The Four Horsemen of the Youth Sports Apocalypse

The Four Horsemen of the Youth Sports Apocalypse:

This next series of essays will be in four parts, not including today’s essay.  Each part will detail what I believe to be the four parts of youth sports that have contributed greatly to the present day scenario that most experts agree is in need of a tremendous overhaul.

 My company, Frozen Shorts, works daily to initiate this change, all the while giving the reasons why the change has to implemented, and the positive results of this change. One of our sayings is “baby steps,” as this problem did not appear overnight, nor will it be cured with any quick fix solution.

 We believe strongly that the education of everyone involved in youth sports is vital to positive change. We give lectures, write blogs, present workshops, mentor coaches, and speak to organizations of all kinds, not just those involved in youth sports. We also do one-on-one consulting with families and athletes to initiate this change.

But this change must be intrinsic in nature to have any long lasting meaningful effect.

The four parts of the youth sports Apocalypse are college athletic scholarships, Division I and Professional sports on television, “elite” travel sports and the parents and coaches involved in them, and finally, injuries and mental health.

These four parts are intertwined and have grown into such a massive force that many people, both inside and outside youth sports, believe that it cannot be changed, corrected, or even slowed down. It has been referred to me on many occasions as a new social phenomenon, much like cell phones, Facebook, or texting. My reply is always the same: It is not a social phenomenon, but rather a man made disease.

However, a growing concern by the many people I have talked to, interviewed, and read about in increasing numbers are engaging in dialogue and action fueled by a desire to give children, families, and yes, even adults involved in youth sports a better way, a more fun way, to understand and enjoy youth sports and life.

Over the past thirty years I have kept all of my notes while coaching high school, college, and youth sports. While my children were growing up I also wrote down notes detailing my observations of youth sports, and after they were done participating, I continued to go out to youth and high school sports events. On my website frozenshorts.com you can see weekly essays and videotaped interviews with high school, college, and professional athletes as well as coaches, Doctors, Certified Athletic Trainers, children, and parents.

 As many of you know I have taken those notes and turned them into a book about youth sports entitled Stop The Tsunami in Youth Sports: Achieving Balanced Excellence and Health While Embracing the Value of Play For Fun. The book was written in long hand and then typed into a manuscript by my wonderful wife Kathleen. Who knew you could type a manuscript? Obviously, everyone but me!

Next week: Division 1 athletic scholarships

Stop Yelling at Kids During the game

Stop Yelling at kids during a game

I am not sure why this has become so prevalent. Last Sunday I was at a youth sports event, and as always, the sport does not matter. There were 6 year olds playing. One coach yelled at his player  "If you don’t want to be out here, I’ll put someone else in who does.”

I am not sure what bothered me more: the fact that nobody on this team thought this should be stopped, or more precisely, that this was obviously an every game occurrence.

Let me explain a couple of things about kids that I have learned from being a parent and a coach. Kids trust adults.  Especially adults put in a position of authority. Trying to teach kids by yelling at them makes them feel awful. They live in the moment. When they feel hurt they rebel, ignore and/or shut down.

 They are kids. The younger they are the harder it is to teach them “plays."  Just let them play everything and love to be active. You know how many times kids change their minds in a day? Besides, it’s like trying to herd baby kittens and puppy dogs when they are that age.

If you want to see kids playing well with no yelling, go to my website frozenshorts.com and click on videos. Scroll down to the Pop Warner video. These kids were given one minute of instructions and allowed to play. The officials were a high school volleyball player and a high school soccer player. They were out there for safety and to blow the whistle when the play stopped. These kids were averaging between nine and sixteen plays in a 20 minute half under their coach’s tutelage. In this half they will run 21 plays! Watch them do cart wheels and summersaults.

They do not perform their best when they are constantly being told what to do, either. Ever heard a two year old say this? “I can do it by myself.” When is the last time you were at a playground and you heard the children stop what they were doing and ask an adult to give them more structure?

Coaching is a very important part of youth sports. A wise man once told me; “coach the kid not the sport.”

 Or, Coach Molly and Bo, not the x’s and the o’s.”

This is what we do at Frozen Shorts. We use science, psychology, and data to teach all who will listen and want to learn, that a safe, healthy, and happy child will play all day if you let them play for fun.

 You see it’s not my job to decide when, how, or even if the light goes on for those associated with youth and high school sports. My job is to just keep flipping the switch.

I am just the messenger, the truth was already there.

You can follow VJ on twitter @VJJStanley,  Please like him on Facebook at frozenshorts, or read other essays from VJ and watch related videos at frozenshorts.com

Per$onal Trainer$

Per$onal Trainer$

As you can probably gather from the title I have some serious questions for the personal trainer industry. I am all for Certified Athletic Trainers. They are a critical component of High School and College athletics. I relied on my  C.A.T. as both a coach and a player.

But this new phenomenon of children going to per$onal trainer$ at these workout facilities has me mystified. I do not remember Bob Cousy, Cal Ripken, Barry Sanders, Pele, or any other stars from the past going to these people to get better.

When I look up these people and places that are offering these $ervice$ I am initially struck by the credential$, the client list, and the apparent attachment of their clients to athletic success.

When I see them take a bunch of kids who quit their sport, are out of shape, and are lazy, and turn them into DI athletes, then I will believe.

Am I to believe that because an athlete went to one of these “trainers,” who may or may not have graduated with a degree in athletic training and does not have a license in athletic training, that the athlete’s improvement will be directly related to the trainer’s involvement? It certainly reminds me of the new mantra of “elite” pay for pay travel teams. And you know how I feel about that paradigm.

Their claims are sometimes listed on their website of their list of players who played for them and then went on to Division I college athletics. Although not directly stated, there is certainly an implied connection between the athlete getting to DI and their participation in the club teams program.

Am I to believe that these talented kids would not have gotten to their potential without these trainer$ and travel team$? Since they have only been around for 20-30 years, how did athletes get to the next level without these service$?

What strikes me almost immediately as how people are bragging about their relationship with these people on a continuing basis.  Some have their children playing two sorts at once and also going to a per$onal trainer a couple of times a week. I am awed at the belief that you can throw money at a problem and think that it will universally work to produce improvement in all athletic situations.

Training for even the top athletes is a very complicated process. They are looking to rehabilitate, and for some, to get an edge over other athletes in pursuit of a big contract.

Since only 1% of all students who go to college play at the DI level and ONLY HALF of them play for free, it is certainly confusing to me why all this time, attention, and money are being spent on this Endeavour.

I strongly suggest that instead of spending your money this way, get all the kids together on your team, go to a park or gym and have them play a pickup game NOT related to your sport. Then go home and hit the books, as there are 77 times more non-athletic college scholarships than athletic ones.

 Charles Barkley, a famous Hall of fame basketball player, went to a per$onal golf teacher to try and get better at golf. The lack of success is documented in a television show.

Now I am hearing kids as young as six months old have had per$onal trainer$. Remember, puberty changes everything.

Once again, in youth sports and in life, we seem to have status, self worth, and unreal expectations overriding common sense.

VJ’s BALANCED EXCELLENCE QUOTES: ALL ORIGINALS

Please and thank you make you feel good. Others around you can sense the message you are sending about being grateful and humble.

It’s not my job to determine when the light is going to go on.  It’s my job to keep flipping the switch.

To say that something is inherently flawed and, thus cannot be corrected, means we are simply followers and not rational beings capable of change and growth.

Can you be happy for someone if they get a Mercedes and you spent the same time and money and ended up with a Yugo?  Can you be satisfied?

I’ve never walked up to a coach or another person and said I wanted to be like them.  I’ve always looked to a philosophy and worked to be true to it.

Do you think a child has ever envisioned a game or player he was dreaming about and the dream involved him sitting on the bench?

Most team sport’s games are lost by one team not won by the other.

You play the players who are playing the best not the best players.

You don’t have starters.  You have players that start.

Playing time is fluid.

More is not necessarily better.

Sometimes you have to do the right thing just because it’s the right thing to do regardless of the consequences.

If it was just about money, then only Bill Gates and Warren Buffett would win.

If it’s a must-win game and you don’t win, then what?

Peace of mind is victory.

Short-term always costs more long-term.

If you have to play one sport year round to compete, how do athletes who play more than one sport compete?  How do injured players out for a year come back and compete?

If you have to pay for play, how do the poor people make it to Division I?

I was watching little kids running around at the park laughing, playing and having fun with a ball.  When did that stop being a great idea?

If there had been a meeting when it was decided that pay-for-play sports with year-round participation became the norm instead of the exception, I would have raised my hand and said, “Hey, I don’t think that is such a good idea.”

Think of youth sports as the equivalent to playing a piano. Different songs require different notes.  All musicians are not going to be comfortable with playing all the notes the same way. If a note on the piano is not in tune, the musician must adapt and use other keys. He or she never forgets the weak note and goes back to it and nurtures it to its former level.

It could be like an extension ladder. It has support on both sides for strength. The support takes the form of teammates, coaches, and family.  The ladder also has an extension to it so that the base from which you climb up can be adjusted to a new level. Finally, as you get nearer the top, you need more support from the base not less.

You do a lot more of getting along at work than you do competing with other employees.

If winning is so important, name the 2010 NBA, NHL, MLB, MLS, NFL Playoff Champions.( No cheating)

Mike Arace from the Columbus Dispatch on Youth Sports and Frozen Shorts

There are approximately 45 million children between the ages of 5 and 18 playing youth sports in America. Around 3 percent of them will play in college. A smaller percentage will make it to the professional ranks.

To all of them, we should say: Expand your horizons.

Focusing on just one sport is about the worst thing a young athlete can do. It mitigates the developmental benefits that come from playing, it is physically dangerous and, for the vast majority, it is actually a hindrance to their primary athletic pursuit.

• A summary of studies that appeared in the January 2012 edition ofPsychology Today asserts that intensity, continuity and balance are the most important developmental aspects of youth-sports participation. The article, written by Marilyn Price-Mitchell goes on to say that balance — between sports and other activities — is probably the most important of the three. Children who vary their experiences rather than focus on one sport make for healthier adults because their world is wider than winning and losing.

• A Dispatch series on youth sports (printed in 2010 and still available at Dispatch.com) highlighted many concerns about a burgeoning, unregulated youth-sports industry. Among the biggest concerns is the rising number of injuries. The sports-medicine clinics run by Nationwide Children’s Hospital and Ohio State have seen an exponential increase in patients over the past decade. These local trends align with national trends.

According to the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons, the number of children treated for sports injuries in 2010 was 3.5 million, up from 1.9 million in 2002. Nearly half the injuries are “ overuse” injuries to children who place stress on the same muscles and tendons in year-round, single-sport pursuits. A 2011 study out of Loyola University-Chicago concluded that single-sport athletes are almost twice as likely to be injured as multisport athletes.

Those who have concentrated on reducing sports injuries in children — such as Dr. James Andrews, the famed Tommy John surgeon — are unanimous in their belief that playing more than one sport actually serves as a preventative measure. It is to an athlete’s benefit to work different muscle groups and joints, learn different skill sets, change scenery and teammates, and be afforded proper rest.

As more data concerning the potential psychological, developmental and physical dangers of single-sports specialists have accrued, a certain movement has begun to coalesce. It is being led by people like VJ Stanley, a former longtime college hockey coach, youth coach of multiple sports, stand-up comic and Zen philosopher, among other things.

“If winning is so important at an early age,” Stanley said, “why don’t elementary teachers with master’s degrees in education teach winning to the little kids?”

Stanley is founder and president of a foundation called Frozen Shorts, which is based in Rochester, N.Y. His mission is to shift the American youth-sports paradigm, as the title of his new book suggests: Stop the Tsunami in Youth Sports: Achieving Balanced Excellence and Health while Embracing the Value of Play for Fun.

Stanley’s view — and that of others, such as Douglas Abrams, a University of Missouri law professor, part-time hockey clinician and an early crusader for change in youth sports — is that we have created a system that is geared toward specialization, and that this system is a long-term disservice to our children. On some level, the kids know it.

The peak of participation is age 10. By 13, some 70 percent of kids quit. Why? A raft of recent studies indicate that the fun is sucked out of it by overzealous parents and undertrained coaches who place far too much emphasis on winning. Specialization breeds such an environment. When costs rise and time commitment increases, joy dissipates in proportion — for the kids, if not the parents. (Some researchers, by the way, are beginning to link quitting sports to the child-obesity epidemic.)

“Children are better at their chosen sport when they do not play it all the time, and we can quantify that,” Stanley said. “We have to remember, these are not mini-professionals — these are children. Their creativity is to be found in a spectrum of experiences. When we push them to specialize, they lose their balance, and they have a skewed view of everything.”

We push them, or allow them, to play basketball, soccer or volleyball 11 months a year, and we tell them how great they are. We should be telling them the odds are they’ll never even play at the Division III college level, so try everything — and have a good time.

On some level, the kids know it. As Stanley points out, in the U.S., the fastest-rising sport in terms of popularity is Wiffle Ball, and kickball is No. 2. Are they the only sandlot games left?

Michael Arace is a sports reporter for The Dispatch.

marace@dispatch.com

@MichaelArace1