READ MORE BLOG POSTS AT BEYOND LACROSSE

I’m a big believer in the importance of building cultural capital with kids when you coach or teach.  If kids believe that you care about them, it is much easier for them to buy in to the things that you ask them to do.  Also, getting to know the kids that you work with is really among the most enjoyable aspects of coaching or teaching so it is beneficial on two fronts.  Building cultural capital is about letting kids know that you believe in them and that you care about them but it is also about understanding where they are coming from.

This can be a challenge for a white, Ivy League graduate who is trying to coach kids from a largely Hispanic community with a high school graduation rate of 50% but it doesn’t have to be.  I watched a documentary last night about a inner-city high school football team and their volunteer coach.  The film is called Undefeated and you can stream it on Netflix.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I was moved by the entire movie but I was especially interested in the cultural capital that the coach had built up with each of his players.  Even though the coach came from a totally different background from the kids and even though he sometimes said things that some would interpret as insensitive, the kids were bought into the messages that he was sending.  To me, the key was authenticity and affection.  This particular coach was absolutely authentic, he did not fake any emotions or pay lip service to his kids.  He truly believed in the way that football could impact these young men and he was committed to that goal.  Any one can buy into a leader with that level of commitment to a set of ideals; even kids that are totally different from the coach.  In addition, this coach had a genuine affection for each of his kids that they could not deny.  Authenticity and affection are qualities that can go a long way when building cultural capital with young athletes.  At MetroLacrosse, we are always trying to build meaningful relationships with our kids and their families and this film is a great example to us.  A lot of times it is about understanding cultural differences like why a child might not be making eye contact when he or she is being disciplined or why he might be late to practice because he had to watch his younger sister while his mother worked her second job.  Taking the time to get to know the kids and understanding where they are coming from is really crucial and when these factors are combined with and authentic coach who demonstrates a deep affection for his players, much can be accomplished.

What are your thoughts about cultural capital and coaching?

READ MORE BLOG POSTS AT BEYOND LACROSSE