Parents

Coaching your child’s team can be tricky. Here are some tips for doubling as parents and coaches.

Positive Coaching Alliance’s Jim Thompson offers postgame-friendly questions for the car ride home.

An open letter from the mom of a 10-year-old youth player who spent the weekend in Florida interacting with and learning from Team USA.

The nature of officiating is to react to a play and call it accordingly. Keeping the game safe is the first priority.

First-time lacrosse parents can face a big learning curve in determining how to properly equip their children for play. The new US Lacrosse Equipment Fitting Guide will ease the process.

When I was 17 years old, my father urged me to join him one morning to practice driving in the snow. When we arrived at the local parking lot turned open expanse of fresh powder, he asked me to take the wheel and get a feel for the car. I drove cautiously, stopping and accelerating at low speeds. My dad chuckled as I gripped the handle tightly at 10 and 2 and worked to gain control of the 1974 Volare station wagon.

Making the "B" team isn't the end of the world. It might be the best thing that ever happened to your child.

Kids learn best through experience and by making mistakes…not by being micromanaged through every pass.

The practice of knowingly including over-aged players on tournament teams is indefensible and illustrates the very worst of youth sports. Not only does it erode the integrity of athletic competition, it also violates the implied oath of all youth coaches to model the very best behavior for young and impressionable minds…and it jeopardizes the safety of players who are forced to play against more mature – and often larger – competition.

BALTIMORE – National lacrosse participation increased 8.4 percent in 2009, according to research by US Lacrosse for its annual participation report. There were 568,021 lacrosse players that were members of organized teams across the country in 2009, from the youth level all the way on up through the professional ranks.