Myopic Technology

Myopic technology:

In my last blog I talked about failure and mistakes and how they have come to be prevalent in our minds, action, and culture. Today’s blog is going to reveal why they have crept into and in some cases dominated the way we think

Instead of thinking of the greater good, we are now faced with a me first mentality. Even in games that are blow outs players, parents, and coaches don’t want their best players to come out of the game for many reasons.

The first reason is that because they have paid money to play they feel they are entitled to playing time. Some fear that if they come out the player replacing them will play better and they will lose their starting spot, fall behind ( behind what) and not get the mythical DI scholarship.

Another reason is that everything seems to be coming at them so fast and so often and from so many different directions people is trying to hold on and to control their environment in whatever way they can. They are being bombarded on their phone, computer, and television with dreams and visions of grandiose riches from professional athletes, musicians, singers, businessmen, and friends.

Someone always seems to be saying they know a person who has this amount of money or that expensive thing. They see these material things as status and attainable goals without understanding what is actually going on in those people lives away from the glitz and glamour of the spotlight.

Youth sports organizations enhance this by claiming to be connected to some major League entity or the Olympic program when in actuality few if any of the children playing in the organization will ever attain even the DI level of athletic participation. They travel to distance places and stay in hotels and play in Sate, National, invitational and the dreaded “SHOWCASE” tournaments to try and make participants believe there is value in their participation in youth sports.

In our latest video on our website frozenshorts.com features NHLPA Agent Steve Bartlett, founder and President of The Sports Consulting Group and the agent for NHL stars Ryan Callahan and Brian Gionta talks about how small the odds are to get to the professional level and how much pressure is being put on children at a younger and younger to succeed in what should be a journey of fun and friendships made playing youth sports.

You can follow VJ @VJJStanley on Twitter, at frozenshorts.com, or on facebook at Frozenshorts. You may contact him at vj@frozenshorts.com or at his office 585-743-1020

VJ’s book Stop The Tsunami in Youth Sports is available through his website frozenshorts.com and Amazon in paperback and E reader.