It was being suffocated by kids being kids and doing things that were best for them.
“Kids don’t ride their bikes to their friends houses.
They don’t know the rules to manhunt.
They can’t even do a somersault..
But some 24 year old dude who use to wear phiten necklaces and was badass on JV holds the keys to their performance for $150/hr.
‘Merica.”
-Ray Zingler on X
Properly dosed sport volume + increased unstructured play = Thriving, physically resilient young athletes.
Increased specific sport volume + decreased (0) unstructured play = Youth injury epidemic at scale the world has never seen.
I’m not a math guy, but this is an equation, very small, immature toddlers would have no trouble understanding if you drew up and briefly explained it on a chalk board.
But grown people with 401k’s subject their children to their own demise..
And they PAY for it.
And I’m not talking only about the overpriced lessons, of course those are highway robbery, but it goes much deeper than that when you factor in the orthopedic costs, the loss of time cost (opportunity cost), and the loss of confidence.
The $100/hr to have some guy watch Timmy swing for 30 minutes is the CHEAP part.
Much like damn near everything else in our modern society, we’ve got the whole thing bass ackwards.
We tend to focus on the highly nuanced stuff because it’s “cutting edge” and ignore the “basic stuff” because we believe our kids are more advanced than they really are.
When in reality, most kids don’t even know how to switch gears on a mountain bike.
But we ignore this stuff because our forearms are tired from boosting ourself up to hang over the fence ledge to pay attention to what “they” are doing over there.
“Well if I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, and I peak over and see that those people over there, who also don’t know what the hell they’re doing, then we, who all don’t know what the hell we’re doing, can justify doing the wrong things.”
And that pretty much sums up how everything works in our current youth sports landscape.
Just don’t forget the best part.
You need to spend $1500 to fly to and stay in Phoenix for 3 days to play kids who live in your neighborhood, because you know, that will really show the scouts who aren’t there, how elite your kid is.
What’s the solution?
We must prioritize kids being kids.
That’s literally it.
But we don’t because when adult money is the line, we will forever use our kids as pawns for cash.
It’s a damn shame.
