Parents Building Resilience In Young Athletes

This week, I talked with colleagues about their current experiences with travel sports and their children. As many of you know, I am an elementary principal and my colleagues are educators. I offered some advice to them from my own experience as a parent and coach. We had an excellent conversation about the current state of affairs in “pay to play” sports and the intolerable environment parents inadvertently create stemming from their bad behavior.

I am a reformed athlete. Sure, I still stay fit and find ways to compete that do not include being crashed into by another human. I look at the current state of affairs through my reformed athlete lens as well as an educator, former athletic administrator, parent, and most certainly as a coach. Both of our adult children are college soccer players. We’re both very proud of the men they have become and the smallest portion of this comes from their athletic achievements. They are good humans and this was the goal from when Linda and I were parenting tirelessly for many years. Continuing to watch them compete at the NCAA level is an absolute bonus, but was never the goal of us as parents. It couldn’t be. Here’s why.

NCAA reports that about 6% of high school athletes grow to play at NCAA Divisions 1-3 (NCAA, 2015).  Yes, that is not a misprint… 6% of players. Stretching this further, consider the scholarship money available or not available depending on the sport played. Both of my kids went to college soccer ID camps to compete, gain exposure, and learn from the expert coaches at the camp. If the camp is worth its salt, coaches have a session with parents and provide reality therapy about the process. The reality check is communicating tactfully to parents that their child is not the next Messi despite being the best player on his or her high school or classic team. The other reality provided to parents is the amount of athletic scholarship money available. For my own boys, playing college soccer, this was an eye-opener. Did you know NCAA Men's Division 1 caps soccer scholarships at 9.9 per team?  Again, not a misprint! With many Division 1 teams with rosters over 30, this money does not see every player on the team.

Therefore, with the amount of scholarship money available, or not available in this case, why do we encourage our kids to play competitive sports that require an insurmountable financial commitment to compete all over the country? In some cases, teams play other teams that may be based 15 miles away from their home state!! Seems absurd, right? But yet we figuratively play the game thinking this will allow our child to have a leg up on others. I hate to burst this bubble, but getting a leg up won’t just happen through exposure when the majority of athletes are involved in pay-to-play. We need to stop glorifying the busy with kids on multiple teams during one season. Sports then become more of a “have to” than a “get to” for kids leading to possible burnout from the sport.

Depending on how you look at the reasons why kids play competitive sports, all is not doom and gloom. Sports and the competition gained from athletics can create a fire inside all kids, even the ones who primarily sit the bench and may only play toward the end of the game when the outcome is all but decided. Being on a team can give a child a sense of belonging and a feeling that they are a part of something much bigger than themselves. They build bonds with teammates, create strong relationships with coaches, and become willing to work hard to make themselves and those around them better for the sake of the team. NEWS FLASH, your kid develops these skills through school and recreational sports too. It isn’t necessary to pay for play. 

The learning experiences from being on a team can be carried on through their lifetime. There are not many jobs that do not require teamwork. Where do professionals learn to be a good teammate? Many skills can be traced back to youth sports (Kniffin et al., 2015). Sure, as an adult on a marketing team, you may not be blocking a shot resulting from a teammate's mistake. But you may be catching a mistake in a plan that will keep a teammate from being looked at in a negative light. Teammates and teamwork matter in the real world. The diversity of thought kids learn from being in youth sports may help them make those around them better on their baseball team and later on in life on their engineering team. In the movie “Rudy” there were many instances when Rudy gave his all on the scout team, angering the first team players. Rudy’s character was so team-oriented he would do whatever he could to make others better. Is this the behavior we promote in our own kids? Begin to reflect on this as a parent.

We all build resilience through our experiences and learn from our failures. I will never forget breaking while attempting to fix our toilet in the only bathroom in our apartment after we were first married. Talk about stress… I learned a lot that day from my failure. As parents of athletes, you must resist the urge to do for your kids. Allow them to struggle, allow them to fail, allow them to be uncomfortable, allow them to face adversity, and allow them to grow. I heard the term “snowplow parents” a couple of years ago. These parents try every angle to remove obstacles that are a potential impediment to their child’s success. By removing the obstacles, we are refusing to allow our kids to grow into their potential. Sports can help to build many of these skills if parents allow failure to happen.

A few things to remember as a parent of an athlete. Your kids will follow your lead and it is critically important to lead by example. If you are at the dinner table referring to the coach as incompetent, feeding your child’s ego that the player starting in front of them is not as good, or trashing other parts of the program, you are creating an environment that will stunt your child’s growth. You are robbing them of their ability to work harder and get better because they will believe that you are correct and everyone on the team is out to get them. And please do not be critical of your child’s performance, unless they ask you for feedback. Remember that sports should be fun and an outlet for your child. If they come home from a game and all they hear from a parent is about the mistakes they made without suggestions for improvement, they will grow to hate coming home after games. 

If your child is struggling with their amount of playing time, here are some suggestions you can use as a parent. Promote the concept of being on a team and being a good teammate. Stress to them if they work hard in practice and grow, their playing time will increase. Encourage them to observe the behavior of their teammates and learn from what their teammates are doing during practices and games. Even coaching them on how to have a genuine conversation with their coach on what they need to improve on so they can see more time on their field. Give your child ownership and do not have that conversation with the coach yourself. This will not help your child grow. I was a HS baseball coach many years ago. After a game, a parent asked me if his child needed to hit the ball better, field better, or run faster on the bases. I looked him in the eye and said “all of that” and walked away. Don’t take this learning opportunity away from your child by doing it yourself.

Another suggestion is to stop watching practices (Bruce, 2015). Find something to do like take a walk, go to a coffee shop, read a book, or simply drop them off and pick them up later. Give your child a little independence and allow them to build their identity and grow with their teammates. Giving your kiddo instructions from the sideline during practice games will confuse your child if the message is different from coaching instructions. Would you stand in your child’s chemistry classroom and give a different message than the teacher? Coaches at the higher levels are truly experts. They receive professional development on tactics and skills and hold licenses. Allow them to coach and enjoy watching your child play. If you must coach your child, coach effort, coach leadership, coach what it means to be a teammate. These skills will put your child on a different level from others.

Be cautious of the parents of teammates who create a narrative that is detrimental to the team. These parents create drama about coaches, other families, players, and organizations in order to try to give their kid an advantage. I would see this with soccer parents at the end of spring seasons when it was time for club tryouts. Parents would attempt to create a fictional world by spreading lies that players were leaving the club to go to other clubs.  This need to create panic would hopefully open a spot up for their own child to have more playing time. These are also the same parents who constantly yell at referees and umpires and embarrassing their own children in the process. Y’all have seen the movie Hoosiers when Shooter was drunk and ran out onto the court yelling at the referee and the embarrassed look on his son’s face? We need less Shooters in youth sports.

One of my proudest moments as a soccer parent came a couple of years ago when my son was at a soccer tournament out of state. My wife was the travel parent that weekend and I stayed back home to take care of the pups, my other son, and probably work on my dissertation. I am not one to condone fighting, but context is always important. I got a call from Linda that my son was given a red card at the end of the game. Why? He punched a kid in the face. Again, the context is important. He was coming to the aid of a teammate who was injured by and being taunted by an opposing player. He stood up for a teammate that he would not have if he had built that palpable bond through sports and a sense of belonging. We should all be teaching our kids to stand up for those they care about, especially if the person is not in the room or unable to defend themselves. Was there a consequence to his reaction, yes. Was it fair, likely. Will he do it again, probably if the conditions and circumstances warrant.

Bonds along with resiliency, relationships, and mental strength will be built if we as parents allow these to cultivate and grow through our parenting. When we become parents, life becomes less about us more about our children. We make the commitment to be the person in our kids’ corner to help them grow and become the best version of themselves. Our kids will not reach their full potential if we continually remove the obstacles to their success. Growth and independence should be our thought processes if our kids choose to play youth sports. Enjoy the game and watch your child grow from the process. Always remember to keep the snowplow parked in the driveway at home.

If you are a coach interested in providing a workshop on this topic to parents, team building, growing resilience in players or teams, and or developing leadership among your players, feel free to give us a shout. We would be thrilled to develop a program to meet the specific needs of your team.

References

Bruce, S. E. (2014). Six reasons parents should not watch practice. Soccer America. Retrieved from https://www.socceramerica.com/six-reasons-parents-should-not-watch-practice/

Kniffin, K. M., Wansink, B., & Shimizu, M. (2015). Sports at Work: Anticipated and Persistent Correlates of Participation in High School Athletics. Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, 22(2), 217-230.

National Collegiate Athletic Association. (201). Estimated probability of competing in college athletics. NCAA. Retrieved from https://www.ncaa.org/sports/2015/3/2/estimated-probability-of-competing-in-college-athletics.aspx