When Will Youth Sports Actually Serve the Needs of Youth?

In late February I was traveling and speaking in Sydney and Perth, Australia, working for a variety of sports organizations including the Football (Soccer) Federation of Australia, Football New South Wales, the Western Australia Department of Sports and Recreation, and the WA Aussie Rules Football Committee. While on site, I got to visit the brand
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Winning the Race to the Right Finish Line in Youth Sports

Kevin McLaughlin, USA Hockey’s Director of Youth Hockey Development, was not looking forward to opening his email in January 2009. He knew it was going to be full of angry posts. He knew he and his colleagues at USA Hockey would be accused of destroying the game and taking the toughness out of the sport.
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WOC #29 Retired NBA Player, Bob Bigelow, Just Let the Kids Play

“When I was a child, the vast majority of my sporting activities were in playgrounds and sandlots. Now, the majority of youth sports activities are organized and administered by adults …. The biggest problem in organized youth sports is very simple to explain — too many adults who want to compete through children.” — Bob Bigelow,
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When Will What We Know Change What We Do in Youth Sports?

“My daughter and I had to miss her grandfather’s funeral when she was 12 for a cheerleading competition.” I had to read that twice to be sure what I was reading. This was an actual comment we received recently on Facebook. We receive a lot of heartbreaking stories from readers, but this one sentence stopped
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It’s Time to End the Sideline Sportsanity

As soon as I stepped out of my car in the parking lot, I could hear it. It was a beautiful Saturday afternoon of travel soccer, but there it was. You know what I’m talking about: that sometimes beautiful, often times excruciating cacophony of sounds that we have come to know as “cheering for our
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Why Kids Play Sports

“What do you think is going to change in the next ten years?” That is a question that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos gets all the time. He thinks that is an interesting question, but not the best one people could ask. “I almost never get the question: ‘What’s not going to change in the next
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An Open Letter to My Dad, who Makes Me Want to Quit Sports

Dear Dad, I was afraid to say this to your face after the game today, but I was thinking that maybe you could stop coming to my games for a while. It doesn’t seem that fun for you anyway, and I know it’s not fun for me when you are there. I used to love
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The Accountability Problem in Youth Sports

“Thanks so much for your talk the other day,” wrote a coach from Calgary, Alberta to us recently. “It was so refreshing to hear that message, especially in light of the news I returned home to.” “My friend spent the weekend coaching his son at a spring hockey tournament for 9 and 10 year olds,”
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Is Your Kid’s Coach a Bully?

“I think my kid’s coach is a bully, and I don’t know what to do,” a distraught parent named Dan said to me the other day. “My kid hates a sport he used to love. He has been called things by his coach that no kid should ever be called. Forget sports; this is trickling
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Does Youth Sports Get the Math All Wrong?

“I did not know there would be math on this test,” is something I say (jokingly) when I get a difficult question at my speaking engagements. Recently, I received an email from a frantic mom, and it got me thinking about math. Yes, math. When it comes to our current sporting environment, I think we often
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The Great Trophy Debate: Do We Need Participation Awards?

“Daddy, do we get trophies for playing lacrosse this spring?” my son asked me a few months back. “No, you get to go out and run around and have lots of fun while learning lacrosse,” I said. “OK!” Then he turned and ran out on the field for the start of his first practice. According
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3 Myths that are Destroying the Youth Sports Experience for our Kids

Every year, I travel throughout the US, Canada, Asia and Europe, and give well over 100 presentations to parents and coaches. I speak to tens of thousands of people about youth sports, coaching, and athlete development. Every time I do a live event, I get asked the following question: “If you are presenting all this
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Help, My Child is a Late Bloomer: 5 Tips for Overcoming the “Relative Age Effect” in Youth Sports

“Here is my question,” a mother concerned with her 10 year-old son’s sports experience recently wrote me. “I am not afraid that my son will quit sports by the time he is 13.  I am afraid that he will be denied the opportunity to play. My son is coordinated and coachable. He LOVES sports; we
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Why Kids Quit Sports

“I just can’t take it anymore coach,” a talented but underperforming player named Kate told me a few years back. “I think I am done playing.” My mind went through all the reasons this might be happening: burnout, other interests, team dynamics, I was too hard on her, the gamut. What could it be? “It’s
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The 4 Biggest Problems in Youth Sports Today

When you run an organization such as the Changing the Game Project, you hear many youth sports stories from parents, coaches, and players. Some stories are absolutely heartbreaking, others inspiring. Recently I encountered the absurd. Many of us have seen the news about a volleyball player from Washington DC who was taking her playing time
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The Adultification of Youth Sports

The other day I had a conversation with a coaching colleague about the state of youth sports. I stated that the emphasis on travel sports and playing multiple games per day for young children was hurting kids and damaging sports. “I agree with what you are saying,” he said, “but you are forgetting that youth
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The Perils of Single-Sport Participation

For the last few days, my email and social media accounts have been lit up by a simple image first shared with me on Twitter by @ohiovarsity. It is amazing because the image portrays something that is widely known among experts, widely discussed in coaching circles, and has certainly been written about by me and
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The Enemy of Excellence in Youth Sports

“My daughter is the tallest fourth grader in her class and loves to play basketball,” said a father to me recently. “Sadly, I know that she will ultimately grow to be of average height.  Since she is now only allowed to rebound and give the ball to shorter-ball handler players on her team, she will
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The Tipping Point in Youth Sports

“What happens to us parents and coaches,” I often get asked, “that turns us from sensible, relaxed people to stressed out adults roaming up and down sports sidelines and screaming at every play?” It is a question I ponder a lot, especially as I often get to watch my young children’s games played side by
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Is Social Media Ruining Your Youth Sports Experience?

Do you turn get on Facebook, or Pinterest, or Instagram, and ever think to yourself “Everyone’s kid has a trophy, won their big game, and is having great success, but mine is not?” Does it drive you nuts when everyone else’s kids seem to be achieving something remarkable, or looking so happy, and you are
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Are Great Coaches Becoming an Endangered Species?

When you are in the coaching profession, one of the things you learn early on is not to take things too personally. Your biggest fans when you win may become your biggest critics when you lose. Your players may love you one moment, and grumble the next, and it is important to maintain perspective and
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The Missing Ingredient in US Talent Development

In 2005, the coaches at one of the top English Premier League Youth Soccer Academies held one of their semiannual meetings to decide upon which players they would keep for the upcoming cycle, and whom they would let go. As they were evaluating their players –many of whom would go on to star not only
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FUN is NOT a 4-letter Word!

When I was a kid, my parents taught me to avoid those bad four letter words we all have heard. You know the ones I mean, the ones that you would first hear in school and then think it was OK to use them at home, until you saw that look on dad’s face! My
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Changing the Game in Youth Sports

On April 26, 2014 I had the honor of presenting a talk at TEDx Bend Oregon entitled “Changing the Game in Youth Sports.” The power of the TED platform, and its international recognition as a brand that brings “ideas worth sharing” to the forefront of conversation, was such an incredible platform to be able to
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The Ride Home

One of the saddest things I had to do as a Director of Coaching for numerous soccer clubs was conduct exit interviews, meetings with players whom had decided to leave the club. Children quit sports for a litany of reasons, and my job was always to see what we could learn, so we could improve
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The Race to Nowhere in Youth Sports

“My 4th grader tried to play basketball and soccer last year,” a mom recently told me as we sat around the dinner table after one of my speaking engagements. “It was a nightmare. My son kept getting yelled at by both coaches as we left one game early to race to a game in the
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The 10,000 Hour Myth

A myth is a false belief or idea that is widely held. One such myth that has enveloped youth sports is the idea that to become an elite athlete all one needs 10,000 hours of sustained, deliberate training. This is a myth in every sense of the word. I recently gave a talk at a
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What About the Single Sport Athlete? Specialization Part II

My article on sport specialization, “Is it Wise to Specialize,” prompted quite a bit of discussion, commentary, and controversy, with people chiming in from all across the globe. Certainly the dynamics of single v multiple sport participation, and its effect upon performance, injury, and burnout, is not a settled issue, and arouses many emotions. It
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The Armpit of American Youth Sports: “Friday Night Tykes”

The armpit is the part of the body that is dark, stinky, and unattractive. Everyone has one, but no one wants to see it or acknowledge it, and would rather cover it up and move on. The armpit of American youth sports is the culture of win-at-all-costs, uneducated, over the top coaches and parents who
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Is it Wise to Specialize?

The greatest difference between our children’s sporting experience and our own is the rise of year round, sport specific organizations that ask – even require – season after season of participation in order to stay in the player development pipeline. The pressure to have your child specialize in a single sport at a young age
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