Most are conditioning our youth to chase socially preferred outcomes.
“Adults are conditioning our youth to strive for socially preferred outcomes.
Love of the game is dying because of it.
It’s cute to say, “fall in love with the process!”
But your actions are teaching them to ‘play for the end result most people will (inauthentically) clap for.’”
-Ray Zingler on Twitter
It is no secret that we live in an increasingly competitive world.
Even U10 Youth Sports are getting a taste of the dog-eat-dog world.
Obviously not because the kids want to, they want to have fun and eat pizza after, but adults work increasingly harder to screw it up for them.
Don’t mistake my words, insinuating that winning shouldn’t be the objective, it should be, but winning at the expense of development, integrity, and class? Y’all can keep that trophy.
It’s sad because most adults are completely blind to the short-term and long-term effects of trying to live vicariously through their children.
What they are doing is creating two ‘camps’ if you will.
Camp 1: “My identity is tied to my sport and the objective is outcome based. The reason I am playing is because I must get a scholarship (partial discount) so that my family and friends will clap for me.”
Camp 2: “I don’t really want to play in college so what’s the point? Should I even play? Sports don’t even matter.” (Cue the mass exodus statistics from youth athletics by HS years.)
Of course there is a 3rd Camp (which is the correct camp) of those kids who are playing because they love the game, they love being a part of a team, and they value the short and long term lessons that accompany playing sports. Whether they play at the next level or don’t is secondary to loving and enjoying the current moment.
Sadly, this camp is (rapidly) diminishing in numbers because the 2-Party System is eating up most of the bandwidth.
I commend those who have goals. I commend those who are willing to do whatever it takes to reach the pinnacle of their potential. I commend those who want to make it to the next level.
But guess what happens when we focus solely on the outcome and not the process?
We wash out the most important aspects of the game.
Why do you think an overwhelming amount of kids get to the next level and then quit/play in the transfer portal?
It’s because they don’t love it.
They attained the outcome you conditioned them to go after. The chase is over.
Sadly they missed the whole point because of it, too.
