Here’s who to stay away from and who to invest in, in the youth sports world.
“You know what will serve your kids far greater & longer than sending them to the self-proclaimed sport specific guru?
Hiring an integrity-rich mentor who truly gives a shit about them, who will serve as a navigational resource on & off the field.”
-Ray Zingler on X
I don’t know what’s sadder…
Is it the sports performance bro, absent of integrity (usually experience, too), marketing and selling a product to unknowing consumers’ that is absent of validity and actually takes from kids more than it gives…
Or is it the naïve parents who don’t take any time to research any of this stuff and simply shove their kids into what they perceive to be best because some “big name guy” (who would’ve most certainly been “big name guy” without the hogwash program he was likely scholarshipped to attend for marketing purposes) down the road did it.
It’s a toss-up, but sad regardless of how you chop it up.
And while I have all the physiological, concrete, inarguable data that PROVES the nuance and premature advancement is COUNTER to the development of pre-teen and teenage athletes, most people don’t care about research. It’s not about truth. It’s about what they perceive to be true.
So in this post, I’m going to come from a different angle.
We can all agree that the overwhelming majority of kids aren’t going to make a living playing sports. (If you’re interested in the current statistics, the going rate of making it to the pros 0.023%, and to “make a living” as a pro athlete, you must get to a second contract, which as you could imagine, plummets that .023% even further.)
So, as a rational parent who cares about the well-being of their youth athlete, who will most certainly go pro in something other than sport, let me ask you what you feel will have more long-term value?
Sending them to a self-proclaimed pitching guru to do more of what they’re already doing too much of, further increasing injury risks and burn out?
Or a big picture focused mentor who deeply cares about them and their well-being as people on and off the field?
Where do you think the bigger return is going to come from? It’s a no brainer, right?
Helping kids improve their performance in sport today is very easy. I’ve been doing it every day of my life, with thousands of athletes, for 15 years.
But “athlete development” will always be secondary.
The global development of young people will always be my main priority.
