I while back I posted an
opinion piece about the need for organized snacks during and after soccer games. I wanted to go into a little more detail on the why of that post.
I've been coaching at the YMCA for about 6 years now. I've seen kids of all shapes and sizes and demographics and family situations. I think that a lot of these kids need organized sports to fill gaps in their lives. They need soccer to help them become better people. I've come to believe that snacks during soccer does more harm than good.
So mid-season this year my teams killed the team snack concept. We rolled it into a BYOS (Bring your own snack) program.
My issues were (in no order):
- It's a pain with all the new allergy issues that kids have.
I don't get it. Almost no one had allergies when I was a kid. Now it seems there are more that do than don't. Trying to buy the right combination of snacks to please everyone stinks. - Snack schedules. I hate them.
I don't want to have to worry about who is not going to make the game on their snack day. I don't need to be called when there's a conflict. The parents don't need to be spending time buying snacks for kids, siblings, refs, coach or whoever.
- Kids don't need more sugar
Those box juices? Capri suns? God forbid, Gatorade? Kids don't need it. In fact, with the rise of juvenile diabetes they should be avoiding it as much as they can. And the bags of snacks? They are just as bad. But hey, if you know your kids and want to do that . . it's your world, be happy. I just don't want to endorse it for everyone.
- Why are the kids playing? For the food!?!? WRONG!
Different kids need to be motivated differently but setting up food as a reward can lead to some very serious issues as they get older. Kids should be playing sports to have fun. Parents should have kids play sports so they get exercise (and learn the benefits thereof), learn to work as a team, and have fun. I don't think food should be in that list.
I think it worked out pretty well. For my kids we did water at the breaks and some fruit after the game if it happened to end around normal "snack time." We didn't make it a part of the game though; it was more a "Are you hungry? How fortuitous that we happen to have orange slices here." {OK . .that part is not entirely true . . in our house we are transitioning away from game snacks so there was still an expectation of snack. That should end next season I hope}
Based on what I've read, it seems that fruit and water is the way to go for healthy, tasty, easy soccer snack. We like oranges, grapes (raisins), nuts, and apples.
