The More I Think About Youth Sports

(Journal entry 29/300)

We had parent-teacher conferences tonight. Kerry and I are pretty lucky. These generally go pretty well for us, because our girls are pretty smart and well-behaved like their mom.

As an aside, I often wonder if she thinks I am ignoring her on these evenings when I am typing on my phone.

Yesterday I wrote briefly on youth sports. One of my college friends had to pull his 7-year old son from a baseball team. They were going to play 40 games in 3 1/2 months. You read that right.

I started to think it speaks more to how we parent than it does to the general issue of youth sports. Maybe that’s the saddest thing about kids growing up in sports today.

The parents. To be fair, it’s constant. A dad wants his kid to get a story on Rivals — in sixth grade. A kid and his dad make a commitment video/movie for Bleacher Report. Or it’s Scott Frost saying he doesn’t want players who want to be recruited, he want players who want to go to Central Florida.

That’s parenting. All of it. The good and the bad.

I am sitting here watching The Biggest Loser and Bob just said, “We get everything that we are from our parents.” He’s so right.

So, here is what I know. Lincoln Boerigter (and most kids, to be honest) has a pretty good dad. He’s more worried about raising a good kid. That’s worth so much more than 40 baseball games.

Because, guess what? If he wants to, when he’s 9 or 10 or 11, Marc Boerigter’s son can play 40 baseball games. That’s a pretty simple thing to think about.

Marc gets it from his dad, who almost 20 years ago, taught me a valuable lesson in Sports Psychology class at Hastings College (that’s also the class where I crushed on wife who thought I was a dork. She is still right.) Kids want one thing from sports before they get to junior high and high school. And even then they still want it.

They want their parents to say one thing. “I love to watch you play.”

That’s it. That it was fun to watch you. On the flip side as a parent, I only wish for my kids that they learn something from being involved.

The picture above was our Olivia’s goals for 2016. They are posted on her locker at school. That was page two. Below, I’ll put all of the three pages together. And, while the second one is good, I am more excited about pages one and three.

Good kids are easy if you raise them to do good things and let them learn a little on their own. I know some parents who could take that lesson to heart, too.

I love to watch you play, Liv. And you dance, Addison. And you too, Ella. Thanks for letting me.