The Lamar Experiment...

In a tiny Midwestern town called Lamar, Missouri, a wonderful experiment took place.

Lamar is 45 minutes south of Joplin, the city that was leveled by tornados just a few years ago. It’s a small town with one main road, one Mexican restaurant, one Chinese restaurant, a McDonalds, a Denny’s and a local barbecue place called Tractors.

It’s a place of southern accents and where people use the phrase, “We’re getting some weather” in place of “It’s raining.” The local furniture factory moved out two years ago taking most of the town’s jobs with it. Lamar is trying to rebound. They take great pride in their local High School football program that is a perennial State Champion. They hunt and fish and fix things around the house themselves.

It’s also the birth place of Harry S Truman.

None of this has to do with the experiment that took place in the Lamar H.S. gym.

The first morning of camp, the high school varsity and JV players were encouraged to warm up. They grabbed their friend, stood on one side of the net and began throwing and tossing and bouncing and finally peppering to each other. The energy was low, the voices hushed and mumbled. It was a chore, and the net was treated as if it were radioactive.

Later that night, a middle school camp came into the gym. Girls as tall as a haystack and some so thin you were afraid a tough serve might snap their arms, the girls ranged in age from 8-14.  Some had never been coached before; they were just trying the sport on. In Lamar, very, very few girls can play just one sport; too many sports and too few girls. Coaches share athletes like neighbors share a cup of sugar.

As the middle school girls started flooding in they started throwing the ball over the net trying to pass and serve and hit. They broke off and played two on two and three on three and one of the courts became six on six in less than 5 minutes.

This was all done BEFORE their clinic started and BEFORE a coach had said anything to them.

The gym was loud, the voices laughing and screaming and had a blind man walked in, he would have thought he had crashed a birthday party. It was the soundtrack of kids having fun.

The next morning, the older girls lazily oozed back in. They fitted themselves in shoes and knee pads and ankle and knee braces and began the drudgery of warming up. This time though, their coach stopped them cold. They were encouraged to grab a partner, or two, or three, or even four. Stop being afraid of the net, use it! Then the word was uttered that changed the gym’s mojo…

Play!

Confused glances shot around the group. They slowly backed up and grabbed a ball and waited for someone to yell, “Just kidding! Pepper!!!”

But it never came.

Two girls started a rousing one on one game, pass-set and roll shots back and forth in a confined space near the antennae. Beside them was a two on two game with one setter dipping under the net to set both sides, a game that started as a cooperative effort but quickly turned into a game of torture the setter as the action got faster.

A three on three game started on the other court and soon melded into a 6 on 6 game featuring a few girls on the same court that weren’t facebook friends! Imagine that!

The cacophony was the polar opposite of the lifeless gravedigger’s cricket chirp the morning before. The girls came out of their warm up sweating and smiling and laughing and ready for a long day of camp.

What did this show? The girls on the older court had been coached, for years in both school and club ball. They were told how to warm up, what to do, what the coaches wanted which was regimented and structured and controlled.

The middle schoolers were for the most part too young for coaches yet and did what kids do…play.

We continue, as coaches, to suck the fun out of our game. We talk collectively about how more touches are good but then limit the opportunities for more in something as simple as just playing as a warm up. Queens, speedball, dog house, mini tournaments, 10’ tournaments: they are fun because they are play.

If you ask your athletes which they would rather do, pepper or play, what do you think the answer will be? What would YOUR answer be?