Microblog
This "microblog" is a collection of short excerpts from writings that have influenced our beliefs and processes. Some excerpts in this collection have been lightly edited for brevity and clarity. If you are brand new, we encourage you to start at the bottom of this webpage as entries at the top are the most recent.
The Youth Sports Crisis
Scott Lancaster | <1 minute
Until we collectively accept that youth sports should be about the healthy development of young people — not the professionalization of childhood or the creation of exclusive systems — we will continue to talk about the problem without producing meaningful solutions. The conversation is familiar. The action is not.
I’ve spent most of my career in youth sports. What was once simple, accessible, and community-driven has evolved into a complex, monetized ecosystem — one dominated by profit-seeking investors and political voices with little real expertise in athlete development. One group wants to buy it. Another wants to regulate it. Both risk further distancing sports from the kids they’re meant to serve.
Rethinking and Redesigning Training
Todd Beane | ~1 minute
Many training programs teach skills in such isolation that children do not learn to apply them under the demanding conditions of a match. In other words, the players do not develop their cognitive abilities. In addition, many training sessions are merely a collection of drills that have no correlation to the player’s role within a system of play. In fact, much of the structure and implementation of traditional training contradicts sound pedagogical practices and ignores recent research on effective teaching.
We also find that traditional training is so heavily imbedded in the culture of football currently that to redesign it would require a completely new paradigm from which to construct a more dynamic and effective program to maximize the potential of each and every player.
The governing “technical centric” paradigm breaks the games to pieces in a way that tosses aside cognitive development. It reduces the game to nothing that resembles the reality of applied skill in real time. Players can juggle, dribble or pass in isolation without having mastered the power to do so effectively in a match itself. Imagine being able to play notes but not music.
As Youth Sports Professionalize, Kids Are Burning Out Fast
Ken Belson | ~1 minute
Travis Snider was a baseball phenom growing up near Seattle and was taken by the Toronto Blue Jays in the first round of the 2006 Major League Baseball draft. But he finished eight unremarkable seasons as an outfielder and played his last major league game at 27. While attempting a comeback in the minor leagues, he worked with a life coach to help him make sense of why his early promise fizzled. He unearthed childhood traumas and unrealistic expectations on the field. In a playoff game as an 11-year-old, he had had a panic attack on the mound and was removed from the game.
Though he reached the highest level of his sport, Mr. Snider felt that distorted priorities turned baseball into a burden, something he wanted to help others avoid. Last year, he started a company, 3A Athletics, to help children, parents and coaches develop healthier approaches to sports that include separating professional aspirations from the reality that most young athletes just want to get some exercise and make friends.
"We as a culture really blended the two into the same experience, which is really toxic for kids as they’re going through the early stages of identity formation,” Mr. Snider said. “You have a lot of parents who are sports fans that want to watch youth sports the same way they watch pro sports without recognizing, hey, the thing I love the most is out there running around on the field… We’ve got to take a step back and detach from what has become normalized and what kind of vortex we get sucked into.”
Development is a Choice
Nate Baker | <1 minute
I don’t think youth soccer is broken anymore…
It just has a major incentive problem. People want to show they are developing the sport, their team, and their club through mechanisms that have little to do with the final product. A press release, a new initiative, or “a player pathway” is a way of signaling development without having to actually do the work that development requires.
And this is the game everyone plays. Winning by any means is the shorter road to validation. But the shorter road is not a route toward potential. You have to stand for something knowing it might take years before it comes to fruition. The irony is that the person who stands for something ends up winning everything.
For Whom?
Todd Beane | <1 minute
In every course I offer, I ask the same question to coaches: Why do you coach?
And in a decade of asking, not once has someone answered with a product. That is, to create a professional player. To coach for a win. To coach for a paycheck. The answers are attuned to the process of sharing passion, instilling values, promoting joy, and creating opportunities for the kids.
In other words, I ask the question “why” and invariably they answer “for whom.” For the children.
I have come to believe that when purpose is connected to a process, success seeds and beauty blooms. I need not know what plans you make. I want to know for whom you make them. I want to know where your deepest hope resides. Our plans are a pact we make with ourselves, but even more so a promise we make to another.
Seek First His Kingdom
Richard Foster | <2 minutes
Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink... Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not more valuable than they? And which of you by being anxious can add one cubit to his span of life?... Therefore, do not be anxious, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?'... People seek these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well. - Matthew 6:25-33
What sort of effort could be made to pursue the kingdom of God? Should a person get a suitable job in order to exert a virtuous influence? No, we must first seek God's kingdom. Then should we give away all our money to feed the poor? Again the answer: no, we must first seek God's kingdom. Well, then perhaps we are to go out and preach this truth to the world that people are to seek first God's kingdom? Once again the answer is a resounding: no, we are first to seek the kingdom of God...
The person who does not seek the kingdom first does not seek it at all. Worthy as other concerns may be, the moment they become the focus of our efforts they become idolatry... In fact, when the kingdom of God is genuinely placed first, ecological concerns, the poor, the equitable distribution of wealth, and any other things, will be given their proper attention.