Monday Aug 14, 2023

The Negative Impacts of Youth Sports and What to Do About It with Scott Lancaster

The Negative Impacts of Youth Sports and What to Do About It with Scott Lancaster 

 

Through this conversation, Mathew and Scott hope to help parents and coaches develop a renewed sense of how they might act when it comes to children in youth sports. Mathew, a former athlete and current youth sports coach for his own children, is intimately familiar with the negative impacts that bad coaching can have on children and is actively working to develop his athletes in this new, more holistic way Scott is championing. It’s imperative that coaches understand who they are coaching, what they can and cannot do, and keep expectations age-appropriate despite the desire to advance children quickly through the ranks.

Scott and Mathew talk about the role that bad coaching and parenting in youth sports have had on the current mental health crisis, the "inner child wounds" many kids develop through sports, and the ways in which negative and positive childhood sports experiences follow people through their entire lives and impact their self-image into adulthood.

Many people say youth sports were great for them or their children, but Scott ponders the counterfactual that we can never know how great they could have been if they had not played the game. Scott goes on to give specific examples of ways children are being damaged by youth sports and possible solutions to the problems. From small changes, like swapping "Did you win?" for "How did you play?", to larger structural changes like reframing the way we think about the purpose of youth sports. There is a close connection between how we coach youth sports and how we parent children, and both have to shift towards developing more resilient kids by teaching them how to deal with losing more than striving to win and talking to them about what they are feeling to help them internalize what they are doing.

Scott Lancaster is one of three co-founders of Whole Child Sports. WCS "offers parents and coaches guidance, tips, and tools to help raise and develop happier, healthier, more well-rounded athletes who will sustain a lifetime passion for active play and fitness." As a former athlete and current parent, youth sports and youth athletes have been a passion of Scott’s for more than 20 years. He spent six years with US Soccer, working directly with Mia Hamm and other U.S. Women’s National Team players to increase representation and participation in the sport. He also spent 12 years with the NLF, developing youth programming. Throughout his career, Scott has worked with many of the Greats in professional sports to make significant and important changes in the philosophy of sports, the youth-to-professional pipeline, and the way sports operate in order to focus on improving youth development.

"Youth sports, as good as they've been for some, have been terrifying for others…"

In this episode, you'll hear:

  • Practical ways parents can shift to start raising healthier children through athletics
  • Tips for coaches to step into this new system of developing youth athletes
  • What it means that "kids should not play adult games" and ideas to restructure youth sports
  • What do action sports athletes get that traditional athletes miss out on?
  • How Scott deals with disciplining athletes who misbehave 

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