Maybe there is something to this “having fun” thing.
Yes, Norway showed up at this World Cup with their best team in 30 years, perhaps ever. They have already emerged from the toughest group with style and plundered five-time champion Brazil along the way. England awaits. That’s impressive enough for a nation with fewer people than the Philadelphia metropolitan area.
But boy, they sure have had some fun along the way. There’s no need to wait for the final. The Viking Row has already won the World Cup.
Why We Wrote This
Norway punches far above its weight as a sporting nation. The success of its athletes might be rooted in the way young Norwegians learn sports – by first focusing on the process, rather than on wins and losses.
And weren’t we here just six months ago? Weren’t Norwegian athletes making one of the world’s great sporting events their personal stage, winning hearts and golds on their way to topping the Winter Olympics’ medal table?
How does Norway do it? What’s going on in those fjords, exactly?
One answer is that, from the youngest ages, Norway thinks about sports in a radically different way. In Norway, teams do not keep score before children turn 11, and the players cannot be separated into ranks until they are 12 or 13. Sports begin not as a race to the top, but as a constitutionally guaranteed social benefit for all, a place to learn, grow, and – perhaps most importantly – have fun.
It is in many respects the polar opposite of the youth sports system in the United States, which has been dramatically commercialized into pathways that promise elite development from the moment kids can kick a ball, lace up skates, or pick up a racket. But that hypercompetitive approach is not always best for the player, and can come at a mental cost – which is stirring American interest in Norway’s youth-sports revolution.
“It’s a human-centered blueprint. It puts the person first by looking at the player pathway as a human journey, not just a sports journey,” says Curt Rosenthal, president of the Sports Wellness Institute in New York. “It’s understanding how to get the most out of someone.”
At the Njårdhallen sports arena, up among the rumpled hills of suburban Oslo, the spirit of those words echoes through the rafters as much as the squeak of sports shoes on parquet. This is the last day of practice before a big local tournament for the club’s 13- and 14-year-old girls’ handball teams. That brings a particular intensity. But at the end, when one of the coaches brings the team together for a final talk, one word is conspicuously missing: “win.”
There is talk of effort, of pride, of trusting one another, and of executing what they have learned. But there is not a single word about winning the games ahead.
That is no coincidence, says goalkeeping coach Jo Røislien.
“We don’t coach for the winning; we coach for the process,” he says. “Whether I won the game or not, there’s nothing I can do. I have to trust the process. We don’t want to worry about the score. We don’t coach the results.”
Affectionately known as “the professor,” Coach Røislien is indeed a professor of medical statistics at the University of Stavanger. An Einsteinian thatch of wild gray hair completes the effect. And to him, teaching sports this way just makes sense.
Mark Sappenfield/The Christian Science Monitor
Winning, after all, can be the result of an unfortunate bounce, a bad call, or one small mistake. Coaching every step of the process gives kids a sense of control and is better for their development. There’s also the fact that it prepares them for the rest of their lives, where they will have to figure out how to manage disappointments and losses at work and in relationships.
“I want these girls to be CEOs and professors,” he says. “We don’t coach them to win the game, we coach them to win at life.”
The results speak for themselves. The Norwegian national team is the top-ranked women’s handball team in the world, and the head coach of the club team that is training at the Njårdhallen won a gold medal at the Beijing Olympics. Two of the other coaches played professionally in Denmark, which has the top handball league in the world.
Yet there is still pressure to adopt a more American model, says Else-Marthe Lybekk, that head coach and former Olympian.
“Some [parents] think you need to start earlier,” she says. “They think about their own child and think something special. They want the best for their child, but they don’t see the full picture.”
For her part, Axeline Austat Adams likes it the way it is. A 13-year-old on the Njård sports club’s team, she says the practices are serious, but “it’s never mean.”
“I like to play, have fun, and have friends,” she says, smiling.
A few thousand miles away, the Norwegian fans and players delightedly rowing their way to the quarterfinals of the World Cup would almost certainly agree.