I've spent many, many hours coaching youth sports -- girls' volleyball and basketball, mainly -- so I'm pretty sure I'll forever keep my ears perked up for ideas on how to help kids learn about sports. A recent article in The Newark Advocate had just that -- teach kids to love sports by letting them tell you how to play.

Think about it -- kids love to play because it allows them to be creative. If you're trying to teach your daughter to play basketball, by all means teach her the basics of shooting, passing, and dribbling, but let her use her imagination to create new ways to play the game.The thing I've learned is this -- kids love to play when you let them play. My volleyball teams might have cried and moaned when I made them perform a drill over and over, but if I gave them 15 minutes to play three-on-three Queen of the Court at the end of practice, all of a sudden they had tons of energy and hustle. Why? Because they got to play a game they loved for fun.

While the basics of any sport are important, it's also important that kids have fun while they're learning. If they have fun from the start, some of those drills might not seem so horrible later on ...