SPEAKER INFO: Adrian Parrish
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Adrian Parrish started at FC Cincinnati as the U17 Assistant Coach & Affiliate Program Coordinator, during the early stages at the club he has also set up Discovery Program to help find young talent to feed into the Academy. Holding a USSF “A” license and UEFA “B” license, prior to starting at FCC he served as technical director of the Kentucky Youth Soccer Association since 2005. While with the KYSA, Parrish ran the State Olympic Development Program, assisted youth clubs with development, designed programs to grow membership and created coaching curriculums and served as the Coaching Chair for the Midwest Region.
Adrian was also the head coach for Cincinnati United Premier DA Under-13 team and has several years of experience of working with men’s and women’s amateur teams with the Kentucky Wanderers from 2006-10, which he led to USASA Finalist on two occasions and was asked to move the club under the USL umbrella
He gained great experience working at the grassroots level when he was the director of coaching for the Amherst Soccer Association in upstate NY and also fund the time to be assistant men’s coach for Buffalo State University from 2003-05. A native of Louth, England, Parrish knew from a early age that he wanted to coach and started his career as youth development officer with Grimsby Town Football Club in Cleethorpes, England, where he was on staff from 1996-2000.
Adrian also serves as a US Soccer National & Grassroots Instructor, but still says his most important job is raising his son Owen who is also a member of the FC Cincinnati family as a player on the U15 team.
TRANSCRIPT:
Skye:
Really excited about this conversation. I always love talking soccer with you. For those of you that are watching, Adrian is currently with FC Cincinnati, he’s their U17 Boy’s Academy Assistant Coach. He is also the directory of their Discovery Program and he works with all of their affiliate clubs as well, so he wears lots of hats at the MLS, FC Cincinnati. Prior to being at FC Cincinnati, he was with the Kentucky Youth Soccer Association for many years working with clubs and supporting them and their curriculum development. Also, working with the ODP program, so working with those high-performance players that found their way into the ODP program, so has a wealth of experience in the youth game and really, really excited to have you here. Thanks.
Adrian:
Thank you. I’ve actually just been given another hat as well. I will be U13 and U14 coach for this coming year.
Skye:
Excellent.
Adrian:
Lots of different hats I wear, but that’s all good.
Skye:
Now, he has four jobs. U13, U14 academy coach for their new academy. Awesome, congratulations.
Adrian:
Thank you.
Skye:
You guys had some other news today with FC Cincinnati and naming your new head coach. Do you want to tell us a little bit about Jaap?
Adrian:
Yeah. Jaap Stam has just been named as the head coach, so it’s very exciting times at the club. Because obviously coming from an extensive background as a high professional player, played at Manchester United, AC Milan and a Dutch national team player. Coached at Brighton and the Eridivisie So we were excited to have Jaap joining us as soon as restrictions are lifted from border control. We were excited him to be leading the first team and leading the club moving forward. I think the official announcement went out at one o’clock so about five minutes ago.
Skye:
All right, so we are hearing it first here folks. That’s amazing. That’s great. I can imagine it’s been just unusual not having a head coach named knowing that that was a little bit in between during all of this COVID stuff, so I’m sure that’s a big relief for everybody.
Adrian:
I’m sure it is. We’ve had good guidance from Yoann Damet who’s been leading us, so it’s been good.
Skye:
Why was this topic… When you and I were talking about getting you on as a guest, this topic really resonated with you. Can you tell me why the high-performance player and why you felt this was worthy of an hour of conversation?
Adrian:
Obviously, out of all the different hats on jobs I’ve worn my number one, my number hat has still been a father. I do have a son who is in the Academy, so been an interesting year dealing with him. He is a high performing athlete. I like to use the word athlete as well, Skye, which you and I have talked about in the past because when we pigeonhole players into being a soccer player or a basketball player or whatever they are, we like to look at them as athletes. Well, first off, we like to look at them as people first, that’s one of our most important things.
Moving from I would say the grassroots that I’ve been in with USYS and the Kentucky Youth Soccer roll, working on all levels with grassroots and high performing players in our ODP program. To now having the experience again, working with high performing players, which I haven’t done since I was working with Ian back at Grimsby Town many, many years ago. Ian’s on today as a former mentor of mine, we haven’t spoken in such a long time, so excited that he’s tuning in today, but we was working together with players trying to put them on the professional pathway. I’m not going to tell you how many years ago it was, so it’s good to be back in the environment and it’s resonated with me again. I guess, Skye stirred my excitement obviously to be back working with elite players and helping them live their dreams as we live our dreams as coaches as well.
Skye:
We hear these terms “high-performance”, you just used the word “elite and” we heard about the word “talent”. These are such confusing terms in youth soccer. Should we even be talking about players as “elite”? Should we even be talking about players as high-performance because there’s just so much yet to be determined about how they develop. When we use this term here today, “high-performance player”, in your mind, what does that mean? Define that?
Adrian:
That’s a good question though, Skye, because you and I have talked about this, the amount of buzzwords that get sent around. You and I’ve had these conversations since we met in February, buzzwords like “academy” has always been thrown out. As soon as you hear the word academy is like, whoa, great. It’s got a mean and it’s the top of the top. Elite, high-performance. There’s all these words that get thrown around that go out. So what is high-performance? Because you could still be a high performing player at the grassroots level in your eyes and what you want to accomplish. That could be who you want to be.
High-performance to us is players that want to be on the level of going towards professional game. It depends on the environment that each player is in. We’re looking at our high-performance players that may be looking at the professional game pathway, however, within the club, we know that the chances are they slim, which we’ll talk about in a little bit. But we still want these kids to have that ambition. We also give them the college options and we work very, very hard on given them those college options, and so they might be a high performing college player as well. I guess the high-performance just depends on what the player wants to accomplish within the environment that they are within.
Skye:
Love it. That’s a great answer. And I think it’s important just as parents as we’re just discussing and thinking about these things with our children that we keep these perspectives that there’s so much to be determined. Speaking along this line of what exactly does it mean? I think we can look at it referencing with what the player wants. We had a great question that came in earlier this week related to this, this is actually kind of long, but I want to read this whole thing because I think it does a really good job of explaining the mindset of a parent and how confusing this can be sometimes based on the pressures that we feel about not being a crazy parent, but at the same time having a child.
So this is the question:
One burning question for me is how to best handle my 11-year-old daughter.
Skye:
I’m going to change a few things here just to keep this private. He wasn’t submitting this as a question for this webinar, but.
Is how to best handle my 11-year-old daughter who has big dreams of one day playing on the US Women’s National Team. I hear so often that we, the parents, have to keep our expectations in check, and sometimes I’ve even heard that we need to temper our kids’ expectations. I get the first point, but the second one seems less valid somehow. My daughter is an excellent soccer player. She’s among the top two or three in our city at our age and plays for well-known club. So she’s getting regular high level training and facing the best competition. Beyond her skills, I do note her game intelligence and her independent work ethic, which stand out (acknowledging my subjectivity as her parent, he goes on to say). All of this is to say she has the potential of realizing her dreams if her physical development rounds out into form in the coming years. But even with all of this, I realize there’s a slight chance that she’ll ever go pro or make the US Women’s National Team. I feel like even Division I soccer is something of a long shot. I just want to know if you have advice for how to both keep her passion alive or even help her towards those goals while also helping her work with a realistic perspective?”
Skye:
I really, like I said, like this question because it really speaks to the heart of what we’re going through as parents. Let’s break this question down into a few questions. The first is-
Adrian:
We’re actually breaking it down, Skye, because you know how my mind works.
Skye:
Well, I hope people appreciated hearing all that because I imagine there’s people listening, going “Yes, yes, yes.” Because it’s a common theme that I hear. Yes, we’re getting comments here in the chat, this is an excellent question.
Skye:
Should a parent temper their child’s big dreams of playing on the US Women’s Team or wearing the Liverpool jersey one day?
Adrian:
No. I’m still going to wear my Liverpool jersey around-
Skye:
You’re still dreaming of that?
Adrian:
Yeah. Kids dream. Kids are great at dreaming and adults aren’t, and we stop dreaming as adults. One of the things is, as you know, I can sometimes be the biggest kid and I still dream. As coaches, we may still have dreams, so no, as a parent, we should not. We should basically let the kids dream and then we should also let the child take control of that dream. If this gentleman’s daughter wants to be on the US National Team, why not help them? Why not help her by the daughter coming to him and saying, “Hey, I want to go and watch the US Women’s game. I want a shirt it with (Christy) Rampone or whoever on the back. I want these goals and this is what I want to do.” So you basically nurture it, but it has to come from her. The dreams have to come from her, so for her to keep wanting that dream to be alive.
Skye:
I think that’s key part of the challenge there is when it comes from the trial versus when it’s the parent facilitating it. Based on your experience as a coach and what you’ve seen, is that where it can get tricky?
Adrian:
Yeah. The advantage that we get a little bit at FC Cincinnati is we don’t necessarily deal with the parents too much, but obviously during my past in Kentucky Youth Soccer role I have had to deal with parents at the ODP level. There’s some levels we still do deal with parents, or if we have a player or a parent that comes to us with an email such as like that, that says my son, because obviously we don’t have a girls program yet, my son is the best player, blah-blah-blah and I think that they’re that great. We get all of that information that comes to us. Hey, and we all feel like our kid is the best and we should, as a parent. We want our child to feel like they are loved and we support them as a parent.
We get those emails that come to us. Our first reaction is, “Okay, great.” We don’t say, “Oh, here comes another parent that’s like, my kids this, my kids the best, my kid is the next Messi.” We look at it and then we obviously go to the club directors to get another perspective of this child. That’s how we go through this process of doing it. There’s many, many avenues that we go through before we decide whether the child is worth us bringing into the academy.
Skye:
Let me just-
Adrian:
Sure. Go ahead.
Skye:
… pop in just for a second because I love that that’s your first response because the secondary comment you had is so often what happens is like, “Ugh, here we go again, a parent bragging and about their child. They don’t know what they’re talking about.” And the bottom line is that as parents we actually really do, we might not know the soccer side of it, of course. And we do have a misguided perception because it’s our child, but there is the possibility that we can just be trying to help. And I love that your first response is actually just to dig deeper and even there in what you said. It wasn’t the eye roll thing because it’s really hard as parents to support your child, advocate for them a little bit in the right ways without coming across like you’re the crazy soccer parent. So just wanted to throw that out there that I appreciate that.
Adrian:
If you are the parent that haven’t that isn’t in a place where your child is excelling and you should know whether your child is excelling. You know if your child’s excelling in math, you know if your child is excelling in anything in school because we get grades, obviously, so the grades get given there. So you know whether your child is excelling. If you know that they’re excelling on the soccer pitch and it may be in a town that’s smaller. Now I’ll give you an example obviously with my own son, he was excelling in, in a younger age in a small town down in Kentucky. So we moved into a bigger town and a bigger club, and then he was still excelling there, so then we had to move out of that. We took the steps of moving him and given him the challenge, so we went step by sIt’s quite easy for you to turn around and say, “Yeah, this child is excelling in this area.” Then think of the next steps that you have to take to challenge the child. However, same thing happened. My son came to me in a small town in Kentucky, said, “Dad, I needed another challenge.” So as difficult as that was of me saying, okay, I have to give him that other challenge, meaning, guess what? I have to then step away as a coach, dad coach and let him go on and be coached by somebody else.
Skye:
There’s the whole other level here of this discussion about what the role is for a parent who has a child with big dreams and what the role is for the coach? You’ve kind of straddled that line because you’re acting as a coach for a lot of players and then you have a child at the same level. So what changes for you in supporting your son when you’re a parent and how is that different from the coach interactions you have with other players?
Adrian:
How long have we got?
Skye:
I think this is important. What’s the parent’s role here and what’s the parent’s job and what’s the coach’s role? Because I don’t think there has to be disconnects between parents and the coaches as long as it’s the child that’s leading this.
Adrian:
Yeah. It still has to be the child leading as the coach, so everything still from within the child. One of the wonderful things we’ve had during COVID, which there hasn’t been many great things, but let’s be honest, one of the wonderful opportunities we’ve had and being able to give our FC Cincinnati Academy players is to speak to some people that are coming from professional backgrounds. They’ve had the opportunity to speak to Landon Donovan, they’ve had the opportunity to interview and speak to all of our first team players. They’ve had the opportunity to speak to basketball, NBA players. And this week we had the opportunity to speak to a gentleman who directed the movie In Search of Greatness, Gabe Polsky and he came on and spoke to the boys. And everyone they spoken to, everyone, [Landon Optingate 00:15:36] who was a college athlete playing hockey, says it still has to come from within. It still has to come from within the child.
So in search of greatness, as a player searches for greatness is still has to come from within the child. It’s the child that has to make that decision. And right now everybody is, I think across the world, is watching The Last Dance with Michael Jordan and that came from within. I think one of the wonderful things I learned from watching Gabe’s movie In Search of Greatness was the difference of parenting as you saw from Wayne Gretzky’s dad, who is an all-time, probably best hockey player or one of them, and the Williams’ sisters, Serena and Venus’s dad, who was their coach as well. He was more hands on than what Wayne Gretzky’s father was, but the difference is both of them became professional athletes in the sports that they played within because they had the burning desire themselves. They just nurtured it differently because everybody’s different, every athlete is different and that’s great because if we all played the same and we all lived the same, we’d have a pretty boring world.
We want players to think differently. We need athletes to think differently. We need people to think differently, but the desire has to come from within the child itself. So whether it’s a coach role or whether it’s a parent role, all we can do is nurture it. Now nurturing it as a coach might be slightly different than nurturing it as a parent.
Skye:
Tell me more about that?
Adrian:
That depends and I think that can depend on the age. You’ve got the age and you break it down, if I come to you, like every probably kid does this, suddenly turning six, seven or eight-years-old and has this desire to dream because they’re starting to get involved in sports and, “I want to be the next Michael Jordan or LeBron James within this country.” “I want to be the next Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo,” or even on the women’s game. The first thing that they look for and the first person that they interact with probably still at their age is the parent. That’s the number one role model still in that child’s life. They kind of help them more of nurturing those dreams. So let them dream. That’s why I said, let them come to you and say, “Hey, I want to play.”
I remember as a kid, Skye, and you was probably the same because we were from the generation of the Sandlot kids, which is probably a dead generation now. I call it the Sandlot kids generation. We would go out after we’d seen a game on the television and we’d go out and play, and I know Ian’s on because I’m sure he did this back in England. You’d watch Match of the Day in England and you’d go out and play straight afterwards because you love doing it.
Skye:
Well, for us growing up in the States, there was no soccer on TV. I had German soccer, 10:00 AM on Saturdays for an hour of black and white TV. That was it. So we didn’t so much have Match of the Day, but we were out playing all the time.
Adrian:
Sure, but it’s great. That’s what I’m saying. It’s still the Sandlot kid. I’m just giving you an examples. And it’s great to have German soccer back on the TV, right?
Skye:
Excellent. Yeah.
Adrian:
We would do it. So you’d go out and play. As a father or a mother that’s on these calls now, why can’t we still do that? I remember my dad would come out and play with me a little bit on the Saturdays. He would go in the goal and I would just shoot at him or we would do something. Again, that’s nurturing it. And then as you encourage that whether that’s going out and shooting hoops in this country or hitting baseballs or whatever it is, that’s helping them and encouraging them. But then as they move on and as they get older then more friends become involved, so they then pick up when that happens, but again, hopefully COVID can kind of help that move along.
Skye:
And so the role of the coach when it comes to inspiration versus the role of the parents. The parents are there to facilitate support, I use the term “moments of ignition”, taking them to the game, making sure they can play outside, have a safe place to play. Those types of things. And the coach, his role is different. More motivational, what exactly do you mean?
Adrian:
We kind of live in a structured environment as the coaches because it’s the way society has come, but we as coaches still have to encourage kids to have fun and enjoy it because that’s the one thing. I always tell people at the end of the day, soccer’s a game. It’s a game. And what are games supposed to be? Supposed to be fun. Even on your level, even the first team, you see the guys having fun. So our job as coaches at the youth level, you get two types of coaches, Skye, you get ‘player developers’ and you get ‘player users’ and both are okay. Player users are people that are about getting results, which is obviously not Jaap’s job and MLS coaches, they’re all about getting results. That’s okay.
In the youth level, we have player developers. And part of that development is making sure that we develop players to enjoy, have fun, reach their goals, nurture them, encourage them, build, grow. All these other buzz words out that we want to, but it’s all about trying to help them move on, again though. It’s still got to come from within the player themselves. Now, if we can see it then we give them opportunities to move on and we keep pushing it and we keep pushing it. If we don’t see it and we can’t see the spark, it’s still our job to try and light the spark, that means a few different moments, moments where kids might say, “I need a break. It’s too much for me.”
Skye:
There’s a question about that. Let me jump to that because there’s a lot of questions here. I want to be sure that we get to some of these. Rolando Gonzales asks, “In the current time with the current situation of the pandemic, what would you recommend to those parents that are wondering how to keep their teenage kids motivated into working hard on their performance as they feel they’re staying behind or they’re losing interest on reaching the higher level?”
Adrian:
That’s a great question. Because-
Skye:
Great question, Rolando.
Adrian:
… Great question. It’s funny because through these interviews that we’ve done with these professional athletes, all of our kids have asked questions about COVID. And I know, Skye, you’ve done plenty of webinars with other people about COVID and it’s a weird time, but at least it’s a weird time for the whole entire world. We’ve all gone through it and we was in the same boat. Even our athletes are starting to just kind of get a little frustrated. Frustrated at virtual calls, frustrated with doing the same technical work and you can see the frustration coming because nobody knows quite when reality is going to come back.
Right now, I still believe it’s okay, this is just my opinion, for kids to just let them be kids and let them do it. So without us pushing saying, “Hey, are you going running today?” I’m just leading by example myself. I’m putting on times as a coach out there with the rest of the team. I’m the slowest one out there right now, but they know that I’m-
Skye:
You’re old.
Adrian:
… I am old. The older I get the faster I was, Skye. As a parent, even to encourage them to do it so they can see that we’re still doing it as role models. As a parent, it’s okay if they see you doing it. Yesterday I was speaking to one of my players who said, “His dad’s jumping out there and doing the runs with him.” So this is a great time again for you to bond. Just like I said, it’s okay for you to go out there and play soccer tennis with your son and daughter. Great time for you to learn. Trust me, Skye, I did that little video for you, with me and Owen playing the game. And if he wants me to go down and play, we’ll just go and play. Let them come up with the ideas of what they want to do. You can kind of encourage them to do it, not force them to do it.
Skye:
I think that that’s the key thing here. If you’re the parent of, let’s say like academy-level player, top player, high-performance player, and that player is 15-years-old and the last two weeks they haven’t been motivated and they haven’t been doing their soccer work as much as they need to. Should you be on their case about it?
Adrian:
No, because the school work’s getting heavy too, and the school work has been through virtual classroom. So we’ve noticed this last two weeks that school is coming to an end here in the Cincinnati, Kentucky, Ohio area. No, we have been on them. And that is to say, if you need a break, you need a break. Everyone needs mental breaks. Even as a club right now, we’re taking tomorrow and Monday off because we all need these virtual breaks. Hopefully, before reality comes back again because you just can’t get away from things right now. You and I have spoken, I’ve been working from 8:00 in the morning til 10:00 at night this week last which I have the buggy eyes on.
Skye:
Yeah. You’re looking a little, no. Another really good question came in from Kristen Troast. Thanks Kristen, for being here. She’s asking I think a very relevant question “with the dissolution of the development academy, how would you evaluate, assess the different options, MLS league, the ECNL for players who desire to play at the highest level of competition and hope to play in college or professionally?
Adrian:
Can I ask her a question back?
Skye:
Yeah. Be ready for a quick answer, Kristen. Yeah, go ahead.
Adrian:
Does she have a female player or a male player there?
Skye:
Male, 15. I need my glasses on. 15 and male. That was quick Kristen, thanks.
Adrian:
Thank you Kristen. The DA has not disappeared. I would look at it this way, there is no longer U.S. Soccer badge is the MLS badge that is running it. So it hasn’t disappeared, it’s still there. And nothing has changed, the landscape on the boys side hasn’t changed. It’s basically that the MLS has taken over from what U.S. Soccer instead. What is happening more now is for the MLS teams as they get more opportunities to play, obviously against MLS level of competition. So there’ll be more MLS versus MLS teams, opportunities with MLS teams at the youth level. Again, involved with the Mexican teams coming up. So opportunities as well with Generation Adidas coming in playing teams from Europe and South America. Once again, when border restrictions get lifted. It really hasn’t changed, there’s just this perception that it has. The way that we’re looking at it is it’s no longer one badge running it. It’s a different badge running in it.
Skye:
Another question that often comes in that I like answering, is that the league or is it the coach? What’s the most important factor in deciding what environment your child plays in?
Adrian:
That’s a good question. I’ll say this again, obviously we’re getting into what I call a loony tune season with tryouts, and it becomes the Wild Wild West across the whole entire country, especially here in the Midwest. It’s a lot different this year. I always ask people when they asked me, so I always say a couple of things. I said, “Why don’t you want to ask where your child wants to play?” It’s your child’s decision on where he or she is the most comfortable, and I always recommend that children try out at several organizations, so they can get the fit. Obviously, that is different this year, very different.
What I would do is research into the coaches that are coaching the teams because there are not a lot of tryouts taking place. So it is the coach, but it also has to be something where the child is happy maybe playing with his or her friends because they’re all there. It maybe that I want to go and play for this coach, certainly, not the league. Right now, we don’t worry about it. It’s our job that the players play for this badge here. So that’s what they want to do and they want to do the level because they don’t know the coaches coming in and who they’re going to be playing for when they come to FC Cincinnati.
Skye:
Kind of related to that in the trial playing and being an environment that suits them most, I always say that the parent’s number one job is to find a playing environment that suits the child’s mentality and athletic potential. So that’s really our job, is to seek and find that environment for a child. You’re kind of speaking to that. Deborah is asking “if you have a very talented player at a young age, would you move that child to an upper age group although the psychological development is not there?”
Adrian:
It’s a good question. I do that all the time. I always recommend playing up, but also let them be prepared to move back down. If your child is-
Skye:
Why? Because you’re not sure if they’ll be able to handle psychologically and you just want to see how they respond and then make a decision or because you know it’s kind of pushing it, but you want to give them an opportunity, but you know they’re going to be coming back?
Adrian:
Can I lead into my own experiences with Owen a little bit here?
Skye:
Yeah.
Adrian:
Take a moment and talk about him because I’ve sat through it. I can talk about it now because I’m no longer with Kentucky Youth Soccer, so I had access to get him involved when he was three-years-old and playing in the youth tikes. We snuck him in a little bit early because he was ready. He played up as early as that which was good. He was psychologically ready for it, but as we have moved on and as he has developed, he has become a late developer. In the aspects that he is psychologically ahead, physically, he is now behind. An example with him and it’s just happened this week, even though he will be a U16 player he’ll be playing with U17s. He’s behind physically and his development some of that was due to some health issues he had a couple of years back, but he will be kept on as a late developer, meaning he’ll be playing with the youth 15s this coming year.
Psychologically, he probably thinks, which is a little bit scary, more like a 25-year-old. He’s been around the game. So we’ve had to move him back because physically he is not ready, psychologically, it could be the same thing. However, it’s good… so who was the person that asked the question?
Skye:
Debra.
Adrian:
Debra, it’s good you dip your toe in the water, give it a try. Give it a try, but be prepared to move back, so it’s almost like, “Swallow some humble pie. Yeah, it didn’t quite work out. Can we move back?” Some people just want to keep persistent with it and pushing through and pushing through. When you keep pushing through, that’s when you might start trying to have your child fall out of love with the game.
Skye:
You’re reminding me of an article I wrote last weekend or the weekend before after I watched the Mr. Rogers movie. If people want to read the article, they can at their convenience at soccerparenting.com, but it was about the quote in one of his songs of, I love you exactly as you are. And as parents, if we get too caught up in them getting moved up and make too big of a deal about it, it’s almost like we’re setting really high expectations for our children instead of just rolling with it. All right. That’s where we are here. This is where we are next. And we’re up, we’re down. Wherever the coaches want. We trust the coaches, they’re making the decision. I just love you exactly as you are. You’re not any better because you made the top team. Can you speak to that a little bit? I don’t know that you can necessarily relate to that personally, but you probably have seen-
Adrian:
Well, I can. One of the things I always tell my son every night, even if we haven’t played is, “Hey, I’m proud of you.” And I probably learned that from my dad himself. My dad was a great father in every aspect of what he did for me. Very hands-off. If I wanted him to come out and play, he would do that as a kid, but he would never talk about the games with me. I’m sometimes doing that Skye because it’s hard for me to take coach hat off and put parent hat on. I’m getting better at it. Thanks to some of your support as well, getting better.
I still tell him that I’m proud of him every night, and then I’m proud of what he’s accomplishing, even though if he’s never played or done anything. It’s one of the things that I do with him. There comes a stage where children know that their parents are proud of them and that they’re happy of what they’re accomplishing and they need that reassurance back from other people as well. They need reassurance either back from a coach, they need from a teammate, they need it from somebody, maybe a teacher or even a former coach is a good one. A former coach who they responded to and that they had this relationship that they built.
The relationship between a parent and a child is always going to be there as much as we want to argue and fight, especially during this COVID when we’re all locked in a house together. And that’s okay because that’s part of growing and understanding. They need that reassurance from other people too. At the end of the day, the child knows as a parent that we will be there to support them. I just do it just out of habit, not out of habit. I am proud of my son. I am proud of what he’s accomplished. And these are tough times, these are tough times these last years, so he’s had to work through a lot.
Skye:
Living in the jungle, that’s good. That’s where we want our kids to live. That’s where they grow. Ian has a good comment here. These probably just were some reflection, so fluid movement is allowing for coaches to meet the players where they’re at. It’s parents trusting the coaches to do what’s in the best interest of the child and allowing that fluid movement can support a child. And knowing that it can go back and forth and back and forth is important.
Adrian:
I’ll just build on that a little bit, Skye. Again, it’s good that the kids should get all of these experiences of learning from different people and we, as parents need to let them go. We need to let them go to understand how learning from different people, that’s parenting. We let them go to school. We let them learn from different teachers. We let them learn different experiences. So let them go and let them learn from different coaches. They learn from it, whether we think, “That coach doesn’t know what he’s talking about or what she’s talking about.” They’re learning even if we think it’s a bad thing, they’re learning even if we feel like it’s going wrong, because you look at the greatest people in anything, in any walk of life, they learn from what? Failing. It’s not always we’re going to learn from succeeding, we learn from failing too.
Skye:
Kim had a really good follow up question on, thanks, Kimberley, for her son, they’re not living in a geographic area that’s supported by the DA. This is kind of the opposite of what we were discussing. She says, “Suggestions for those who are not in the geographic range of a DA level club, like the previous questioner, I also have a 14-year-old boy, he’s taken all the extra time COVID has given him and tripled the amount of solo training he’s doing.” He’s found this connection and inspiration during this extra time. How can she best support her son knowing that they’re not in a DA level or geographic area?
Adrian:
I would ask her if she’s willing to let her son leave eventually, because it comes a time when you have to do that. If you want him to… He has his aspirations of wanting to reach his dreams and he wants to go, there maybe a time where he does have to leave. And some parents may not have that answer.
Skye:
Just for those listening, we’re talking about high, high-performance here, and Adrian’s talking about the residential academy programs that the MLS teams have. I assume that’s what you’re talking about.
Adrian:
Sure.
Skye:
So top, top level. As he’s working to progress there, my advice just like Adrian was saying is finding the best coaching environment that really supports and speaks to your child. I have so many questions here that I wanted to get to as well. We’ll keep going here. I want us to talk a little bit about life balance because I think it’s important for these players to have this. We touched on it a little bit. Don’t put too much pressure on them during COVID, but let’s say non COVID times a child-
Adrian:
Good times. The good old days.
Skye:
Can we remember when those were?
Adrian:
It’s funny because I saw the other day that said BC now means before COVID.
Skye:
That’s funny. In those times where it’s four nights a week training, it’s a lot of demands on the players, some travel, all of that, et cetera. What does life balance mean?
Adrian:
We have to read it as coaches. We have to read that as coaches, we have to read our players coming in and if there’s a group of them that are struggling. We obviously have luxuries that a lot of other people don’t. We have GPS systems, we have heart rate monitors, we have sports science. We have all the sports performance people from the academy all the way up to the first team. We have luxuries. We can monitor children’s physical wellbeing through the science of the game so we can tell it might be, “Hey, it’s COVID training session day, which we need, let’s just play some soccer, tennis, or let’s just do something fun a little bit. Let’s just play some pick up soccer, let the kids just play, let them work out what they want to do.
One of the fun things we did this winter, and I know this memory will stay with these boys forever. Unfortunately, we just have the team release meetings. During a training session one day and it was supposed to be a higher performance session, it just started snowing and so we lost the kids mentally. It was just like, “Okay, snowball fight.” Because after that you could just see that the kids are just like you’ve lost them and that happens at no matter the levels that you’re at. How do you do that at the level that doesn’t have these luxuries? Obviously, you know that after a game, there’s no point as a coach coming in, and we’ve all done this as coaches. I’ll be the first to put my hand up and say, “Hey, I’ve done it. You’ve lost a game. You’ve lost it badly. You played badly.” What do most coaches do the next day that they come in? You are so rubbish. You are so going to run. You’re getting nothing out of it. You’re getting nothing physically out of it. You’re getting absolutely zero out of it, anything mentally.
So sometimes as coaches, if you’ve done things like that, you have to read the players’ mindsets and how they’re feeling and where they want to go. Sometimes it’s just, okay, wash it away. There’s nothing you can do. You wash it away. So it’s almost like, let it go. It’s almost the opposite, well, it’s not the opposite. You let that go and you start visualization for the future. Moving forward. You visualize now what we can do and you learn from the past. We have to let that go. It’s gone. Now we build here.
Skye:
From a coaching perspective, what I’m hearing you say is make sure that this joy is there. Make sure that, this is a lot of the work that I do is sense of community theory in the coach education and the club education I do, is what we can do to establish a sense of community and how essential that is to motivation. When we have combined moments of joy, which a snowball fight would be, like you said, these boys will remember this, then it’s really finding… It helps them develop a sense of motivation. And that I think is sort of answering the question in terms of having some balance. It doesn’t always have to be pushing, pushing, pushing.
Let’s talk about it from a parent’s perspective though. I love that conversation from a coach’s perspective. What does making sure our children have some life balance mean from a parent’s point of view, from a high-performance mindset?
Adrian:
Well, the high-performance, more than likely, Skye, is just doing one sport. They’re more than likely just doing the one spot that they’re going to, whatever that sport may be. So the balance is difficult in knowing that for them that they probably just more or less become just the taxi driver, take them back and forth to training sessions. It’s not flowing in multi-sport for this child to do. There’s two ways you can kind of look at it, Skye. If they’re a high-performance player and just playing one sport, then making sure that that child gets rest as well, that balance. Making sure that they get the rest and the nutrition is just as important. During off seasons or during days off, it is a day off. It is a day off. When we don’t do anything because we go Monday through Thursday we’re training, sometimes it’s Monday through Friday. Friday could be a travel day, so mentally the players are still obviously engaged in it. When we then get to wherever we’re playing, if it’s a game on the Saturday, then we play on the Saturday, but then Sunday or Monday is off.
As a parent, then you’ve got to make sure that that kid does take that Sunday and Monday off. That is a regeneration kind of, regenerate the mind, regenerate the body. That’s all that’s needed. It doesn’t need to be okay, we got to go, because the more we do it, the better we are. Rest is important. Rest is just as important. Nutrition is massively, massively important because these kids basically calories that they’re taking in, they’re burning off straight away. That’s the high-performance player. If we’re talking about balancing somebody that’s in this doing multi-sports, we’re driving from basketball to baseball and we’re driving here and we’re driving there. That becomes very difficult, again, because of the same thing, they need days off, they need times off. Because what happens when we’re driving them around everywhere and we’re doing everything, more than less, we’re just teaching them how to become NASCAR drivers more than we are in the sport or whatever we want them to be in. I’m not saying, don’t do multi-sports. I’m not going to come out and say it, but it’s a balance. It’s a balance. [crosstalk 00:43:59]
Skye:
And then I also find it interesting. I asked survey question on my soccer parenting, my private Facebook page. I asked a survey question that I thought I knew what the answer would be, and I was way off. I asked the parents during this COVID, has your child develop different movement patterns? Are they doing different things? And by and large, it was no, no, no, no. And I was thinking they’re already in their play, they’re playing basketball. They never would have played so much basketball if they were so busy in the middle of their soccer season. I was kind of surprised by that. What role does just… I’m reminded of my conversation with Kelley Pulisic talking about Christian. When he’s playing at the youth level or the high level, he wants to go play basketball afterschool with his friends, he’s playing golf on the weekends. He just wanted to always do those things that she and Mark always really encouraged him to because that was how he relaxed.
Adrian:
I think one of the perks at the top level clubs in Europe is the sports clubs. If you see like a Barcelona, soon as you put the buzzword of Ba, that’s another buzzword, Barcelona. If you see at Barcelona, you see those top level players in the first team go out and just throw the basketball around and shoot hoops. That’s all it is. So I disagree. I think kids are going out there and doing other movements. They are playing basketball, shooting hoops. They are getting on their bikes, they might be getting on their skateboards. They’re doing things that are different.
Fortunately, Skye, one of the things that kind of always happened and is getting less and less is those kids got a lot of that movement through a recess at school, which is less and less happening in the school system. And they also got it through physical education at school, which you’re seeing less and less of that too. What becomes important now is that’s also a coach’s role. At FCC, listen, we play tag games almost at the beginning of every training session. We spent 20 to 25 minutes just doing something different, whether it’s dodge ball, whatever it is. We’ve done that, we’ve done different games for these kids. And again, so thinking about the snowball fight, those kids will remember those first 15 to 20 minutes of our training sessions more because as soon as you throw that out, whether it’s first team or whether it’s U13 team, laughter breaks out. Everybody loves a good tag game, all the kids love doing that. That’s why-
Skye:
For the parents listening, they’re developing important movements skills like evasive movements, and stuff that we wouldn’t necessarily get to in a training game. But again, that they’re missing or lacking. I did a skipping warmup with some top-level goalkeepers I was training. Just all different types of skipping movements. Three of the goalkeepers there could not figure out how to skip backwards. That to me is just like a normal part of development of movement. Just to be clear for everyone watching, that’s also part of why you’re layering it in for some fun and some joy, but also because of developing.
Adrian:
Yeah. Because like I said we’re developing. Well, like I said, one we’re developing humans first, then we’re developing the athlete then we develop the game after that.
Skye:
Yeah, love it. I want to get to a few more of these questions and I also want to talk about, we talked a little bit about the late developer. I want to open up that question into just a bigger topic of just the path that kids develop. Not even necessarily a late developer, but I think just keeping the options open for parents. I know I’ve had a lot of discussions with coach educators around the world about if we choose too early, the early selection dilemma, the 12-year-old’s already on a path and we’re leaving the others behind. Can you just kind of address these larger topics? I relate this a lot to my daughter who all of a sudden wasn’t ever necessarily behind physically. She was always physically there, but she was behind mentally with her mental performance and then that just clicked for her when she was 17. So she could have been far left behind.
Adrian:
What is a late developer to start off with, is it mental? What is an early developer? We’ve known the early developers who’s the biggest, fastest, strongest player. We look at that and they’ve gone through puberty early and they’re 13, but they look like they’re 18. We’ve also got to nurture those players. We have to help those players because what happens with those kids? We’ll put them up front or we’ll put them in goal. We’ll put them in positions where it’s like, we want the biggest of our youngest kids. So within training sessions we have to nurture and help those players by maybe putting them into positions where they won’t play in the game, challenge them in different ways. We may have a forward who’s big, fast and strong. Can we put him or her into the midfield where they have to learn the technical skills?
One of the things that we do at FC Cincinnati is we want everybody to come to us and be able to play the number 10 position. Even if our number one comes to us and that’s the goalkeeper, we want him to be able to play as a 10. So he’s 10, 1, so he’s an 11. The left back needs to be able to play in the midfield, the right back. You’re seeing that at the highest level now, obviously with Liverpool, their two full backs, both of those are more than capable of playing in the middle. We look at that type of thing and that’s the early developers on how we help those because again, we challenged them differently within training. We moved them up if we can to give them experiences, but just like I spoke to earlier, we also have to nurture that and potentially move them back down.
That would be hard though in the USYS pathway because we don’t allow for that flexibility as much as what we would like to happen. It’s all about, “Hey, they’re winning.” Whereas like I said earlier, it shouldn’t be because that’s the level where you should be a player developer not player user – even more so there. With the late developers a lot of that is also can be with them mentally frustrated. They disappointed because playing time becomes less. I’m not as fast, but I know I am. I’m technically there. You’re then fighting psychological battle with the player to help them and keep them engaged in the game and encouraging them to stay in the game. And that’s an experience that I’ve got to go through, obviously with my own son this year, who’s been thinking about it is just like, “Is this really for me?” But he doesn’t need to hear it from me because I keep saying, “Yeah, buddy, you can do it. You can keep going, mate. You’re fine.”
And so what I’ve done with him is put him into an experience where he’s learning or gone back to working with another coach, his previous coach, he connected with. Even though he’s still go to his training sessions and still staying with those teams and he’s going there, I’ve put him with a coach. I tested him, to start off with. I honestly did. I put him in, so I tested him. He would go and do maybe small group training with this other coach that he connected with. He was no longer connecting with me. He was no longer pushing me. He now comes back to me and he says, “Hey, can you take me to do a training session with this coach?” So it was him now that’s done it. I kind of pushed him out there a little bit because you have to do that.
When I pushed him out there and he came back from that first session, Skye, he was as red as beetroot. He was as red as a beetroot and grinning like a Cheshire cat. His excitement was there again. I could see the spark again. So then from then on, it’s always been him saying, “Hey dad, can I go and do this? Can I go and do that?”
Skye:
I think it’s really fascinating. The same thing kind of happened for my daughter too. She found her connection again once I took her a little bit out of the day-to-day, not that her environment wasn’t amazing, it was just having a little bit of something else, hearing something else, having a different influence really made a difference for her. It was that extra little spark that she needed. I think that’s kind of food for thought for parents here because one of our topics we wanted to get to what the late developer? I love the fact that we talked about the physical late developer versus the mental late developer too, and how we can support those players, both sides of that. I want to end with a topic and Kazuwi Fujuki has asked a couple of questions. He wrote-
Adrian:
[crosstalk 00:52:45] because I didn’t take him. He didn’t want to come out of playing there. He was adamant he wanted to stay in there. I gave him the option. I gave him the option of saying, “Hey, do you want to do this?” You have to give the players the options as a parent. I ask my son every year, “Do you still want to do this?” Still, “Yes.” I gave him the options because in his mind, again, talking about mindset, it was his mindset and it’s his dream. I’m not they’re squashing his dream because if he feels like I take him out, he feels like I’m taking his dream away from him. It’s his dream.
My idea was how can I help him with that dream by doing it that way? He stayed in, kudos to him. What do I say? “Hey, I’m proud of you, buddy. I’m proud of you. You keep going, you don’t quit. It’s okay. You don’t quit.” But how can I now keep helping him push forward so he still keeps going, keeps going through with it. Because so many kids it’s easy just to quit, it’s easy just to step away and say, “It’s too tough.” You don’t step away from math or school.
Skye:
This question came in from Nathaniel earlier and I read it and I was like, “Oh, this is such a dilemma.” And I agree, so let’s wrap up with that. And I apologize, there are a couple of questions Kazuwi Fajuki sorry. We will get to this. I’ll write an article about your question. He’s talking about values and instilling values. I just don’t think we’ll get that. I want to ask you, this is from Nathan, he says, “I really appreciate your comments about nurturing, but I wonder if there’s a place for pushing our kids as parents, keeping them accountable to work hard and helping them set goals?” Is how the question was worded. What’s your thoughts on that as we wrap it up.
Adrian:
I’ll answer that anybody that has any questions, Skye, can email them to me as well. Are you happy with me just putting my email address out? That’s fine.
Skye:
Absolutely. 100%, yeah.
Adrian:
Parrish@fccincinnati.com – And that’s Parrish with two R’s. They can send me those emails and you can send that out to people too.
Skye:
Absolutely. Thanks Adrian.
Adrian:
It does come down to leadership and what type of leader we are as parents. And most of the times as leadership as parents, we are servant leaders. Most times, let’s say, we all servant leaders. We put our children first, and I say most of the time, because there other ways that we will use for leading them. The question was, can we push them? Yes, of course we can push them, but again, it’s a guiding. If we keep pushing and pushing and pushing and the child doesn’t want to do it, you’re going to do that. And he’s just going to resist and he’s going to fight back as it is.
You might be able to push a little bit and push and push, but if the child eventually doesn’t want to do it, they’re going to push back. They’re going to push back at anything in life. It still asked to come about that the child has to do it. We want them to have values in life. We want all of our players to have values in life, because like I said, we’re all about putting people first. We tell our players that at FCC. Is about you as a human first, so we need to get to know the person first before we get to know the player.
Now you, as a parent, you think you know your children, you probably do know your children, but there are parts of your children that you don’t know because again, they are becoming their own person. And we all know as a parent that kids keep secrets away from us in some ways just as we did as with our own parents, we didn’t tell them everything. I’m not getting into all the things I kept away from my parents.
Skye:
Please don’t.
Adrian:
The kid has to have these values and understanding. Then usually what they’ll do though is copy some of our values. As parents some of our kids will copy our values. That’s what I said getting out and playing, they will all become similar parents to how we have become, but they’ll also want to become better parents than what we are doing. Show them those volumes of what we can do. Right now we can help them and then they get to choose themselves. So if we’re all about push, push, push, push, push, is not going to help. It’s about balance. It’s about helping them and keeping going in this direction. And yes, sometimes they need a push, especially right now. Sometimes they need to push in general. “Hey, come on, have you done this?” But again, if they keep resisting against it, maybe they don’t want to do it. Maybe they want to do, and that’s okay. And we have to understand that because that, Skye, is it your dream then? Or is it the kid’s dream?
Skye:
And the keyword that I saw here in this question was helping them set goals. I want to just tell a super quick story about my years directing soccer plus camps. One of the lectures we did at night was teaching the players about goal setting. We had a lecture about a short-term goal, a mid-range goal, long-term goal/dream, and the values between dreams and goals. So we had this great workshop with these players and part of the workshop was that they would write down some of their goals. And as coaching staff, we would then reflect with our groups about that, have a conversation with the players. Parents would email Tony DiCicco the owner of the camp and be like, “What did you do to my child? They came back a different player.” And a lot of it was about this goal setting thing, but I just want to put it out there that I think that that was especially effective process intervention with these kids because it was us as coaches doing it and leading them. And they’re totally on their own away for a week from their parents setting their own goals and then they own them.
I think that parents can then help support them to make sure they meet them. “Hey, this is what you said you wanted to do. Did you do it yet? How can I help support you in that?” But we really need to let the children lead the way there. So I would love to see coaching staff, I’m curious if you do anything like that with your players?
Adrian:
I’m kind of looking over at the top of my laptop there because I’m looking at the goals that I’ve written on my fridge that belong to my son. I can’t read them even with the glasses on. He has five goals. He has five core values in life. I know one of those core values is faith and family, and that’s where that I think faith in himself or faith in his teammates and maybe others as well, but those are his values that he’s chosen. We give all of our players lists of values and it’s a massive, massive, long list that we go through, values and goals and everything. And then they put them down into three different levels. Important, not so important, doesn’t resonate with me. So then you take the list from doesn’t resonate with me and scribble off the ones that really don’t resonate with them and then you put them with the not so important ones. And you eventually, which ones again from here really don’t stand out to you? Is that you may look at the worst to start off with and you go, “I really don’t know what that word means. I really don’t know what vulnerable means.” Again, another buzzword, but we throw it out there. I don’t know what it means.” So we go through them and then they scribble them off.
So they may have to come to us and say, “Well, what does this word mean? What’s the meaning behind it as a player? What’s the meaning behind it? As they go along each list and they take them off, maybe some end up from list three into list one and they just scratch off all of those that don’t mean anything to them eventually, they get down to five. I have kept them on the refrigerator right now. It’s something where every day that they can check them. Obviously, they’re on the refrigerator right now because kids are going to the refrigerator of every 30 minutes to get a snack.
Skye:
Well, for the coaches that are listening, I think it’s an awesome exercise and I hope they take some connection there about that type of relationship building, sort of transformational coaching and think about doing those things. And for the parents that are listening, I hope you find playing environments for your children that are facilitating processes like that, because that is what we need to be seeking for our children, those types of environments. So really, really loved that story. Thanks, Adrian. Anything as we wrap it up here? You already gave your email address. Why don’t you give that one more time? Any other ways that people can follow you?
Adrian:
Yeah. I am on a Twitter, I can’t remember my Twitter handle now. I just changed it recently. I am on Twitter and Instagram, I think both are the same on Twitter and Instagram. So as I’m talking, maybe you could pull that up.
Skye:
Adrianparrish02.
Adrian:
Adrianparrish02, so that’s the Twitter and Instagram.
Skye:
And it’s double R.
Adrian:
And then a Parrish is P-A-R-R-I-S-H @ FC Cincinnati. I might have to look at my badge to spell Cincinnati. I still have to do that. But just to wrap it up, Skye, thank you for you. Thank you for everything that you’ve done. I know there’s so many people out there that are doing great work right now. And one of the things that I’ve really enjoyed with you is you just didn’t jump on the COVID bandwagon and just say, “Oh let’s do something.” You try to elevate everybody’s game. So it’s been a pleasure to get to know you since February and build this relationship. So thank you for everything that you’re doing to help people of all levels including me. You’ve helped me with my own son going through this, but for you, obviously keep working hard and for anybody that’s out there as a parent just keep helping your children live their dreams because children dream better than what we do.
Skye:
Excellent. Great way to wrap it up. Thanks everybody for joining us. We appreciate it. Again, the recording will be at the soccer parent resource center, and we really appreciate you tuning in and being a part of the work that we’re doing here to inspire our players. Take care.