Jason Sacks: Youth Sports, Culture, Character | Turn the Lens Ep36

Jason Sacks: Youth Sports, Culture, Character | Turn the Lens podcast with Jeff Frick, Episode 36  

English Transcript

Cold Open:
And you're good on time.  
Yeah, yeah.
So I will count us down and we will go.
In three, two, one.

Jeff Frick:
Hey welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here coming to you from the home studio for another episode of ‘Turn the Lens.’ And I'm pretty excited about this. You know, before I was quite the heavy broadcaster, I spent a whole lot of time in youth sports with my three kids who were very active in a lot of different activities—sports, dance, the whole gamut. And, you know, the parents play a big role in that. And there's a lot of volunteer organizations. And one of the big national organizations that has been trying to really change the culture of youth sports and really bring back more of the positive is the Positive Coaching Alliance (PCA). I was fortunate to take their training. I looked it up, it was back in like 2000, I think a couple of years after it was started. But we've got the current president joining us from Chicago today. So, let's welcome in Jason Sacks. Like I said, he's the President of Positive Coaching Alliance and has been there for 18 years, which is amazing. Jason, great to see you.  

Jason Sacks:
Thanks so much for having me, Jeff.  

Jeff Frick:
Absolutely. So we had a chance to get together. You had an event out here in the Bay area which was pretty cool. Had a couple of the local professional soccer players there, Emily Menges and Jamie Shepherd. And you talked about some of the latest things going on at Positive Coaching Alliance. Why don't you give people who aren't familiar with your organization kind of the 101 and what you guys are up to?  

Jason Sacks:
Yeah. No. Thank you for the opportunity. So, Positive Coaching Alliance, we're a national nonprofit organization. We were founded out of Stanford in the Bay Area. The overall mission is to change the culture of youth sports so that every child, regardless of social or economic circumstance, has access to a positive youth sports experience. We really want to make sure that kids and youth sports in our country are positive, they're accessible, they're equitable, regardless of what community you're living in. I think most people don't understand. They know how big youth sports is, but they don't really recognize that 35 million kids are playing youth sports each year. It's a $30 billion industry, right? You know, if you drive around on the weekends or the weeknights throughout different communities, that's where people are—right there at the sports fields. They’re practicing, there are games. But we want to make sure that it's still seen as a youth development platform and not just something that's all about competition, wins and losses, trying to get that college scholarship, because we know that with all those kids that are playing youth sports, if we don't focus on all the other life skills that can come out of it, and we're only focusing on the wins and losses, then it's a really big lost opportunity. Because outside of schools, youth sports is the largest place where kids gather, so it's an unbelievable opportunity to equip them with things that are going to stay with them long after their playing days are over.  

Jeff Frick:
So much. That's a great summary. We're going to break down a lot of those different areas and dig in. So let's start with the positive. And you talked about it. I didn't know it’s the largest thing that the kids do outside of school, 35 million kids. That U.S., I assume.  

Jason Sacks:
Yeah. Yep.  

Jeff Frick:
So, you know, it's about character building, right? And it's about experience. And you've got a great video on your website, I think with Steve Young talking about it. I'm just going to read some of them because he hits them really well, you know, teamwork, overcoming challenges, working towards a bigger goal, resilience, risk-taking, experiencing success, failure, self-confidence, mental toughness, self-control, respect for others, being part of something that’s bigger than just you. I mean, those are a lot of extremely valuable character traits. And the one that really jumps out to me the most is resilience in this challenging world. And we see a lot of people struggle with resilience. And from a parenting, I call it the parenting paradox. Like you're trying to teach your kid to ride a bicycle, you know, when do you let go? When do you let go of the seat? And do you let them fall over and scratch their knees? And sometimes falling over and scratching their knees is the only way to learn to ride. And sports gives us multiple opportunities over many, many activities and days and weeks and years to get little versions and tastes to start to do this. So I wonder if you can, you know, share this is a really important piece that I think, you know, does it get forgotten? Does it not get forgotten? Does it need more highlight? Talk about the character-building attributes of youth sports.  

Jason Sacks:
Yeah, it's a great point. I mean, we like to say that sports can be a really safe place to fail. Right? It can be, you know, like, and oftentimes people will talk about, you'll hear the quote, ‘Sports Develops Character.’ Right. That's what makes it so, so great. I agree with that. But there's a couple of words that are missing: ‘Sports Done Right Develops Character.’ Sports left to its own devices can actually be a breeding ground for a lot of negativity. A lot of, you know, types of abuse—physical, mental, psychological. So we need to be deliberate that if we want to get everything out of the youth and high school sports experience that you just talked about, all those life skills, they're not going to happen on their own. So we need all the stakeholders that are involved in the youth sports experience. And that's organizational leaders, that's coaches, that's parents, that's the athletes themselves. Everybody needs to be aligned that youth sports and high school sports can be this development zone-like opportunity to teach these life skills. So what we really try to do in our work is when we partner with schools and youth sports organizations at the grassroots level and national governing bodies, professional sports leagues, we are trying to equip them with tangible tools and resources so that if you're a dad, you're a mom, you're a volunteer coach, and you are out there, how are you making sure that you are taking advantage of this opportunity to teach those life skills? And you're not just, you know, teaching the sport, focusing on the winning, but you're actually, you know. How does a child bounce back from a mistake, right? One of our most popular tools coming out of our workshop is a mistake ritual. Right. Like, how do we teach those kids that if something goes wrong, you know, they're often... Kids will, they make a mistake, they look three places. They look down at the ground because they're, you know, down on themselves. They look to their coach to see what the reaction is going to be. And then they look in the stands at their parents. Right. Can everybody be aligned with, ‘Hey, that's okay, move on to the next play,’ right? And how do we move on? Like you'll hear pro athletes, pro coaches, coaches talk about, what's the most important play in a game? It's the next play, right. So how do we react? How do we be able to bounce back? How do we flush that mistake out of our system and move on? Those are little tangible things that we try to, you know, teach and give those tools to coaches and parents so that they can start utilizing them in their everyday life. And I think what a lot of people recognize is that, hey, outside of sports, this actually works in a lot of different aspects of life as well.

Jeff Frick:
Right. When did it go wrong? I mean, this is kind of this double-edged sword, like everything in life with, with kind of the over-organization and maybe just too many damn adults, parents, and not they get involved. And, you know, you kind of compare like your classic sandlot baseball game with the kids, grab a mitt, making up rules. You know, there's no umps to decide what's right or wrong versus suddenly you've got these beautiful Little League fields. Little League World Series is coming up. It's on ESPN. Yeah, I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. You know, the pressure of being on a national audience and making it look like the major leagues, when in fact these are not major league kids. These are kids. And there's some great books about, you know, the whole, Little League World Series experience out there that you can read. But, you know, the... I guess the good news is, though, now you're trying to use that organizational structure to actually come back and provide those benefits back through those organizational structures to get back to some of the core benefits and get away from, you know, making it look like it's a World Series game.

Jason Sacks:
Yeah. No, I mean, it's definitely... there's been this commercialization of youth sports. I think, you know, it's... youth sports is very unorganized in the US. You know, you brought up Little League. Little League is actually probably one of the most organized organizations when it comes to, you know, sort of like how they're structured, where their leagues are, how, you know, everything that they do is actually really, really organized. And there's a good infrastructure there. But there's a lot of sports that they don't have that. And there's nothing at the federal level in this country either. Like we don't have a ministry of sport that is dictating all this. So it becomes very fragmented. There's a lot of different people that have control in different areas. And I think what happened is people started seeing, you know, all this opportunity, like the lure of a college scholarship, right? Or, you know, the money that is being dumped into sports or this opportunity for exposure and success. And, you know, if it's not good enough, if we don't feel like we're getting the best competition here, we can go elsewhere. We're going to start our own league. I mean, a lot of it came down to money, right? Like that's how it started moving and moving faster. I think at PCA, we don't believe that we're going to go back to the way things were, you know. Just that. But what we're trying to do is also make sure that, you know, barriers are broken down for people that don't have access to youth sports. Right? Even in those super competitive, you know, different types of competition and organizations that are competing in youth sports, how do we make sure that PCA and some of our values and our tools and resources are integrated into what is happening? So, you know, we work with Little League International and we were just working with them on, hey, what are some resources around mental health and mental wellness so that we can provide those tools to the kids that are competing in these games, or provide tips to the parents on what your role as a parent should be. You know, as your child is going through youth sports and obviously training coaches is a big part of what we do as well. So I think it's, you know, the horse is out of the barn. We're not going back to the way it was. So how do we try to make sure what is happening now? Like there are a lot more resources being put towards youth sports. How do we make sure that they're being used in the right way?

Jeff Frick:
Right. So many places that we can go. So let's talk about the specific resources that you do provide. And I thought it was interesting at the event that we were at the other day, one of the board members, I think, talked about, you know, their introduction to youth sports when their oldest usually it's usually your oldest. It's kindergarten. You do your first AYSO volunteer stint and try to learn what offsides is and put the yellow shirt on. But you know, he talked about coaching positively isn't necessarily innate. It's not necessarily something that you just know how to do. So let's, you know, share with with the audience. What are some of the resources that you guys have? How do you approach things like training both for coaches and parents, and what are some of the resources that you guys have developed over the 18 or no, 20 some odd years here?

Jason Sacks:
Yeah, yeah. So, we really focus on, how do we create an environment where the well-being of the student, the child that's playing sports is at the center. And in order for, you know, the research shows that in order for a child to feel like safe in that environment, they need to, you know, feel like they're welcome, that they are they have a connection, that they're being valued, that they're being seen and they're being heard. So we want to give coaches the tools to create that environment. Right. And so, a lot of what we talk about in our workshops, you know, is how do you do that? How do you create that environment? And that can be everything from how do you talk about winning? How do you talk about competition? How do you define success? We want to go from people thinking about winning where it is, you know, the results on the scoreboard, comparing yourself to others. You know, mistakes are a bad thing. We want to shift to a more mastery environment where you're focusing on effort, you're focusing on learning, and you're focusing on how do you bounce back from mistakes and that resilience. And you know, learning from adversity, those types of things. And then we're going to equip the coaches with how they can actually do that in a practice or a game. The other things we talked about in our workshop could be around, you know, what we call ‘Filling the Emotional Tank.’ And that is really communication between a coach and a child, a coach and a parent, the parent of the child. Because we know that we all have emotional tanks, right? You and me right now. Depending on what's happened in our day today or how we're feeling, we could have a full tank. We could have, you know, an empty tank. And just like a gas tank in a car, like if your tank is empty, you're not going to go very far. Right? So in order to make sure that we are, you know, filling up kids when they are at our practices, at our games, right? We need to talk about how we're giving them feedback, how we're coaching them. You know, what are tools like what are nonverbals, what are the impact that they have on our kids? So I think it's those types of tools that we're trying to give to our coaches so that they can they feel equipped and empowered to have those types of conversations with kids that, you know, and develop the relationships with the parents and families so that it is a good environment where kids want to come back. We also talk about things like ‘Honoring the Game,’ which is really closely around sportsmanship, you know, respecting the rules, opponents, officials, teammates and yourself. I mean, that's something you can teach to kindergartners and you can teach that to professional athletes as well, right? Those are things that go across, you know, all levels of the game. And we do this by partnering with, you know, grassroots organizations, national organizations. We have these workshops that are both live, in-person, interactive. We have them via Zoom, where it's still very interactive, but it can be virtual. And then we have self-paced courses as well, where people can do that asynchronously and get certified through PCA. But we don't just focus on the coaches because, coaches is one piece of this ecosystem within youth and high school sports. We also have training for organizational leaders, parents, student athletes where we really focus on character and leadership development because we know that if you don't have everybody aligned, it's really hard to change the culture. So we need to make sure that everybody has a seat at the table and they can they can figure out what their role is and how they impact the overall experience.

Jeff Frick:
And then how do they engage with you? They engage as a league? Do they engage and is it a pay thing? Is it a free thing? Is it X number of training classes for the organization and so many coaches? Kind of. What is an actual engagement for a league that wants to do a better job here look like?

Jason Sacks:
Yeah, all of the above. Right. So we partner with we partner with over a thousand school districts, youth sports organizations. That's where a lot of our work is happening. Through that partnership with a league or a school, they'll bring us in and say, "Hey, we're going to have all of our coaches at our back-to-school coaches meeting on Tuesday night in the cafeteria. We want your trainer there to provide the training for those two hours." We have some, you know, national governing bodies where we're actually building courses with them or they're using our online courses to train their coaches as part of their mandated certification program. So we have a great partnership with the US Soccer Federation, which is the governing body for soccer. Obviously, our U.S. Women's National Team just won a gold medal in Paris, which is awesome. But the federation, they are also focused on youth soccer and growing the game. And they have a ‘Safe Soccer Clearance’ program where PCA and the U.S. Soccer Federation built a course together around positive soccer environments. And we have, you know, hundreds of thousands of youth soccer coaches who are going to be going through that online course over the next few years. So it's a variety of ways that people can access not only our workshops. It can happen through our grassroots partnerships. It can happen through some of our national partnerships. Someone could go to our website right now and take one of our online courses for a small fee. And so we are a nonprofit organization, so in some communities, people are paying to receive our partnerships. That covers a portion of what it costs us to put those on. We're raising funds to go into communities that can't afford it. We're raising funds to offset the cost of all of our programming. So it's a combination. But then we obviously rely on philanthropic support from individuals, corporate partners, foundations, things like that.

Jeff Frick:
And you mentioned a couple of numbers, but let's just get a bunch of numbers out. So why don't you just take a minute and talk about the scale that you guys have achieved in, you know, whether it's annually, or over whatever period of time or kind of what your objectives are, both in terms of kids, organizations, and adults.

Jason Sacks:
Yeah. So this year, this year, we'll probably train around 80,000 coaches nationwide.

Jeff Frick:
80,000 coaches nationwide?

Jason Sacks:
80,000 coaches nationwide. Yeah, nationwide.

Jeff Frick:
And most of those are coaching kids, probably between whatever.

Jason Sacks:
Five and 18, yeah.

Jeff Frick:
That’s great.

Jason Sacks:
Exactly. We partner with about a thousand or so schools and youth sports organizations, park and rec organizations, boys and girls clubs across the country. We will do around 3,000 live workshops this year. We are in the midst of our busiest time. We're recording this in August. So you think about schools coming back, fall sports starting, you know. Last week alone, in one day, we had 30 workshops. One day, 30 live workshops around the country. So the scale is there, we're getting bigger. What we want to be able to do is, regardless of what type of organization you are, you could be a big travel soccer club, or you could be a Boys and Girls Club in Oakland. And we can work with you, right? We can work with you by training your coaches and working with your parents. We can help you recruit coaches and place them within your organization. Or we can look at the whole community and say, "Why is the youth sports experience for children here not the same as in a more affluent community?" What are the things that we can help provide that experience and bring more resources so that all kids have access to this type of youth sports experience? So, we're about a $14 million nonprofit organization a year. And we're continuing to grow, and we have, over the next five years, our goal is to reach over 7 million young people participating in sports. And that's going to mean that we're going to have to train 500,000 coaches. We're going to have to go to communities and create more opportunities for kids to participate in sports, because in some communities they don't have access. There isn't a team for them to play on. So how do we work with local leaders to make sure that they're creating those opportunities as well?

Jeff Frick:
Wow. Huge impact. And what are some of the softer things that you measure for success? Or just the numbers.

Jason Sacks:
Yeah, we look at, there's a lot of, you know, impact is important obviously for all nonprofit organizations. And there's two ways we can look at it. You know, we can look at it through, you know, outputs with a lot of the things I just talked about, like the number of partners, you know, we can talk about how many coaches we're training, how many workshops we're doing. But from an outcome-based mindset, there's a lot of things that we're looking to measure. One is that, you know, the data and the evaluation that we have shows that, as a result of PCA programs and initiatives, youth exhibit teamwork, confidence, resilience, persistence, all the things you talked about earlier. If you have an organization that's going through PCA consistently, these are the types of things we're going to see in our youth. We're going to see coaches have that ability to really focus on positive youth development in their role. They're not just going to be focused on the wins and losses; they're actually going to be able to focus on some of those life skills that we talked about. But it's going to be at the forefront for them, and they're going to feel equipped to be able to do that. Youth sports organizations say that their cultures are more positive. They have less, you know, conflicts between coaches and parents, parents and officials, coaches and officials. So it's actually making the sport more fun, right? That's what it should be, right? And communities also feel this increased quality in sports programs happening in their community. And parents feel more connected to their child's school and their community when PCA is in the mix because it's creating that better culture.

Jeff Frick:
Yeah, you got the ‘Joy’ over your shoulder.

Jason Sacks:
That's right. I mean, that's a good reminder. And it's interesting. A lot of PCA’s content comes from, you know, sports psychology research, social educational psychology, but we also take from best practices from professional and college coaches. You know, one of the members of our national advisory board is Steve Kerr, the Warriors coach, his coaching philosophy. He talks about joy, mindfulness, compassion, and competition. And, you know, he talks about it like if they're struggling, you know, at a stretch. He's saying like, we just don't have the joy in the game. Like even at that highest level, you see coaches are focusing on how do we make sure that those types of skills, you know, we're keeping them at the forefront because that's what's actually going to lead to better performance, right.

Jeff Frick:
You certainly see it in Curry's face when they're in their flow.

Jason Sacks:
That's right, exactly, exactly.

Jeff Frick:
There’s no doubt about it. All right. So I hate to wipe the big smile off your face, but we got to talk about some of these dark things that, because you've got your finger close to the pulse. I just want to get your take. And the first thing, and I brought it up at our event the other day, was multi-sport athletes. And I want to expand it not only to multi-sport, but kind of multi-activity. And unfortunately, there's a pressure for kids to specialize early and to give up other things, whether that's other activities like plays or whatever, and to do the one thing. And we know that's not a great thing. And both Emily and Jamie, professional soccer players, both said that they played other sports in high school. I think Jamie played basketball. I can't remember what. I think Emily was lacrosse. I don’t know if you have any data to back it up or evidence. But, you know, what do you tell people in terms of really thinking more holistically about a sports experience versus just isolating on one particular skill or sport and just over focusing? Because the other thing that often happens, you might have a great athlete, but you burn them out by the time they're 16 because they've been doing nothing but the single sport for three or four seasons a year. What's the best practices around that?

Jason Sacks:
Yeah, I think if you were to talk to any smart coach at the high school, college, or professional level, like all those coaches would say, we want players that are playing multiple sports and they're not specializing at an early age. They might say, like, okay, when they get to high school, maybe that's when you start to hone in on one sport. It becomes a little more difficult if, like, the competition level and the time and the energy that you're putting into one sport that might happen. But at the youngest level, it needs to be multiple sports. And there's a lot of different reasons. You talked about the burnout factor, right? From a mental standpoint, there's going to be burnout. I think from a physical standpoint, there's risk of overuse injuries that are happening. Like you look at baseball and all the Tommy John. If you look at the concussion issues in football, right, because so many hits at the younger age where it's like there's different ways that you can navigate this now. There's a lot more options. There's things that you can do. But how do we educate parents? Because it's very easy. My wife and I, we have, you know, soon to be nine-year-old twins, boy-girl twins that are active in youth sports. And I can feel it, right. I've worked at PCA for 18 years. This is like my world. I can feel the pressure if they're not playing multiple sports or, hey, have they tried out for a travel team yet? Or, are they getting extra help? And I'm like, no, because they're eight. Right, that time is going to come. If they want to do that, great. I'm going to go out in the backyard. I'm going to spend more time if they are showing, hey, I really want to play more soccer. Like this is what I want to do. Okay, let's talk about that, right. But I am not going to try to chase and keep up with everybody else. And I think that's really difficult. And I don't fault parents for, you know, it's easy to get caught up and you want to provide all the opportunities possible for your child. So, but what I would say is, you know, and only 1% of 1% of people are going professional. But if you look at, you know, who's getting drafted in all these different sports and you look at what they've done, they played multiple sports, not only does it help with, you know, developing different muscles and, you know, the psychological break and just getting new sports. One of my favorite stories from Chris Collins, the Northwestern men's basketball coach, who played at Duke and coached under Coach ‘K’, you know, been a part of the USA basketball gold medal-winning teams, he said his dad was, you know, Doug Collins, who coached Michael Jordan at the Bulls. So he was a great basketball player. And he said, my parents made me take a break from basketball. And he said, I played baseball. He was like, I was always the best basketball player on the team. He said, in baseball I was mediocre. And he said, you know what that taught me? It taught me what it felt like to be an okay player on a team. So that, and how did I want to be treated by the better players? So that when I went back to basketball, I knew what it meant. He was like, I was the best player, but I knew what it meant to be the number five or number six player on the team and how can I be a better teammate to those players because I've been in that position in basketball. So just the ability to interact with different groups of people, you know, there's so much that people can get out of playing multiple sports. So I'm a proponent of playing multiple sports. I think the issue now is I think people are not specializing, but now they're playing two and three sports in one season, which I think that's where we start to run into just over-scheduling. And, you know, too many sports at once. And there's some studies that have come out recently that talked about like, you know, not stacking multiple sports in one day or, you know, those types of things where that's happening a lot.

Jeff Frick:
Yeah. Like, yeah, I'm guilty as charged. I did all the bad things you could possibly do. So let's, you talked about the 1% of the 1%. So let's talk about another, you know, kind of issue is this chasing of the scholarship or this chasing of the potential, professional career. Ironically, at our high school, just a couple of years older than my oldest kid, we had two kids who made the pros. Joc Pederson, you know, played for the Dodgers and the Giants. I'm not sure where he is now playing baseball. And Davante Adams, you know, played on our field who’s with the Raiders now. So you know you can actually see real, real kids that it happens. That said, you know, the percentages are so low and that if you put that as your primary objective again, you just miss out on all these benefits in this pursuit of something which again, if the kid's going to make it, the coaches will find you. The scouts will find you. But it's just, again, kind of, it’s just too much parents, too much organization, too much focusing on the wrong goal when for the vast, vast, vast, vast majority, it's really about the experience of what they're going through, in the moment.

Jason Sacks:
Yeah, and I think one thing, one, another really good resource that we have, we call it the 100 point exercise and we give it to parents and it's basically, you know, forcing a parent. It asks the parent, it says ‘What are your goals as a parent for your child in sports?’ Right. And it could be youth or high school sports. And we ask them to fill that out at the beginning of the season. And it could. And they need to divvy up 100 points through these different things. It could be earn a college scholarship, have fun. You know, meet new friends, physical fitness, winning a championship. They need to divvy up, like where they put their, you know, their 100 points. And then we ask them two things. We say, all right, look at where you put your points, where you put your emphasis. And a lot of them will be like, oh, I'm all about like the sportsmanship. I'm all about like, I don't care about winning. And then we say mimic those points when you're in the stands and what you're cheering for. Are you only cheering for the results plays? Like but you said you didn't care about those, right? So it's like trying to hold them accountable to what's important to them. But then we also ask them to take a blank version of that and give it to their child and ask their child, ‘What are your goals in this?’ Right. And see, like, we've gotten so much feedback, of Wow, this, this opened up

Jeff Frick
Oh my goodness,

Jason Sacks:
a conversation with my child that we've never had before. And I didn't know that they really wanted to play at the next level. And again, if the child is driving that, great. Let's have that conversation. Let's talk about it. But if we, the parent, are pushing them in a direction that they don't want to go, then we're only doing harm, so this tool helps them get on the same page with what they both want to get out of the youth sports experience and hopefully, you know, we can't put 100 points in getting a college scholarship and going professional because it's against the odds that that's going to happen. And because we've talked about all these great things that can happen in playing sports, let's make sure that we're starting to focus on some of those. And we're a little bit more deliberate.

Jeff Frick:
Yeah, I would love—I would love. Do you guys have a published roll-up from like a league or something that's obviously anonymized, but, you know, I can just imagine joy, meeting new friends, you know, blah, blah, blah on the kid's side versus what's on the parents' side. I bet the disparity, especially across 100 variables, must be giant. I mean, even if you look at...

Jason Sacks:
Right, and I think we've all been guilty of this, right? I've coached, you know, basketball at the high school, college level. And then we joke like we are not anti-competition, right. We are not everybody gets a trophy. We want kids to be able to access this positive youth sports experience. We want them to thrive in those environments. We want to create these healthy environments. But you know what's really fun too? It's winning.

Jeff Frick:
Right

Jason Sacks:
And I think what makes sports this magical place is the competition factor if it's done the right way. And so I think all of this comes down to is that, you know, parents often, you know, are coaching little league or coaching youth soccer. And the team loses a game. The parent might be stressing over that for, you know, 2 or 3 days that they lost, right.

Jeff Frick:
Right.

Jason Sacks:
You know how long the child’s stressing over it? Like five minutes.

Jeff Frick:
Right.

Jason Sacks:
And on to the next thing, right. So it's like we need to, as parents, recalibrate our expectations—like what we're looking to get out of this and why we're putting in the time as a coach and how we can develop these players. And, so I think it's again, it's matching up those expectations of all the different roles within the youth sports experience.

Jeff Frick:
Yeah. Well, I love that one advice you gave earlier. Just knowing that as soon as somebody makes a mistake, they're going to be looking at you. And what is the face that you're going to reflect back to them?

Jason Sacks:

Yeah, what are you doing as a parent. Right. And, you know, if your child makes a mistake and you go like this, and they look at you, you think that's going to help them or hurt them, right? You know, so you got to be—it’s got to be ‘Hey, that's okay. We're on to the next play.’ Right. Those types of things.

Jeff Frick:
So another topic, which is a tough one and it's kind of an extension of the one we just talked about, is kind of club versus...

Jason Sacks:
Yeah.

Jeff Frick:
You know, whatever your local...

Jason Sacks:
Yeah.

Jeff Frick:
And I want to distinguish between, like, AYSO and, you know, some of the, just the little organizations that are just the organizations versus the highly competitive travel teams, maybe that's a better way to talk about them. And invariably, you get this conflict because of the level of competition, timing of seasons, or whatever. And often I've seen, you know, you take kids in high school situations specifically out of the opportunity to play for their high school, to wear the colors of their high school, to, you know, participate at a high school level regardless of the competition. You know, the kids are in high school for four years. And it just seems like, again, just a miss, a miss-prioritization of, you know, what's important? What are they going to remember? Where are the long term benefits? You know, always giving aside there might be, you know, the small small percentage where, you know, they just they just want to be a pro and they're 100% committed. But more often than not, it’s coming from the parents and the side-junct to that is you talked about it, the additional coaching.

Jason Sacks:
Yeah.

Jeff Frick:
And again, guilty as charged. You know, hiring private coaches to work on skills or you got one on ones with kids and a coach with a ten year old working on their ball dribbling skills. It's like, really? Or should they just be out, you know, hanging out, being a kid? So what do you think about travel, some of these kind of high competition travel teams and that conflict with high school.

Jason Sacks:
It's really difficult. I mean, high school sports is such a great institution, such a great experience. So I hate when I see when kids can’t play high school sports because of a club commitment or whatever. So, I think those are some of the extreme. But it happens more in some sports. And it's just a shame. Like it's just a, it's a part of the, it's the overall experience. I think in the moment you're like, well where's the better competition? What's going to make me better? And again, we go back to like, well, what was the overall reason and goal for participating in this?

Jeff Frick:
Right.

Jason Sacks:
It's more about those experiences, those relationships, those things you're going to look back on and you know, you're not going to be able to go back and do that and you're going to miss out on it. So I think those are tough when you think about the lower level, of kids, when you start to get into that, you know, and that’s the thing that’s starting earlier and earlier, right.

Jeff Frick:
Right, right.

Jason Sacks:
Six, seven, eight years old. Like you could be playing for a club and it's, and you’re playing, you know, more times a week. And I think that again, it becomes this like keeping up with the Joneses. Like how do we make sure that my child doesn't get left behind. And if they're not playing travel at a certain age, is that going to impact their high school career?

Jeff Frick:
Right.

Jason Sacks:
And I’d say probably not, you know, like there's there's a lot of early, you know, early bloomers and and late bloomers and like we don't know. You know, a lot of kids drop out of sports by 13 because you know, either opportunities are lost and there's not enough, you know, and not enough rec programs for kids to continue on that aren't playing at a competitive level. Kids are getting burned out. They start to specialize on a certain sport. So I think, again, it comes back to I don't have a problem with, you know, if your child's going to play for a club team and is and the child really wants to spend more time, that's totally fine. I think it's really important for clubs to be really clear with the expectations of and what families and children and coaches are going to get out of being a part of that club, because I think oftentimes people might sign up, they spend a ton of money. It becomes year round. And then maybe their child isn't playing as much as they thought they should be. And then that's where some conflict happens. Or, you know, people feel like, you know, like, ‘Hold on, I was sold a,’ you know, a bag of goods that wasn't true. Like, how do we get past that? So I think being upfront, being really clear with what you're looking to get out of it, what is this organization providing. And I think it's totally fine. Kids are going to develop at different ages. Like there are some eight year olds that, yeah, they probably could be doing more. Right. And there's some eight year olds that probably aren't going to—it's not going to click for them for a couple of years, and that's okay. And they might be level by the time they get to 13.

Jeff Frick:
Right.

Jason Sacks:
So we don't know. But I think it's just keeping a realistic outlook as a parent and not getting caught up and really thinking about what is best for your child. And how can we make sure that the child wants to do that, right. Like if you see that your child is going outside every day on their own and kicking that soccer ball and working on their footwork and dribbling and all that, that's awesome. Right? And then maybe it's like, hey, hey, I want more help. Like, can I go and work more? Like, that's great. That's the ideal situation versus, I’m the parent saying, I think you need to do this. Now we're dragging you to this extra help or, multiple practices a week or whatever it might be. So...

Jeff Frick:
Yeah. And there's—and unfortunately, there's a there's a nasty underbelly of people that take advantage of, of parent's dreams and are selling, you know, a can of goods.

Jason Sacks:
Totally.

Jeff Frick:
And it's like, you know, the kids just want to play. They don’t want to be on the most competitive team and ride pine, and fly all over the country to ride pine is... I mean, you hear just horror stories.

Jason Sacks:
Totally. And it becomes... And I think one of the things that's really unfortunate is become—it’s become a status thing.

Jeff Frick:
Right?

Jason Sacks:
Of, you know, almost like my self worth as a parent is driven by how good my child is at youth sports. And I don't know, like when we got there. But it's unfortunate because you start to see that a lot where it's like, ‘Oh, your child isn't playing travel soccer yet?’ Or, ‘Oh, they're just playing rec.?’ Or, you know, whatever it might be. And it... again, everybody has different needs, has different wants. You know, it's like if they want to be in a play, if they want to play an instrument, if they want to do stuff, like there's so many options for kids right now, it's totally fine if they don't play. And you know, we have friends where it's like, oh, you know what? You know, she's not going to play soccer this year and she's nine. And it's like, great, guess what? She can always come back in two years and play. Like she's not—the kids aren't retiring when they take a season off, right? They can always come back. And I think parents need to keep that in mind, that just because my child wants to take a break doesn't necessarily mean that they're not going to come back because they may.

Jeff Frick:
Right.

Jason Sacks:
So...

Jeff Frick:
But they're all stuck on this perception of this linear progression of activities to get to that college scholarship, which is kind of silly.

Jason Sacks:
Yeah.

Jeff Frick:
All right, so now I’ll ask you another topic, which is a little controversial, but also I think we can have a little fun with it. And that's trophies, participation trophies and just a couple of backgrounds. You know, on one hand, there's a school of thought that says, you know, they're not good, they're not really rewarding, winning behavior. And then there's a whole other school of thought. Well, you know, for a lot of kids, that might be the only trophy that they ever get. And then there's an element too of potentially, you know, being part of the team that, you know, it's more of a team trophy than an individual trophy. And then just to kind of close on the concept because I think it's less about the trophy than what it actually physically is. As you know, back in the day, they used to give the winner of the Boston Marathon a laurel wreath, right on his head or her head, that's all you got. And there's a whole kind of psychology around, you know, if the extrinsic value of the reward is high, this is where, like, you know, Super Bowl ring, it actually diminishes the intrinsic motivation in terms of accomplishing a goal, getting through the journey, accomplishing the challenge. So, trophies are a kind of tricky part. And, you know, full disclosure, I had no trophies as a kid and my cousins had a thousand. I thought it was the coolest thing since sliced bread. So, you know, it's not a it's not an easy topic. Give us kind of your guys' thoughts on trophies and awards.

Jason Sacks:
I think there's a time and place for all of them. Right? I think at the youngest ages when kids are first playing, like, that's awesome. Like they love it. They get so excited, right? They say, oh, look how many trophies I have. Because at that point, the point of them playing is to learn the sport and participate and get out on the field. And that is why they're getting rewarded for that. So I think it all comes down to, again, I keep on saying this word like the expectation and what—why are we giving them a trophy? Like if the trophy is not for the championship team? It's like, right, because they're six years old and there is no champion. They're all doing great things out there, and we want them to come back. Like that should be the goal of all youth sports coaches, how are kids coming back. If a trophy helps that, great. I mean, I don't think we need to be doing that for their entire life. But to your whole thing around, you know, the value of what it is. You know, my daughter is playing flag football right now, and the coach after every game and every practice, they have this big chain with a dog on it. You know, the mascot.

Jeff Frick:
Right.

Jason Sacks:
It's like the dog of the day who showed the best effort, who was listening, who was a good teammate and who worked the hardest. Right. And at the end of the day, like the kids are competing for that. That is... And it's like a $10 necklace, right, that they wear to the next practice. And then somebody else gets it, like those types of things to drive some of the behavior that you're looking for. And it becomes this fun thing that everybody's vying for. Those are things that I think work and that are, you know, really special for the kids that are participating. I think just getting a, you know, as kids get older, I think, you know, wants and needs change. And so, so I don't know. So I think, you know, again, why are we giving out the trophy? What's the need for it? And I think that some aspects and some organizations at certain ages, I think it's a great idea. And then at others, I think there's other things you can do to drive some of the behavior that you're looking to see.

Jeff Frick:
I love that framing because you are trying to drive participation and you are rewarding participation, not winning when they're 8 years old. I think that's a really great framing. So we're getting towards the end of the time, kind of the last kind of contrast I want to get your take on is, is kind of professional coaches versus parent coaches.

Jason Sacks:
Yeah.

Jeff Frick:
They both have pros and cons. And the reality is for most organizations, the vast majority of people in the organizations are parent volunteers, because that's when you're engaged and you're participating and you know, all the money has to go for fields and uniforms and refs, etc. So I wonder if you could share some thoughts around the good news and bad news of professional coaches and kind of the good news and bad news of parent coaches and how, you know, maybe organizations should think about that.

Jason Sacks:
I mean, I think the most important thing is that you have a couple of things. One, you're equipping coaches with the tools that they need to be a good coach. Two, that you are giving the coach a job description of what is expected of them.

Jeff Frick:
Great tip.

Jason Sacks:
I don't think we do enough of that in youth sports. Hey, we need you to coach like you're a warm body. Here's, here are the balls, here the uniforms. Go ahead! And it's like, ummm... Okay, like I've never played this sport. I watched it on TV. Great. I'm just going to do what I see on TV. Like, we don't want that. So how are we equipping and training coaches whether they're paid or not paid? Right. Just because somebody is a paid coach doesn't mean they're a good coach, right? So I think regardless of who is coaching, how your organization, it is training them, it's evaluating them, and it's showing them the expectations and holding them accountable to those expectations. And I think those are the things that, you know, we need to focus on. And I totally get it. Youth sports, you know, to run a youth sports league, it's expensive. There's a lot of different things you need to do, but we kick off a lot of our workshops talking about like, who was the most impactful coach or mentor that you've had in your life. And people remember that immediately. And they say, it was my coach from 30 years ago, it was my coach from 40 years ago. And then we say ‘why’ and they start talking about it. It's like, because the lessons that they taught us, like the support that they gave us, it’s never because we won this many games or because we had the best uniforms. So it's really the experience that people remember and oftentimes we want to make sure that that becomes what we also invest in as an organization, as a school. So how are we—where are the ways that we can invest in our coaches, our experience to make sure that that's what kids are remembering down the road. And it's not just about the wins and the losses.

Jeff Frick:
That's great. That's a great, a great close. I think we'll leave it at that.
So how can people get involved? How can people find out more? Give us a little bit of the, of the detail how people can contribute and get involved.

Jason Sacks:
Yeah, we'd love to have you check us out at Positive Coach dot org [https://positivecoach.org/]. You know, you can check out our resources. We have a whole resource zone on our website. You can learn about some of the different workshops and trainings. If you're a parent, there's plenty of content resources for you. If you’re involved with a school or youth sports organization, you can check out ways that we can partner. And obviously, as a nonprofit organization, we always love people that donate to support what we're doing across the country. So Positive Coach dot org [https://positivecoach.org/].

Jeff Frick:
Great. Well, thank you, Jason, for the time today. Really, appreciate getting to know you a little bit better. And I can't be more supportive of the cause. I think it's such an important part of our culture, youth sports and, you know, the little training and some tools and guidance. You know, anyone can be much, much better at the task. You just need training. Like anything else. Thanks a lot.

Jason Sacks:
Thanks so much for having me, Jeff.

Jeff Frick:
All right. He's Jason, I'm Jeff, you're watching ‘Turn the Lens’ with Jeff Frick. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening on the podcast. We'll see you next time. Take care.

Cold Close:
Awesome.
That was great.
Thank you.
Yeah. No, that was great. Appreciate the opportunity it was fun.
Oh for sure. My pleasure.

Jason Sacks: Youth Sports, Culture, Character | Turn the Lens podcast with Jeff Frick, Episode 36  

© Copyright 2024 Menlo Creek Media, LLC, All Rights Reserved