You have heard it a million times…”There is no “I” in team”. You may have also seen the cute illustration above jokingly suggesting otherwise. All joking aside though there most definitely IS an “I” in TEAM…and that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. I am trying to teach my children as young athletes, to embrace the “I” and think this is important for all children just getting started in sports.

In our family the “I” is probably most obvious in my daughter’s sport: gymnastics. It’s a strange sport when it comes to the term “team”. She and her teammates are close. No big surprise considering they train together 17+ hours a week. They train as a team. They attend meets as a team, sitting together, wearing the same uniform and cheering for each other. As parents, we treat them as a team as well, cheering for each girl as they take their turn on each event and truly wanting them to do well. However, when it’s time to compete, each gymnast walks out to her event on the floor…alone.

And when it’s awards time, if that teammate that you were cheering for takes 1st place, it means you do not. This can lead to disappointment, comparisons, and jealousy. But it can also create determination, motivation, and respect. It’s a fine line.

My son plays sports that are the more traditional “team” sports- soccer and football. The “I” is there too. In fact until this year, the whole game of soccer was nothing but a bunch of “I’s” as the ball rolled around like a magnet with a bunch of little kids all huddled around it oblivious to their teammates and often even stealing the ball away from them. Finally, at the age of 6 they are starting to get the concept of passing and teamwork, but the “I” is still occasionally there telling them they can make it down the field all by themselves to score the goal and be the hero. However it can also be the driving force to push them harder to improve themselves as an all around athlete for the good of the team (“I” passed the ball to my teammate and together we made a goal!”).

So how do we as parents lead our children to use the “I” in a positive way? We have found a few ways that have worked well for our children.

COMPETE AGAINST THE “I”~ Teach your children that the most important person that they should be competing against and striving to do better than is themselves. It doesn’t matter if “Molly” or “Jimmy” was worse than you last year and now seems to be the star of the team. Everyone has ups and downs but the only person’s you can do something about are your own. How are YOU doing compared to last year (or even the last game or meet)? My daughter measures this by keeping a progress chart during her competitive season. She writes her scores for each event from her first meet in a line and then for each following meet underneath, however each time she writes her scores she either uses a green pen for scores that have improved or a red pen for scores that are lower. This really helps her visualize her improvement and progress. Most often the majority of the scores are green showing her that medal or no medal, she is improving. And seeing the red scores is great motivation for working hard to improve before the next meet.

BUILD FRIENDSHIPS~ Get your kids and their teammates together outside of their sport for some fun. Building friendships off the field can often lead to teamwork and sportsmanship on the field. The closer the friendships, the more they feel like a team and the more they want to see and help each other succeed.

PRAISE THE LITTLE THINGS~ I’m not talking about the “Everyone gets a trophy just for participating” kind of praise, but tell your child how proud you are of their “less obvious” accomplishments. Maybe their teammate scored 4 touchdowns and they are feeling down because they didn’t score any. Remind them of their awesome block that allowed their teammate to make it into the end zone and how together they were able to score for the team. Sometimes the little things are actually big things. My son’s flag football team was undefeated last year. After one game that was especially one sided, my husband was talking to some parents that he knew from the opposing team and my then 5 year old went up to their son and told him “Good game”. I was more proud in that moment than after any of his touchdowns and made sure he knew it.

Children will (and should) experience disappointment and frustration during their athletic careers and that’s ok. I’m definitely not saying they should be protected from that. But we can help teach them to use it for good and to improve themselves both as athletes and people.