When You Attend a Youth Sports Event, Know Your Role!

Imagine the perfect summer day. The sun is out, The birds are chirping. And a bunch of 7 year old boys scurry about a baseball diamond, trying to hit, run, throw and catch, all the while smiling and giggling and doing what 7-year-old boys do. But then the game gets tense. Parents and coaches started
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Can Youth Sports be Both Fun and Competitive?

I got an email from a distraught parent the other day. She described a scene where the coach was screaming at the girls after a loss. She was beside herself at how the coach treated the girls. He was demeaning, he was loud and scary, and he had lost perspective on the age he was
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WOC #30 What Makes Sports Fun for Athletes of All Ages with Amanda Visek, PhD.

Fun. It is the biggest reason kids play sports and it is also the biggest reason they quit. That is widely known. What is not widely known is the fact kids define fun differently than us adults. In fact, they define fun 81 different ways. You’d be surprised at what they consider fun…   Subscribe
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Google it! What Youth Sports Can Learn from the Tech Giant About Building Great Teams

110-2. 24-0. Headed into the 2004 Olympic Games, the Men’s USA Basketball team was 110-2 all-time. They were 24-0 since the introduction of the 1992 “Dream Team”(NBA-era). The team consisted of current and future NBA stars. The best of the best. The greatest players from the greatest league in the world. LeBron James, Dwayne Wade,
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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 for the NCAA to Stop the Early Recruiting Insanity

I recently received a phone call from a friend who is one of the national directors of coaching for a major US sport governing body. He told me the story of a recent phone call his office received from a distraught parent: “We just had tryout for our local club and my son was placed
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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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How Adults Take the Joy Out of Sports (And How We Can Fix It)

We have all seen it. I was recently watching a 12-year-old boys soccer game, and I saw it again. Like a deer in the headlights, the left defender on the blue team was seemingly stranded on the field and unsure where to go or what to do. He turned to one sideline, where his coach
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