Post 8 – Youth Sports

Youth Sports

What is going on in youth sports? Do kids train too much and too early? Do parents ruin youth sports? First off, I love sports. I loved competition growing up. In the 80’s all we did was play outside and compete. Anything and everything became a competition growing up or at least I would make it a competition. It did not matter if it was a backyard football game, home run derby, basketball game, a board game I wanted to win. Taking the trash out I wanted to be fastest to get it to the curb and back inside the house. Cutting the grass, I would time myself so I could beat my time the next time I had to mow the yard. If I had no one to compete against I would compete against myself. As I got older, my buddy and I would race our cars from one place to the other. We would race home from work driving like idiots cutting each other off all in the spirit of competition!!! We did swap some paint on occasion. It was fun, funny, and sometimes dangerous but we were young and dumb. As we were of age in our 20’s it was who could drink the most beers, who drank beers the fastest, and on and on. When I speak of youth sports and how I view the current state it is not because I am not a competitive person. I have a very calm demeanor now that I am much older and supposedly more mature. I still do time myself
making pizza dough at the pizza shop on occasion. Maybe things do not change all that much after all!

In today’s sports world I feel like parents have taken sports to a whole different level. There is so much pressure and politicking in youth sports that it has started to ruin sports for the kids and the very reasons we play sports to begin with. I played when I was young because it was fun. I had the best time and best memories playing sports. My parents never coached me, yelled at me, watched me practice, took me to additional trainings, talked to a coach, or anything else we see today on a regular basis.

Just a few weeks ago my wife and I sat at an AAU 5 th grade basketball tournament. We said we need to do a social media channel on crazy youth sports parents. It would be great to video all the crazy stuff that happens at these youth sporting events. It would be must watch TV!!

I have been involved in youth sports for over 15 years. I do not know what happened to youth sports from when I was a kid. The only two answers I can come up with is money and the desire for parents to feel like their kid(s) are getting better opportunities than they had growing up. The amount of money spent on youth sports is mind blowing. This money spent is where a lot of issues start. Once parents are invested with time and money things become more serious.

The Aspen Institute estimated U.S. families spend $30 to $40 billion annually on their children’s sports activities. I read where it cost about $900 per child in youth sports. If they play multiple sports add to that Nine hundred. This does not even include any type of travel fees for the parents /spectators. Entrance fees are becoming expensive as well to get into these events.

In addition to the expense to play and equipment now throw in personal trainings for your kids so they can keep up with little Johnny who is focusing on one sport. He is getting better every week with elite training at age Eight! Of course, we do not want our kids to fall way behind and not be good enough to play.

What happened from the 1980’s and 1990’s until now? Sports have taken over time. Family dinners sitting down are extremely difficult when running to multiple practices. Sunday going to family church takes a back seat to sports and tournaments. I do feel like many parents are completely out of control. You can
look up referee’s being assaulted, coaches being shot, brawls breaking out, and much more horrific youth sports incidents. Why is this? Why are parents so invested in every single moment in sports for their kids? I have witnessed my fair share of fighting, yelling, and parents being way too intense. I have been on the end of conversations with parents, witnessed people yelling from sidelines/stands, and hearing parents talk with coaches (who by the way in most cases are volunteers and maybe have limited knowledge of even coaching the sport.)

When I was a kid, I was dropped off at practice, and I was picked up when we finished. No one lined the practice field to watch every practice. 

I am not a perfect coach by any means. I do feel like I do a good job for the kids and typically I feel like compared to other coaches I see I am doing a good job trying to keep it fun for the kids. For me it comes down to two things having fun and learning fundamentals of the sport vs winning. We all want to win (be competitive) but to get so involved and making it only about winning is too much. There is way too much negative in youth sports. I want the kids to win because they see their hard work pays off and that is fun to see the joy of winning a big game or tournament. However, if they lose it is not the end of the world and they will be fine in two minutes right after they stop and grab some ice cream or something on the way home.

The reality is all these kids are spending hours upon hours training. Parents spend tens of thousands of dollars for memberships and sport trainings. What is the goal? Do parents even ask themselves this question? Do kids really enjoy rushing from sport to sport? Practice every day of the week? Do they think their Kids can’t wait to train and get to the gym? The answer 98% of the time is NO. There is a small percentage of youth that just love to train and workout and try to improve. Most are pushed by their parents. It is what the parents want or feel satisfies the kids. I feel like parents have good intentions for the most part. They want their kids to play and have success and gain confidence and make friends playing sports.

In all my years of coaching I decided long ago to try and get the kids to play their best game, have fun, and if they lose it is ok, there is nothing wrong with losing. I would take an 0-10 season in football losing by one score every game than a 10-0 season beating every team by 30 points. Parents and most coaches don’t see it that way. They want to stack a team and win that championship. It is important to the
parents and coaches. What most people fail to realize is the kids do not care all that much. I have four boys and have coached hundreds of games from Kindergarten through High School. I am not sure I ever have seen anyone really care about losing a game an hour after it happened. In today’s world they get to the car and start checking their phones, get home and start playing outside, their buddy that just beat them is sleeping over, and life goes on for them.

As a coach there are games, I feel like I made a dumb call or did something stupid that cost my players an opportunity or put them in a bad spot. I at times will think about those mistakes because I feel like I messed it up for the kids. Other than that, I do not even think much about the game after it is over. As a parent watching my kids play sports my goal is that they have fun, learn the game, enjoy competition,
not complain, don’t blame anyone for things that went wrong, be a good teammate and that they give 100% effort (this does not mean be the best just be their best.)

Most kids’ sports are a building block to confidence, friendships, and great memories. This is what it all should be about. The .0001% chance your child or a child you know makes it to the NFL or NBA is very slim. Even getting an opportunity to play at a D1 college is a small chance. Some kids do not even care to go onto play college sports. All the money, practice hours, travel, getting overly involved, yelling at your kids, and not letting them enjoy sports for what?

If you have a D1 athlete, you will know it and a lot of it is natural talent. They will be the kid working on their own when no one is watching. They do not need their parents pushing them or yelling at them. They are special and those are the athletes that move on to play at college or a career. I can say since 1990’s until 2024 I have played with, coached, and have seen some amazing athletes. I can think of one
that made it to the NFL and one that made it to the CFL in football. So, two kids in over Forty years around the area. I have seen several special athletes play at the college level. Only a couple at D1 schools most at smaller colleges. My point is it is tough, so parents just need to enjoy youth sports and make it fun for the kids. Let the kids make memories without all the expectations and parents pushing them so hard at such young ages.

Some interesting articles and facts on youth sports:

*The average child today spends less than three years playing a sport, quitting by age 11, according to a 2019 survey by Project Play with the Utah State University’s Families in Sports Lab. To keep them in the game, many parents are opening their checkbooks. In 2022, the average youth sports parent spent $883 on one child’s primary sport per season.

*Parents in the wealthiest households spent about four times more on their child’s sport than the lowest-income families

*The more money families spend on sports, the less their children enjoy it,” he said in an interview, noting the findings of the study surprised even him. “We would have expected that kids of means are going to have more fun and be more committed because their parents can afford all the best equipment and coaches, but we found the exact opposite.”

*To some parents, coaches and officials are deterrents to their children’s athletic
careers, obstacles along a path to wins and playing time. Sometimes, parents will do
anything to remove the coach or the official from this path toward high achievement — even resort to verbal and physical abuse.

*If you think your kid is the next Lamar Jackson/Serena Williams/Caitlin Clark you
could be right — but you’re probably wrong. 

*Every single parent thinks their kid should get more playing time. Every. Single. One. Do the math.

*Do not yell at your kids during a game. (The sound you hear is my older daughter
laughing bitterly as she reads this.) Not just because it makes you look like a jerk, but also because, like yelling at refs, it does not help. When you yell at your kid loud enough for them to hear, you force them to think not about the game but about you. 

*It should be fun, at least most of the time. There will always be bad games, injuries, intra-team conflicts, painful coaching, personal disappointments, questionable reffing, opponents who play super dirty. But there should also be joy, of the sustained variety. That joy can come from spectacular performance or slow improvement, from a string of trophies or just the pleasure of being on a team and participating in a beloved sport. But if there is no joy, then there are plenty of other things your child, and your family, can do. And most of them do not involve refs.e