Resources

Sport Parenting

Videos

Ted Talk: Changing the Game Project

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXw0XGOVQvw

John O'Sullivan remembers when youth sports was about children competing with other children instead of adults competing with each other through their kids. Following nearly three decades as a soccer player and coach, O'Sullivan began working to reshape youth sports and inspire a major shift in culture. After serving as a youth coach for the Portland Timbers in Bend, he founded the Changing the Game Project and is now an international speaker and national best-selling author of Changing the Game: The Parents Guide to Raising Happy, High-Performing Athletes and Giving Youth Sports back to Our Kids.

“The most fundamental thing we teach is just five simple words: ‘I love watching you play.’”

Coles Notes (this won’t do the video justice, but hopefully provides some quick reference notes to keep after you’ve watched it:

  • If you've ever seen five-year-old soccer, it's amazing! There’s this is giant scrum of players and it moves up and down the field. There’s lots of giggling and laughing, and sometimes a player breaks out and scores (sometimes in the right net; other times the wrong net).

  • At the ten-year old boys game right next door, it should be the same right? But it’s completely different. It wasn’t the kids who were competing harder, it was the adults.

    • Adults are screaming, yelling and arguing like it’s the World Cup, when the kids are just there to play a game.

  • Kids get in the car after the game hoping to just relax and emotionally unwind,

    • But this is when so many parents choose to deconstruct their game, and criticize & critique their performance.

    • They drone on about the time, sacrifice and financial commitment it takes to play youth sports, and hope their kid gets a scholarship to help pay for it all.

  • All this does is add pressure and stress, and suck any remaining ounce of fun out of sports.

    • Which is why 7 /10 athletes quit organized sports by the age of 13.

  • It’s become this “Great Giant Race to Nowhere.”

    • Most of the focus & attention is on the very very few athletes who get a scholarship or turn pro.

    • But the vast majority of youth athletes end up somewhere else:

      • Hating sports;

      • Damaged relationships with their parents; and/or

      • For some: physical and emotional scars that last a lifetime.

  • We have to ‘change the game,’ and give sports back to our kids.

    • They aren’t becoming better; they’re becoming bitter.

  • The answer is NOT participation awards.

    • Kids shouldn’t get a trophy just for doing the bare minimum.

  • The single greatest factor that affects performance is state of mind

    • We need to let kids fail, and learn from that failure.

  • The most fundamental thing that the “Changing the Game Project” teaches: five simple words:

    • “I love watching you play.”

    • Changes everything for their kids

      • Tells them, that their parents love does not depend on whether they win or lose, or how they perform.

    • Not going to be easy - parents will inevitably slip up (and that’s ok)

  • Sports can have a powerful impact on kids

    • Not only making them better athletes, but more importantly: better people

    • We can give sports back to our kids by fulfilling their needs, and not the needs of the adults.

    • Every single one of us can do our part by starting with five simple words: “I love watching you play.”

Podcasts

Finding Mastery #212 Feb 19, 2020 - Sue Enquist

Listen via Apple Spotify Stitcher Google

The Finding Mastery Podcast is hosted by Michael Gervais - a Sport & Performance Psychologist for the Seattle Seahawks, the US Olympic Volleyball team, Red Bull and more.

Sue Enquist was a softball player and coach at UCLA - where she won 11 NCAA Div I Championships before retiring to focus her efforts on helping families navigate the sports world in a more constructive way. After spending 3 years interviewing athletes and parents about what their pain points were, What she discovered is that well-meaning parents have veered off-track because no one is teaching them how to navigate rec ball, to travel ball, to path to college. This led to her founding onesoftball.com as a free resource for athletes, parents and coaches.

This entire episode is worth listening to, but the part specifically deals with sport parenting goes from 1:06:34 to 1:13:33.

Sue uses an analogy to compare spectating your kid’s game to watching a movie at the move theatre.

"Think of it like a theater. You're going to the theater, and when you watch a movie, you're not standing up in the movie theater and yelling at the movie theater. This is a movie and you're not in it.”

The Way of Champions #217 The Power of "I Love to Watch You Play" with 4x Emmy Award Winning Sports Journalist and Producer Asia Mape

Listen via Apple Spotify Stitcher Google

The Way of Champions podcast is hosted by John O’Sullivan (Ted Talk Video presenter above) who is Division 1 Soccer Coach and founder of the Changing the Game Project.

Asia Mape is a 4x Emmy Awards winning sports journalist and producer, and the founder of the incredible website "I Love to Watch You Play." She has covered five Olympic games, two Super Bowls and nearly every major sporting event in the world. She has also interviewed hundreds of the top athletes, and has first hand knowledge of what it takes to perform at the highest level. A former college basketball player and mom of three athletic girls, Mape has dedicated the past few years to providing parents and coaches with the latest information on coaching, parenting, nutrition, sleep, and everything youth sports.

Articles

Moving from Performance to Purpose in Youth Sports

https://thethrivecenter.org/resource-article/moving-from-performance-to-purpose-in-youth-sports/

Ben Houltberg (former 800m runner and Developmental Psychologist) discusses the positive and negative affects sports can have on identity formation, and how we can try and get the good without the bad.

Coles Notes:

  • Much of our current western society fosters performance-based identities, whereby youth wind up viewing the outcome of their sports competitions as

    • The purpose of their existence; and

    • The main avenue for them to earn care and attention.

  • This results in athletes losing the joy that initially attracted them to the sport, and replaces it with a fear of disappointing others.

  • 10 warning signs of a performance based identity in youth sports

  1. Sports are not fun anymore

  2. Anxiety increases before competitions

  3. Athlete desires to quit or finds excuses not to compete

  4. Feelings of worthlessness when not performing well

  5. Jealousy or anger towards others performing better

  6. Fear of failure is stronger than the excitement to compete

  7. Bouncing back from a disappointing performance is difficult

  8. Self descriptions only relate to being an athlete

  9. Athlete ruminates on mistakes made in competition

  10. Obsession develops working harder & frequently

  • To counter performance-based identity, youth need

    • Continual reminders of being unconditionally valued (by parents, peers, coaches, organizations, and themselves) and

    • To be connected to their unique purpose - that involves contributing to something bigger than oneself.

  • When an athlete operates from a purpose-based identity, sports shift from being a determiner of self-worth, to an opportunity for growth and something to be enjoyed.

    • Athletes then experience the freedom to strive for excellence and to maximize their potential on and off the field.

Online Courses

Youth Sport Training: What Parents & Coaches Need to Know

https://www.eveltraksport.com/courses/Understanding-Youth-Training-for-Parents

The online video course is designed help parents help navigate their child or teenage athlete through his or her athletic development, focusing on the essential, key concepts in youth sport training any sport parent or coach working with young athletes should be aware of. Note this course requires an investment of several hours of your time. If you are wiling to make that investment, we believe you will find that it is well worth it!

The course was created by Derek Evely. - a friend of several coaches in our club. He is partially known for coaching 3 athletes from Kamloops to World Junior medals in the span of just a few years. He then went on to be the Sport Science Manager at the Canadian Athletics Coaching Centre, and then a Centre Director for UK Athletics in the leadup to the London 2012 Olympics. He now works as a Consultant to elite sports individuals, teams, institutions and federations globally on all matters related to institution, coach and athlete development.