May 6, 2008

Are Coaches being Glorified Part III by John DeBenedictis

Who else can be blamed for kids quitting sports based on the top two reasons but the coach?

If the coach cannot make playing a sport interesting or fun, than he/she has failed as a coach in being the leader and role model that he or she needs to be. The coach has failed in the player’s eyes and parents also consider the coach a failure. Championships are not what parents care about. Players want to have fun first and foremost. If this is not achieved, the coach has been a poor role model.

The issue of kids quitting sports is huge especially when we are fighting for kids to get active and healthy. Drop out rate hovers above 75% in boys and at 65% in girls by age 12.

Learning skills, tactics and strategies does play a role in keeping players interested and coaches need to understand that learning is important but winning is not. Take a good look at the spectators at a youth sporting event. Most are parents and they are not there to watch the team. They are there for one reason and one reason only. They are there to watch their children and in reality, that’s all they care about. Do they prefer to see their team win the championship at the expense of their son or daughter playing? No way, because parents would rather see their kids play a fair share of the game and risk losing the championship rather than sit out. A victory would be more rewarding if the child played in the game rather than be embarrassed in front of his or her peers for not playing. Parents couldn’t really care less if the team won or lost if it was at the expense of their child not playing. I watched a nine-year old boy cry so hard that he created a crowd after his house league coach barely played him in a playoff game. I also witnessed a coach of a  select team act like a monkey on the sidelines and get thrown out of a game.

Check by next week for the final chapter of this great article on Coaches.

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May 1, 2008

Are Coaches being Glorified? Part II by John DeBenedictis

What is the role of the coach and how important are they in that job?

The coach, regardless of the age group and level he or she is coaching, has a very important role in the relationsip with the athletes of the team outside of simply teacing skills and tactics.  In fact, this role is probaly more important than most coaches themselves understand.  Studies have show over and over that a coach is a very influential person in a child's life and actually is the second most important person in children's lives nest to the parent.  In fact, in cases where there are parental problems or a child has lost a parent, the coach can take on those roles as well. At each age group, the coach influences players in different ways.  How a coach interacts with the athletes can either crate a positive or negative experience for the athlete.

In other studies that looked at the drop out rates in children's sports, the coach is very influential.  How enjoyable they make the sport, can either increase or decrease the chances of their playing the sprot for a long time or quitting.  Their role in the development of the child as a person will be a much more important aspect of their coaching.  Players and parents will remember them in how they or their child was treated and not what they won.  Unfortunately, coaches themselves are often under the wrong impression that they are there to only teach kids how to play and then to make their team a winning team.

This is the biggest misconception a coach can have about his or her performances as a coach.  Most parents don't care if the team wins or loses.  All they care about is how their kids play.  Everyone plays to win but the parent is concerned that his/her child plays.  Are they enjoying the game, making friends, keeping fit, demonstrating fair play, and learning the values of competition and cooperation?  These are life skills that are applicable to the real world.  Playing in the NHL,NBA, Wolrld Series of the World Cup is not going to be the real world for most kids.  Of course, there are parents who actually think their child will be the next superstar but most are reasonable and just wnat their kids to do their best and use sport as a life learning tool.  That can only happen if kids stay in sports.  Of course players need a goal that there may be a future in athletics but coaches must realize that young kids will search for that goal on their own.  Parents are acutally expecting you to get to the other goals.  Ultimately, to lean life's lessons.

Therein coaches make grave mistakes and are the prime reason why kids quit sports.  In a study of over 11,ooo kids, the number one and two factors for why  kids quit sports are:

  • 1) It was no longer interesting and
  • 2) It was no longer FUN.

This was the same for boys and girls.  Quitting because the coach was a poor teacher was the 6th on the list for reasons why boys quit sports and not even in the top ten list for why girls quit sports.

Check back next week for Part III of this interesting article on Coaches.

 

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April 24, 2008

Are Coaches Being Glorified by John DeBenedictis (National Soccer Coaches Association of Canada)

Koach Karl hopes this article will help answer some questions about coaches….

 

 

Question. I do not score goals, run for touchdowns or make baskets: I do not make passes, receive passes or make errant passes: I do not stop goals, make tackles or cover the opposition: I do not dribble, or stick handle around opponents: and I do not sacrifice my body physically for the team. But I am involved in sports and get the most close ups and individual airtime on Television than anyone else during a sports cast. Who Am I?

 

Answer. THE COACH

 

With the NHL and NBA playoffs in progress and the baseball and soccer seasons just beginning, sports fans will be watching countless hours of team sports on TV. The camera’s will focus on many sports personalities but it’s the coaches that will literally hog the TV screens with most of the close ups.  Although sport has always identified the coach as an important person in the scheme of things, the expectations put on a coach, especially as an entertainment value, has increased substantially in the past decade. It is quite common for cameras to be solely focused on the coach to see what their reaction is in the game. We see close ups of their reactions to goals, touchdowns, penalty calls and now the coaches are practically part of the replays.

 

If a player has a scoring opportunity, in many cases the coach may have thought out the play to create the chance but ultimately, it is the skill of the player that will decide the fate of that moment. But we still want to see how coaches react, look, cheer, curse or whatever else they do during a game.

   

The media has certainly helped glorify the coach and his/her importance to the athletic results on the field, floor, ice or diamond. But does the coach actually deserve this attention? TV stations will do what it takes to improve ratings and if fans want to see a coach’s reaction then they will get it. Unfortunately, too many youth coaches think they need to behave as though they are coaching the pros and are on TV. Some coaches believe all eyes are on them to produce winning results. In reality, most coaches are strictly volunteers and they are not expected to produce winning results. Some coaches may want to coach at a higher level but while they are coaching kids, they must understand that their role is not to produce winning teams at the expense of the child’s social development and certainly not in an entertainment, ratings grabber sort of way.

 Check back next week for the continuation of this great article about Coaches…

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April 8, 2008

Expectations Lose to Reality of Sports Scholarships Part IV - by Bill Pennington

Koach Karl brings you the final chapter of this great article on Sports Scholarships.

In 2003-4, N.C.A.A. institutions gave athletic scholarships amounting to about 2 percent of the 6.4 million athletes playing those sports in high school four years earlier. Despite the considerable attention paid to sports, the select group of athletes barely registers statistically among the 5.3 million students at N.C.A.A. colleges and universities.

Scholarships are typically split and distributed to a handful, or even, say, 20, athletes because most institutions do not fully finance the so-called non revenue sports like soccer, baseball, golf, lacrosse, volleyball, softball, swimming, and track and field. Colleges offering these sports often pay for only five or six full scholarships, which are often sliced up to cover an entire team. Some sports have one or two full scholarships or none at all.
The N.C.A.A. also restricts by sport the number of scholarships a college is allowed to distribute, and the numbers for most teams are tiny when compared with Division I football and its 85-scholarship limit.  A fully financed men's Division I soccer team is restricted to 9.9 full scholarships, for freshmen to seniors. These are typically divvied up among as many as 25 or 30 players. A majority of N.C.A.A. members do not reach those limits and are not fully financed in most of their sports.

Ms. Milhous, whose Villanova field hockey team plays in the competitive Big East Conference, must make tough choices in recruiting. The N.C.A.A. permits Division I field hockey teams to have 12 full scholarships, but her team has fewer. "I tell parents of recruits I have eight scholarships, and they say: "Wow, eight a year? That's great," she said. And I say: "No, eight over four or five years of recruits. And I've got 22 girls on our team. That can mean a $2,000 scholarship, which surprises parents.
"They might argue with me," Ms. Milhous said. "But the fact is I've got girls getting from $2,000 to $20,000, and it all has to add up to eight scholarships. It's very subjective, and remember, what I get to give out is also determined by how many seniors I've got leaving." Two Brothers, Two Stories Joe Taylor, a soccer player at Villanova, received a scholarship worth half his roughly $40,000 in college costs when he graduated from a suburban Philadelphia high school three years ago. He had spent years on one of the top travel soccer teams in the country, F.C. Delco, and had several college aid offers. "It was still a huge dogfight to get whatever you can get," Mr. Taylor said. Everyone is scrambling. There are so many good players, and nobody understands how few get to keep playing after high school."
In 2003-4, there was the equivalent of one full N.C.A.A. men's soccer scholarship available for about every 145 boys who were playing high school soccer four years earlier. "There's a lot of luck involved really," Mr. Taylor said. "I can pinpoint a time when I was suddenly heavily recruited. It was after a tournament in Long Island the summer after my junior year. I scored a few goals. The Villanova coach was there, and so were some other college coaches. Within a couple of days, my in-box was full of e-mails. I've wondered, what would have happened if didn't play well that day?
Mr. Taylor has a younger brother, Pat, who followed in his footsteps, playing on the same national-level travel team and for the same Olympic developmental program. "He did everything I did, and in some ways I think he's a better player than me," Joe said. "But you know, I think he didn't have the big game when the right college coaches were there. He didn't get the money offers I did." Pat Taylor is a freshman at Loyola College in Baltimore. Though recruited, he did not make the soccer team during tryouts last fall. "I feel terrible for him” he worked as hard as I did for all those years," Joe Taylor said.
Their father, Chris Taylor, said he once calculated what he spent on the boys' soccer careers. "Ten thousand per kid per year is not an unreasonable estimate," he said. "But we never looked at it as a financial transaction. You are misguided if you do it for that reason. You cannot recoup what you put in if you think of it that way. It was their passion still is and we wanted to indulge that. So what if we didn't take vacations for a few years." Pat Taylor, who started playing soccer at 4, said it took him about a month to accept that his dream of playing varsity soccer on scholarship in college would not happen. He looks back fondly on his youth career but also wishes he knew at the start what he knows now about the process.

"The whole thing really is a crapshoot, but no one ever says that out loud," he said. "On every team I played on, every single person there thought for sure that they would play in college. I thought so, too. Just by the numbers, it's completely unrealistic. And if I had it to do over, I would have skipped a practice every now and then to go to a concert or a movie with my friends. I missed out on a lot of things for soccer. I wish I could have some of that time back."

Check back next week for another interesting article.

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April 1, 2008

Expectations Lose to Reality of Sports Scholarships- Part III by Bill Pennington

 

Koach Karl brings you Part III of the reality of Scholarships…

 

Lack of Knowledge

Parents often look back on the many years spent shuttling sons and daughters to practices, camps and games with a changed eye. Swept up in the dizzying pursuit of sports achievement, they realize how little they knew of the process.  Mrs. Barry remembers how her daughter Courtney rose at 4 a.m. for years so she could attend a private swim practice before school. A second practice followed in the afternoon. Weekends were for competitions. Courtney is now a standout freshman at Delaware after receiving a $10,000 annual athletic scholarship.


"I'm very proud of her and it was worth it on many levels, but not necessarily the ones everybody talks about," Mrs. Barry said. "It can take over your life. Getting up at 4 a.m. was like having another baby again. And the expenses are significant; I know I didn't buy new clothes for a while.

But the hardest part is that nobody educates the parents on what's really going on or what's going to happen.

When they received the letter from Delaware informing them of Courtney’s scholarship, she and her husband, Bob, were thrilled. Later, they shared a quiet sigh, noting that the scholarship might just defray the cost of the last couple of years of Courtney’s youth sports swim career. The paradox has caught the attention of Myles Brand, the president of the N.C.A.A.

"The youth sports culture is overly aggressive, and while the opportunity for an athletic scholarship is not trivial, it's easy for the opportunity to be over exaggerated by parents and advisers," Mr. Brand said in a telephone interview. "That can skew behavior and, based on the numbers, lead to unrealistic expectations." Instead, Mr. Brand said, families should focus on academics.


"The real opportunity is taking advantage of how eager institutions are to reward good students," he said. "In America's colleges, there is a system of discounting for academic achievement. Most people with good academic records aren't paying full sticker price. We don't want people to stop playing sports; it's good for them. But the best opportunity available is to try to improve one's academic qualifications. The math of athletic scholarships is complicated and widely misunderstood.


Despite common references in news media reports, there is no such thing as a four-year scholarship. All N.C.A.A. athletic scholarships must be renewed and are not guaranteed year to year, something stated in bold letters on the organization's Web site for student-athletes. Nearly every scholarship can be canceled for almost any reason in any year, although it is unclear how often that happens.

 

Follow up next week with Part IV of this interesting article……

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March 25, 2008

Expectations Lose to Reality of Sports Scholarships Part II by Bill Pennington

Koach Karl brings you Part II of this article on Sports Scholarships:

Many students and their parents think of playing a sport not because of scholarship money, but because it is stimulating and might even give them a leg up in the increasingly competitive process of applying to college. But coaches and administrators, the gatekeepers of the recruiting system, said in interviews that parents and athletes who hoped for such money were much too optimistic and that they were unprepared to effectively navigate the system. The athletes, they added, were the ones who ultimately suffered.

Coaches surveyed at two representative N.C.A.A. Division I institutions:  Villanova University outside Philadelphia and the University of Delaware told tales of rejecting top prospects because their parents were obstinate in scholarship negotiations. "I dropped a good player because her dad was a jerk” all he ever talked to me about was scholarship money," said Joanie Milhous, the field hockey coach at Villanova. "I don't need that in my program. I recruit good, ethical parent’s as much as good, talented kids because, in the end, there's a connection between the two."

The best-laid plans of coaches do not always bring harmony on teams, however, and scholarships can be at the heart of the unrest. Who is getting how much tends to get around like the salaries in a workplace. The result "scholarship envy" can divide teams.

The chase for a scholarship has another side that is rarely discussed. Although those athletes who receive athletic aid are viewed as the ultimate winners, they typically find the demands on their time, minds and bodies in college even more taxing than the long journey to get there.

There are 6 a.m. weight-lifting sessions, exhausting practices, team meetings, study halls and long trips to games. Their varsity commitments often limit the courses they can take. Athletes also share a frustrating feeling of estrangement from the rest of the student body, which views them as the privileged ones. In this setting, it is not uncommon for first- and second-year athletes to relinquish their scholarships.


"Kids who have worked their whole life trying to get a scholarship think the hard part is over when they get the college money," said Tim Poydenis, a senior at Villanova receiving $3,000 a year to play baseball. "They don't know that it's a whole new monster when you get here. Yes, all the hard work paid off. And now you have to work harder."

Check  back next week for Part III of this scholarship article….

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March 18, 2008

Expectations Lose to Reality of Sports Scholarships by Bill Pennington

Koach Karl brings you another great article on Scholarships:

Expectations Lose to Reality of Sports Scholarships
By
BILL PENNINGTON New York Times March 10, 2008

At youth sporting events, the sidelines have become the ritual community meeting place, where families sit in rows of folding chairs aligned like church pews. These congregations are diverse in spirit but unified by one gospel: heaven is your child receiving a college athletic scholarship.
 
Parents sacrifice weekends and vacations to tournaments and specialty camps, spending thousands each year in this quest for the Holy Grail. But the expectations of parents and athletes can differ sharply from the financial and cultural realities of college athletics, according to an analysis by The New York Times of previously undisclosed data from the National Collegiate Athletic Association and interviews with dozens of college officials.

Excluding the glamour sports of football and basketball, the average N.C.A.A. athletic scholarship is nowhere near a full ride, amounting to $8,707. In sports like baseball or track and field, the number is routinely as low as $2,000. Even when football and basketball are included, the average is $10,409. Tuition and room and board for N.C.A.A. institutions often cost between $20,000 and $50,000 a year.
People run themselves ragged to play on three teams at once so they could always reach the next level, said Margaret Barry of Laurel, Md., whose daughter is a scholarship swimmer at the University of Delaware. "They're going to be disappointed when they learn that if they are very lucky, they will get a scholarship worth 15 percent of the $40,000 college bill. What's that? $6,000?"
 

Within the N.C.A.A. data, last collected in 2003-4 and based on N.C.A.A. calculations from an internal study, are other statistical insights about the distribution of money for the 138,216 athletes who received athletic aid in Division I and Division II. Men received 57 percent of all scholarship money, but in 11 of the 14 sports with men's and women's teams, the women's teams averaged higher amounts per athlete. On average, the best-paying sport was neither football nor men's or women's basketball. It was men’s ice hockey, at $21,755. Next was women's ice hockey ($20,540). The lowest overall average scholarship total was in men's riflery ($3,608), and the lowest for women was in bowling ($4,899). Baseball was the second-lowest men's sport ($5,806).

Return next week to continue this interesting information about Scholarships.

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March 11, 2008

Youth Soccer Trainer - You Raise Them I Train Them

 Koach Karl brings you this opinion by Bob A. - let us know your thoughts on this subject….

Youth Soccer Trainer Contract

My issue is not with "paid coaches" even though I don't think "paid coaches" are necessary in youth soccer, IF you have a good technical director paid or unpaid that is directing the training of your league coaches who is QUALIFIED to train your coaches. 
 
What I do have a problem with is the "paid coach" that is not qualified to teach. Who makes false promises of college scholarships to kids he or she trains to obtain employment as a trainer/coach.
 
Bob A.
Here is an example of a contract that I would like them to sign.
Youth Soccer Trainer Contract
                   I, (insert trainers name) a youth soccer personal trainer/coach agree to refund all money paid to me for the training I have been paid to train, (insert players name)a (insert age) old minor to become a NCAA Division I men’s soccer player on a full athletic soccer scholarship.
                   If (insert players name) does not receive a full athletic scholarship to play soccer at a NCAA Division I school by his nineteenth (19) birthday I (insert trainers name) will refund all of the money paid by his parents to me and include interest at a rate of six (6) per cent per year for all money given to me by his parents to train (insert players name).
                   If (insert players name) parents have paid me to train (insert player name) based on my promise that by training with me from January 1, 200(insert year) until his nineteenth (19) birth date he would receive a “full ride” soccer scholarship to a NCAA Division I school and  I (insert trainers name) do not deliver that scholarship for (insert players name) and they paid me to train (insert players name) on an average of at least two training sessions per week for at least forty (40) weeks per year during that time I (insert trainers name)will do the following:
                   I (insert trainers name) will double the money they have paid me for that training that did not result in (insert players name) receiving the scholarship to play by his nineteenth birth day. I (insert players name) will reimburse his parents with-in thirty (30) days of his nineteenth (19) birth date. Said payment shall include interest at a rate of six (6) per-cent per year for the period of time that I (insert trainers name) was paid to train (insert players name).
                  
Signed,
(Trainers signature),
 You raise them, I train them!
“Double Your Money Back Guarantee”
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March 4, 2008

Youth Soccer Coach Wanted: Only Those with Patience and Perseverance Need Apply Part IV

Koach Karl brings you the final chapter of this great article about youth development by Gary Allen.

The second issue of motivation is "who" is motivated to continue to play. It is well-known that in youth sports generally, approximately 70% of all athletes at age 12 stop playing sports altogether by age 13. Why? Most of it comes back to intrinsic motivation. Players entering their teen years are like all teenagers, they are beginning to search for their identities, and they also start to realize that they do have choices about how to spend their time. Why is there such a rise in "extreme" sports in this country? Could it be that these sports provide teens with a way to express themselves and solve problems in unique ways, without the constant prodding from adults to do things in certain, prescribed ways?

     Another fact, of which many are unaware is that almost 75% of physically precocious athletes only develop into mediocre athletes. By focusing all of our "special" attention at ages 9-14 primarily on these players, we are missing many players, who, though they are not precocious, could ultimately be the great athletes when they mature. Yet, currently, we provide them with very little motivation to continue, focusing most of our attention on those we deem to be "serious" players.    
     A 13 year old searching for affirmation as he or she begins to go through tremendous changes physically, mentally and emotionally, is generally not going to be motivated to continue in an area where he or she may not be successful because he or she has not grown enough yet, or may have grown too much too quickly and is temporarily awkward. Yet, instead of focusing on providing intrinsic motivation for more and more young teens to play, we adults do just the opposite, seek to select out those we perceive to be "elite" for success.  
     "A 1999 study of professional soccer players from several countries showed that they were much more likely than the general population to have been born at a time of year that would have dictated their enrollment in youth soccer leagues at ages older than the average. In their early years, these children would have enjoyed a substantial advantage in size and strength when playing soccer with their teammates."
     The study referenced above showed that the vast majority of successful players were born in the first half of the year. Since we place such a premium on physical prowess between the ages of 9 and 14, this makes sense. It is at these ages that there is the greatest diversity in development. For a 14 year old, six months can make a huge difference in physical development. Every parent can relate to the fact that at these ages they have to constantly buy larger clothes and shoes. Most kids born in the second half of the calendar year, therefore, are at a distinct disadvantage having to compete with players born in the first half of the year. 
     Our current push to select Olympic Development Program players at younger ages exacerbates this problem. While we are legitimately searching for ways to increase our ultimate level of play, our efforts in this instance, hurt us more than helps us. We have decided that the solution lies in finding and identifying players at younger and younger ages. There is a Under-14 National Team, for which players must be chosen from Under-12 Regional teams. Thus, at the very ages when we should be expanding the pool of players for development, we are shrinking it, based upon the faulty premise that we can identify the future stars at 13 years old.
     The issues for youth soccer development in this country are huge, but not insurmountable. To be sure, the solutions will require nothing less than a paradigm shift. All of the modern organization and viewpoints notwithstanding, the nature of how kids learn has not changed. If we truly want to develop players who can play on a world level, and a society that enjoys the game as much as the rest of the world, we have to recognize, embrace and utilize these truths. Otherwise, we will perpetually be pushing the rock up the same hill, only to have it roll back down again.  
      Check back next week for more great articles from Koach Karl.
 
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February 26, 2008

Youth Soccer Coach Wanted..only those with Patience and Perseverance Need Apply Part IV

Koach Karl brings you Part IV ot his article about youth development…

    Of major interest for all soccer fans, and really fans of any sport, is to watch an incredibly talented player solve problems in ways no one else has tried before. Highlight reels are loaded with heretofore-unseen feats. It is interesting to note that some of the greatest players of all time: Pele, Maradona, Cruyff, Platini, Bobby Charlton, etc. were not especially tall players, but each of them was electrifying to watch. Yet, because we tend to focus on the results of games, and selecting future stars out so early, our attention most often turns not to the player with a spark of something unique, but to the physical attributes of the precocious "early bloomers." While this may seem to reinforce collective efficiency at a given time, because of the nature of development, it ends up placing a premium on being bigger, faster and stronger, and eschewing the creative methods that less physically precocious athletes use to solve the problems of the game. In addition to bypassing many future potential stars, this focus also causes the "selected" players, in these very crucial years of their development, to learn to be successful by using a very rudimentary, direct style of play.     

     Soccer is a game played on a relatively large field. Arguments for years have centered on trying to make the field and the numbers per side smaller. Unfortunately, even though strides have been made in these areas, fields generally tend to be too large for younger players. This often results in footraces to balls driven into spaces that are mostly won by the bigger, stronger and faster players. Thus, in the formative years when they could be put in smaller environments that require them to solve problems by developing many different tools, these players are rewarded for relying almost exclusively on their precocious attributes. Thus, they learn to be efficient, direct players, but don't develop the creativity to work out different problems of the game for themselves.
     "Motivation appears to be a more important factor than innate ability in the development of expertise."
This statement is immensely important, because it affects both the type of players we develop, as well as whom we develop. First, as to the type of players we develop, by placing such importance on the physically precocious player, we motivate those players to perpetuate the physical and direct style and method of play. The premium placed on winning games and having successful seasons actually diminishes any motivation for players to experiment, or try to solve a problem through guile or indirect and crafty play, because of the penalty for failure.
     Two crucial aspects of the game at the higher levels are patience and concentration. Because success based upon physical prowess often results in promoting direct play, players up through the mid-teen years often have never developed the patience or the concentration to hold possession of the ball beyond three or four passes, and certainly do not have the foresight to use the ball to draw opponents into certain parts of the field so that they can exploit the spaces they create. This sort of patience, concentration, guile, and using the ball as the ultimate decoy are not even considerations for most teenaged players. Most of it is due directly to what has been the reason they have been "selected" and the continual motivation throughout their earlier years: success through physical, direct and efficient play.
     Check next week for Part V - the final Chapter of this great article by Gary Allen
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