American coaching youth teams in Europe -- Is this normal?
I am from the USA, living in Sweden, and started coaching my son's team a few years ago. I come from a family of coaches and have some, but pretty limited, coaching experience myself. Mainly I'm trying to help out, fit in, and do things the way they do things here—which is often much harder than it sounds.
A couple of years ago I started with a new team of 12-year-olds, most of whom were absolute beginners. We had a training match against another team in our club. They beat us 90–4, pressing the entire game, cheering loudly, running fast breaks, chanting "DEFENSE" in the 4th quarter...like it was a competitive match or something
Our second match was against a team from our club that was a year older. They beat us 108–? When they broke 100 (on an under-the-leg layup), their bench and parents erupted like they had just won a championship.
I confronted both coaches afterward and they acted like I was insane. One told me I needed to learn to be a "better loser." The other told me they really "needed this win" because they hadn't won any matches the previous year.
These last couple years, I have realized these massive blow-outs are pretty common, since the teams are very uneven skill-wise. A lot of "serious" teams ( often with parent-coaches who were former players ) start their teams very young ( 6 or 7 ), so older beginners are often at a disadvantage.
This year I'm helping coach another team of beginners, this time 14-year-olds. There is a big increase in interest in basketball in Sweden right now, but a shortage of coaches. We play in a lower-level league, but for matches, in order to avoid getting completely blown out, we were given a few players from the club's A team, who play at the top level. Apparently they needed some playing time.
The screenshot above is from our last game. We won 132–8. The loaned players were responsible for more than half of our points.
I don't feel good about this. I've brought it up with other coaches, but they insist that not playing your hardest, or not going for it on every possession, would actually be a greater insult to the other team than easing up on the competition.
As the immigrant in the group, I do speak up, but I also don't want to constantly push against the local coaching culture.
In the USA, at least in my experience, this would generally be considered pretty poor sportsmanship at this level. Or any level really. I grew up playing extremely competitive Catholic-school basketball in Oklahoma in the 80s and 90s, and I honestly don't remember seeing anything quite like this.
So I guess I'm wondering if I've been assuming something was universal when it actually isn't.
Is this attitude toward youth basketball blowouts common elsewhere in Europe or the world? Or is this unusual even by European standards?