Why play the game?
Youth sports are incredibly unique and challenging to navigate. As a result, this often leads to families choosing to remain on the sidelines or they dive in so far that it becomes unhealthy. We believe it’s in the best interest of most families and kids to play the game, however, it’s time for us to talk candidly about what that means and how we all can keep greater values in perspective.
I would argue that youth team sports are the best wholistic opportunity to help our children grow and mature in very practical ways. It is one of the only environments that forces kids to regularly face fears, overcome setbacks, develop interpersonal skills (often with difficult teammates or coaches), and work toward both personal as well as team goals. Baseball specifically, is not just a challenging game, it’s hard. It’s a game of failure that forces you to work hard for the moments of success. There is a desire to be perfect, but it’s just not possible which is the beauty of it. There is always room for improvement, ways to give more, and new challenges to face…it’s also never in a vacuum as you must do your individual part while working as a team.
Realistically, most players stop competitive sports at the end of high school, if not before. The statistics are actually staggering. Anyone selling you a marketing line of ‘we’ll help your kid become a pro’ or ‘we have the path to college scholarships’ is merely feeding your ego and pushing the unhealthiest part of youth sports. Unfortunately, this leads to a lot of kids and their families pushing youth sports for the wrong reasons. I think it’s important to reflect on why you have chosen to engage and invest in youth sports, so I won’t list examples to narrow that exercise, but the drive for my kid to be the best is quite strong. Of course we love our kids and want the best for them, nothing wrong with that. We also want to push them to be the best they can be, nothing sinister there either. But in the end, the greatest value of youth sports needs to be the continued growth of character and leadership qualities in these kids that will translate after sports. It’s not all about the wins and losses, the batting average, prestigious tournaments, or number of all-star teams. Ultimately, it’s about whether they will become good people, great business leaders, a loving spouse, a supportive parent, and leaders in the community.
Good humans first, great ball players second.