Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good morning. You'll find out with Beating the Poet Cold.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
I'm Peter Leonard and I'm the poet Gold, and.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
We're on the air with Bill Hoynes, William Hoynes, and Chrispishorek,
author's co authors of a book called More Than Just
a Game. And you're going to want to find out
what that's about. But before you do, we're going to
go right to the poet Cold for her weekly poem
prayer incantation Gold, let it roll.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
I'm going to do one of the stanzas from be
the Poem, Be the poem that breathes the breath, to
dream out loud, discover the wonders residing above the clouds.
For Helius's chariot brings hope with each day. The time
is now to make life your way, board of ships,
set sail to see. Be brave, my friends, be the
(00:40):
poem in your life, Be your life, be poetry.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
It's more likely in air before the poem, I mean,
it was more good work from the poet Gold. And
you know, I know both of you have very experienced teachers.
Advasa and Bill. How long have you been at it?
Speaker 4 (01:00):
Thirty three years?
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Thirty three Way about you Chris twenty one. Okay, so
over fifty is of experience, right, fifty is a vaster experience. Right,
it's a table today called and oh yeah, I was
there for thirty years, so and that's eighty. My wife's
forty six years. So we're up to one hundred and
(01:22):
twenty five years of vaster experience. Man, we made a
lot of money in one hundred and twenty six years.
But you know, you guys collaborate on the book. One
of the things I would be curious about on a
personal level, what made you collaborate in other what brought
you together to have a collaboration.
Speaker 5 (01:43):
Yeah, I remember very clearly the conversation that led to
the book. And Bill and I were walking home at
the end of the day and we bumped into each
other in a parking lot and just ask each other
what we were doing. Coincidentally, we both said that we
were thinking of doing research projects that would look at
the current state of the youth worst industry, because as parents,
we felt like there wasn't a lot of information out there.
(02:04):
And so we were friends, we were colleagues, and we
talkt why don't we do this together? And I'm really
glad that we did because it's been such a great experience.
Speaker 4 (02:11):
Yeah, I learned a lot from working with Chris. And
one of the things worth noticing it took us about
ten years to do this project. We were doing other things,
but we also were talking to lots of people and
learning a lot as we went, and of course we
had the pandemic in the middle of it. But it
was a great collaborative experience where I think one of
the most important things is we became good friends in
writing this book together.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Now I'm assuming I could be wrong. Both of you
have children.
Speaker 4 (02:32):
We all do have children who played youth sports in
the Hudson Valley.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
Got you, okay, so that's why you went down this
rabbit hole, so to speak.
Speaker 4 (02:38):
And in fact, our kids played on rival high school,
so we used to see each other on the sidelines
back in I don't know, twenty eleven, twelve thirteen, and
got struck up a conversation. Then that probably is what
led to that parking line, and it.
Speaker 5 (02:51):
Never came to blows.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
I was going to say, were you the well behaved
parents or were you the you know, the other parents
of people we see ourselves as the well behave.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Say that comes up from the book, he will behave parents,
so that the point that build is your sociologist and
Chris's and the education field. What is it, uh, the
sociological about this book? I mean, because it's written in
a style that anybody who likes to read is gonna
(03:25):
like it and find it easy reading. But what but
what is there a component of it that's sociological that
you might want to comment on?
Speaker 4 (03:32):
Yeah, it's a great question. When we started the project,
I think we thought of it as an academic project
trying to think about the relationshiptween youth sports and questions
of community identity, inequality, some core themes in sociology. But
the more that we worked on the project, the more
we realized who we wanted to write the book for
were other parents. And that's partly or largely, I guess,
I would say, because when we were going through this
(03:54):
with our kids, we felt very unprepared for how to
guide support our it's through the youth sports world, and
we were looking for advice and I think we just
kind of, I don't know, in some sense, followed the crowd,
talked to our neighbors who weren't experts, did what everyone
else was doing, and we thought, well, we've learned a lot,
(04:15):
and if we can do a study, we can learn
some more. And rather than write for academics, but let's
write for a broader audience and hope the parents might
be able to read it. So thanks for saying that
about it being readable. We hope to make it readable,
be not be full of academic jargon. And that was
actually a challenge for us because Chris and I are
used to writing academic jargon.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
And I guess I want to ask the complimentary question
answer Chris, you know, being in education and thinking of education,
you know, basically all your adult life. I think people
are vaguely aware that the role of sports has changed
in education, and if you could give us a sense
of what your perspective is on that, I.
Speaker 5 (04:55):
Would say that the role of sports has changed and
the role of parent the approach to parenting has changed significantly,
and they're both relevant to this work. So what we
found was when we were in high school and played sports,
you or even younger, you played on a little league
team or for the why, you played basketball for the
Why for a couple of months, and then your parents
(05:16):
would drop you off, and that was kind of it.
But what we discovered was our kids today are under
intense pressure from the time they're eight nine years old
to specialize and that puts, you know, a lot of
pressure on parents too, who feel like they're obligated to
do whatever they can to make their kids exceptional rather
than just have, you know, steer them into fun, interesting activities.
(05:39):
And so we wanted to get a handle on that
because we found that as parents, you're so emotionally connected
to your kids that you kind of lose perspective. It's
hard to have a clear sense of what's going on
in how you're affecting your kids, and so we thought
we need to step back, and we interviewed probably one
hundred parents and tried to benefit from their insights and
(06:02):
what they learned about being a sport parent and to
pull that all together and hopefully help parents today that
need more information.
Speaker 4 (06:10):
And one of the things that just from those interviews
we learned is that parents were often up with some prodding,
maybe like the kind that you do with your guests,
reflective about their experience, but they often began by talking
about the ways in which they and this is language
that the parents use, not our language. They manage their
children's careers, and the kids could be eight, nine, ten
(06:31):
years old, maybe they could be fifteen, sixteen, But and
the more that we talked to them, we got a
sense that they felt a kind of obligation to see
the world that way because of the way that youse
sports as structured as an industry. And the more that
they reflected, the more that they thought about the lessons
that they learned and were really happy that we were
talking to them because they thought maybe their experiences might
(06:52):
help some other parents. And we certainly learned a lot
from talking to people in many ways was consistent with
our experience as parents. Really pushed us to interrogate our
own experience as well.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
You know, I didn't have an opportunity to read your
book when I'm going to because I used to coach
youth basketball female girls basketball team, and I did read
a little bit of the first chapter, and it was
just hitting home for me somewhere around I think two
thousand there was, at least from my experience as shift.
(07:25):
I remember the first team that I volunteered to coach
and our daughter had a dental appointment that day, so
we had to leave the pick early, and the other
coaches were quite upset that I was leaving, and I said,
it's They're like, it won't be fair to you, and
I'm like, it's okay, we're gonna win anyway. Give me
the grunts, give me all the ones that you don't
(07:47):
want for the season, and we did win the season
because for me, it was really more about finding the
gifts in each individual child versus and I had all
kinds of beautiful kids at the time. They're all delts now,
but versus trying to make this child a basketball player.
Speaker 5 (08:06):
You know, Yeah, I think that's a really relevant story
because it highlights one of the points we try and
make in the book, and that is that because of
the commercialization of the industry, there's so much pressure on
families to go all in and to pay exorbit amounts
for their kids to get specialized training and to sign
up for a club that advertises itself as preparing kids
(08:27):
to get college scholarship. And that is one reality that
we observe. But we also found that there are a
lot of fantastic coaches out there who don't put that
pressure on their players, that want them to have fun
and develop and work together cooperatively. But what we find
happens is that parents don't really give a lot of
thought to this, and it's easy to give in to
this pressure to go, you know, to do as much
(08:49):
intensive parenting as you can. But we're encouraging parents step back,
you know, take a breath, and look for coaches who
are going to kind of embody the values you wipen.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
And then your kids will get that.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
That is that is so true because the parents that
I had put their kids into sports for different reasons.
You know, one put a child in for weight loss.
The other one put a child in, uh because she
just wanted to meet more people. Another parent put a
child in because they weren't as athletic and they wanted
them to have some activity. But but no one ever
(09:22):
came to me and said, you know, we want our
kid to take this all the way and and get
a scholarship for school. They were just you know, kids,
They were letting them be kids. If you're just tuning in,
you're listening to finding out with Pete and the poet
gold I'm Peter and I'm the poet Golden. We're here
today with co authors Chris B. York and William Hoynes
(09:43):
talking about their book more than just a game.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
It was notarring to you, Chris, but it was jarring
to me. And a bill of course, gave out no
emotion even when you use word sports industry. That's the
first summer I read the book and I've read that phrase,
but it's didn't ring some and so you said it
it was so casual and a youth sports industry. Could
you give us a sense on basically what the business
(10:07):
of it is, both from actual people making money in
a self conscious way and the families and the individual
athletes who were sort of subjects to that.
Speaker 5 (10:18):
So just to give a quick overview, all of this
started to change in the nineteen eighties. So in the
nineteen eighties sports were mostly locally organized, parent overseeing and
low pressure. But then due to cuts in public support
for sports programming and recreational program these are entrepreneurs saw
a market and created programs related to the sports that
(10:41):
they could make money off, and it's just expanded rapidly.
When we started working on this book, it was an
eighteen billion dollar industry, which at the time I thought
was incredible. In that ten years it's gone up to
forty billion dollars. So this isn't small change. We're talking
about it now dwarfs other forms of entertainment, and it's
(11:02):
you know, probably going to get more and more intense
as you know, private equity sees this, entrepreneurs se future markets.
It's big money.
Speaker 4 (11:09):
And to give a sense of how it is a
twenty to forty billion dollar industry. Some of the costs
are private organizations run high end travel teams that parents
pay fifteen hundred to five thousand dollars year just to
be on. They travel to what are often perceived or
called national tournaments that are in strategically located places lots
(11:34):
of soccer or baseball fields or basketball courts, and they
pay money just to stay hotels and for meals and
for all of the accessories associated with that. Once they
get to be eight or nine or ten years old,
those whose parents take it really seriously try to play
or almost exclusively play these days for teams that hire
(11:54):
private coaches. So that's in addition to your registration fees.
And then many of the students of the play. I'm
thinking that as and educator of students, many of the
youth players also have than private trainers that and you
can keep spinning this out further and further, but it
that more and more costs, more and more demand that
if you want to succeed, you're going to pay this cost.
(12:15):
And to Chris's point, it's perceived as an incredible opportunity
to make money because it continues to grow. It's almost
like it's and my eyes are wide about this. It's
almost like it's it's unending in its potential growth. The
numbers we saw in the twenty teens we were shocked by,
and now it's double that.
Speaker 5 (12:35):
I would add that one really troubling aspect of this
is it's really exacerbated the gap between the haves and
the have nots because a lot of parents can't afford
to spend that much money on their kids' sports activities,
and so they're in a bind. And the sports entrepreneurs
have an eye on on where they're going to make
the most profits. So these specialized teams tend to be
(12:55):
in areas where there are a lot of there's a
lot of money, and in urban areas or in areas
with a lot of poverty, kids don't have those options.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
And I mean, that's fascinating stuff. You know, it's the
business of it and there's your points out. If you're
a working class family or even a sony the middle
class family, you can't afford what could wand opinion twelve
to fifteen thousand dollars a year for soccer or whatever
it is. So you know there are social dimensions to it.
(13:26):
But have either one of you Let me stop from
what I'm really saying. I never heard a parent talk
about their kids athletics and I was interested in and
have you is the question? I mean, because parents usually
have a huge vision in terms of how great their
kid is and therefore how great they you are? Now
(13:47):
out of my brains by that.
Speaker 4 (13:49):
Yeah, well, I think just to go back to what
I was saying about when prodded parents became more reflective,
certainly many parents do want to talk about how wonderful
their their kids are, whatever activity in including sports. And
you know, one of the things that we observed we
did a survey of five hundred plus parents at youth
sports tournaments in the Hudson Valley and we found even
(14:11):
the kids under ten, more than half of their parents
thought their kids were likely to play in college. Now
that's way that inflates the possibility dramatically, you know, maybe
about one in ten kids have the opportunity to play
at some level in college, and about one in one
hundred have the opportunity to get a scholarship. But huge
numbers of parents evaluate their kids likelihood to succeed, both
(14:34):
in terms of their skill level and also in terms
of their likelihood to pay off in the long term
with scholarships, they wildly inflate it. But let me say
the thing that we learned and we found really helpful
was as we talked more with parents about their experiences,
kind of at the end of the day, most of
them settled on they thought their kids were learning something
valuable that it wasn't about cashing in. They were learning resilience.
(14:57):
They were learning how to manage failure. They were learning
about what it means to be part of a team.
They were learning about how important is to practice something
that really requires you to improve. They were learning about
how to take criticism. And I would say some very
large percentage of parents we did they used the language
of putting quotes life lessons because that was the language is.
(15:18):
We didn't impose that in interviews. We asked them about
their experience and they used this language, and we found
that really heartening that the parents were thinking that way.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
And let me tell you another way to learn things.
Having experiences, you know, social and political experiences, makes you
more gracious and more skill that evading questions. So when
I asked, Bill, did you ever run a parent who
was interesting talkt about their kids' sports? He said, well,
as I said, before their parents became more reflective, they
(15:47):
have to speaking to him for a while, and then
you went into a very interesting thing. But you didn't say, man,
you really got a way through some stuff. What the
parent's talking about their kids. You might be in the NBA,
I mean. And so congratulations. And Bill was the genie
of the faculty, which in the vaster world was a
(16:07):
very high position, and where they teach your life skills
like avoiding questions. Part of that was editorial, but.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
I think also going back to your point, is that
the scholarship, the college scholarship, is a real driver with
some of these parents.
Speaker 5 (16:24):
Absolutely, And I would say another dimension of what Bill
is just talking about is that parents tend to start
out when their kids first start playing, with really noble intentions, right.
They want the best for their kids. They don't want
to put a lot of pressure on them. But because
of this commercialization of the industry, they're pressed to invest
a lot of time and money when the kids are
very young, and what's become really prevalent is to sign
(16:47):
their kids up for these travel the teams that play
all year round. And what we found happens is even
parents with great goals for their kids, after they've spent six, seven,
eight years, paying three thousand dollars a year all their
free time, you know, doing things related to the travel team,
they kind of shift their expectations and suddenly they think,
(17:09):
I spent all this money, I spend all this time,
I deserve something. My kid deserves something, and that often
translates into a college scholarship. And it's still observed the
chances getting a college scholarship are tiny, and so it
kind of sets them up for disappointment.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Absolutely, disappointment is something we've all experienced and nobody wants
to be disappointed. But it also sets you up to
be foolish in other words, and that's something Disappointment is
not as bad as being foolish. And I think one
of the values of this book is for a parent
(17:47):
who is involved in this youth sports industry to read
the book, your chances of becoming foolish are diminished by
reading it. So of value to that, and I'm.
Speaker 5 (18:02):
So glad to hear you thought that that was kind
of our goal in writing this book.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
And I would say, I guess almost as as a
criticism of it. Yeah, you know, I certainly picked that
up from the book. But the book, I think is
written in a way that academics tend to be strive
to be value free, you know, theor is not have
their own values and pinged and I suspected your attitudes
(18:33):
were more more closely aligned with what you're saying now
than in the more value free way in which you're
your writing comes across.
Speaker 4 (18:43):
Well, it's an interesting question. I mean, I think that
one of the things that we we started with reading
a bunch of books that basically say the es sports
industry is toxic. And it's a pretty easy argument to make.
You go to the sidelines and you see the crazy
parents yelling yeah, and you see kids crying, right, so,
and now you know, one of the things we learned
is that happens, but it's much less prevalent than you know,
(19:06):
we might think it is. But yes, that's part of
it at the same time, we both felt like we
had positive experiences and our kids had positive experiences. So
but we knew that it was a complicated and messy world.
And we also know that we live in a privileged
community where we had resources. We didn't go all the
way in with these huge, really expensive commitments, but we
(19:27):
were adjacent to that. I think both of us and
when our kids were in the twenty teens. So we're
trying to was find our way through this without trying
to say it's toxic or celebrated. So maybe maybe that's
a kind of value for you, but we thought it
was a trying to trying to understand the complexity of
it and try to write about that in a clear
and compelling.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
And you want to be objective, Yeah, to.
Speaker 5 (19:50):
Give parents information that was reliable, I would give them
a sense of the larger picture and so that they weren't,
you know, feeling obligated to make prep decisions very quickly
without thinking through the consequence.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
And I think, you know, my criticism there was really
beautifully answered, So thanks for that, because it was a
genuine criticism and both of you handled it very graciously.
But I will say Bill and Chris, they don't use
phrases in the book like the crazy parents are yelling
and the kids crying.
Speaker 3 (20:22):
That's so if you're just tuning in, you're listening to
Finding Out with Pete and the poet Gold and I'm
the poet Gold, and we're here with co authors Chris B.
York and William Hoynes speaking about their book More Than
Just a Game.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
You know, one of the things Bill, you mentioned in
the beginning when I asked him what you mention is
the sociological You use the word identity, and you know,
identity is a largely socially constructed thing. And I find
even now, you know, besides all the madness around sports,
(20:56):
you know, I care that somebody know I was good
at something. You know, so I was good at swimming.
It's sort of fun if somebody knows that about me,
and I didn't have to suffer all this kind of stuff.
But if you could talk about identity and sports, I'd
appreciate that.
Speaker 4 (21:13):
Yeah, it's a great question. I think it's a really
good example you're saying about people wanting to be recognized
for what's important to them. One of the things that
we found is that many young children consider themselves and
identify as athletes. Like when you ask them how they
see themselves, they see themselves as athletes. And then many
(21:33):
parents interestingly see themselves as youth sports parents, and it
becomes a central part of their identity. Their friends or
youth sports parents. They do holidays with other youth sports parents,
they organize their lives around that world, and they find
real satisfaction and meaning in it. And one of the
things that we were interested in is when inevitably, as
(21:54):
we say, pretty much everyone stops playing, even that you
know one in a million person who ends up playing
into their twenties or so, whether it's at the time
they start high school, a the time they end high school,
sometime in or after college. And one of the things
we found is that parents experience a kind of almost
grieving at the loss of that identity of being a
youth sports parent. You're not that anymore and the community
you've built around that, you don't have that anymore. And
(22:16):
we were interested to talk to people about how they
have they struggled with that, maybe not for long term struggle,
but at least in a short moments of when there
was this change, will you build.
Speaker 5 (22:27):
Well, one of the explanations we came up with, all
this makes sense. This doesn't happen in a vacuum. And
one of the reasons that parents feel this way is
that then this builds on a lot of sociological research.
Is it our neighborhoods are disintegrating? A lot of adults
don't feel connected to the people who live around them.
They feel kind of unmoored, and these sports teams provide
(22:48):
an anchor to them. They anchor the parents' social lives
as well as their children, and so the parent that
helps to explain why their parents, the parents are so
invested in these activities because it's for the kids, but
it also becomes for the.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
Parents absolutely, And I totally totally agree with you, because
I know when I moved out of the city into
a more rural environment, that was the thing that was
the community.
Speaker 5 (23:13):
And that was the way probably for you to make friends.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Right exactly.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
And so you know, the sports team parents we got together.
You know, we partied together, We took our kids to
the pizzeria together.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
That was the community.
Speaker 5 (23:27):
And one other layer of this is those relationships were
probably a lot richer than so many of these online
relationships that adults have now that they know people just
through Facebook or Instagram, whereas their travel team parents they
see every day every week, They commiserate, they share stories,
and so those relationships between really central to their lives.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
I thought that you both made it very clear in
the book how that worked, and it's sort of like
mobile neighborhoods. Apparently. One of the things that struck me,
I think it was implicit, maybe even explicit in the writing,
is that the parent group around it, or the neighborhood
(24:09):
group around it winds up inevitably depending to some degree
on the success of the particular athletes. So if one
of the basketball players is exceptionally good, he'll be praised
by other adults as being good, and his parents will
have a status that seems perverse to me. And so
(24:33):
to have the community values being led by a twelve
year old seems the opposite of rich.
Speaker 4 (24:42):
Yeah, I think perverse is a good word. It's a
strange thing that successful young athletes bring status to their
parents in these communities. And one of the things that
that becomes even more complicated is that become so successful
they might leave that travel team and go to a
more elite team, and then there's loss of the parents
that they they they lose their community connection. And this
(25:05):
sort of happens repeatedly over time as players come and go.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
Because always repeatedly, almost inevitably yeah yeah, yeah, So it
seems like for most parents it's a losing proposition unless
they're armed with some sort of forethought and more than
just the game is the beginning of the individual parents forethought.
Speaker 5 (25:33):
That's the goal. That what I mean throughout the process,
the thing that was driving us was this desire to
give parents information and perspective that would help them make
good decisions and to set their kids up for success
in and off the field. And one thing I would
add that I found really interesting was that we also
interviewed a bunch of college coaches, and the college coaches,
(25:55):
believe it or not, were big proponents of sampling different sports.
Have kids lead balance lives, not pushing them to specialize
them when they're really young, because they find by the
time they do get to college, then they have a
variety of skills, they're still enthusiastic, they are healthy. Yeah,
they're healthy, and they don't burn out. Because that's a
(26:17):
real danger of the current situation is that a lot
of kids who play a sport all year around from
the time their eight just burn.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
Out right right right, you know.
Speaker 3 (26:27):
And it's so true because the amount of pressure that
you're putting on the child, even though your intentions I
think for the parents that your intention is initially in
the right place. I think someone said earlier that it's
a noble position to have in the beginning, and then
somewhere it takes that turn.
Speaker 5 (26:50):
That's such a great way to put it, because what
you said just kind of crystallize the point of the
book in my mind, and that is to help parents,
to give them the tools they'll need to match their
intentions with their actions, to help them come up with
concrete strategies that they'll benefit and their kids will benefit from.
Speaker 3 (27:10):
And before we go into the next topic, how can
we have really discuss how can people get the book?
Speaker 2 (27:16):
Where's the book?
Speaker 4 (27:17):
The easiest place to get it is online. It's the
press is Cent for Recovery Press. You can go to
their website or that large company that sells all things
that everyone goes to that I probably won't mention, but yes,
it's widely available at any major bookseller. In fact, local
bookstores if they don't have it in stock. I believe
(27:40):
Oblong Books in rhyme. Beck and Millerton has had it
in stock, but if they don't have in stock, taken
order for you.
Speaker 5 (27:45):
And we consciously chose a press that would publish it
in paperback at a low cost from the beginning. So
the book is less than twenty bucks, easy to get,
easy to read. So we're hoping that parents who are
motivated can buy it.
Speaker 4 (28:00):
Yeah, it just goes back to sort of one of
our motivations to write this was we wish we had
a book like this when our kids were twelve, and
we wanted to write a book that we thought would
have been helpful to us at the time.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (28:09):
And that is accessible and affordable and readable. So we
hope we've we've achieved some of that. But you know,
it's it's a it's a tough industry and uh and
the book isn't really out there that much. So thanks
for taking the time to talk about and it's.
Speaker 3 (28:24):
And it's it's it's helpful for you if you choose
for it to be helpful. You know, like most things
in life, we have to have that consciousness to say, well,
let me learn about this, and oh there's some great
things in here. Let me remain conscious of my own behavior,
(28:44):
my own drives, and remain in that sort of elevated
quote unquote awake state in our engagement.
Speaker 5 (28:53):
And we don't want readers to or listeners to go
away with the idea that the whole system is messed up.
It's inevident that their kids are going to have bad experiences,
because we came across many many coaches parents kids who
had fantastic sporting experiences. So it's possible. You just have
to invest a little thought into the process, right.
Speaker 4 (29:14):
And one of the things that was really interesting to
us is we saw very little what I would call
bitterness among parents as they reflected upon what their kids'
experience has been. We saw a lot of parents reflect
on how the thick they thought things might have gone differently,
But there wasn't a lot of a sense of profound disappointment.
There was more reflective. We wish we knew some of this,
(29:34):
and we'd like to impart some of the knowledge we
have now as parents of nineteen twenty year olds to
our neighbors who are our only have eight year olds.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
A lot of good advice from nice people may go
out and buy the book More Than Just a Game
by Bill Hoynes and Chris Sure, and thank you very
much for being with us.
Speaker 3 (29:53):
And thank you to our listeners for finding out Pete
and the Poego. We truly appreciate you that both of you.
Thank you once again for coming on. Go out and
get the book More Than Just a Game.
Speaker 4 (30:01):
Thanks very
Good morning. You'll find out with Beating the Poet Cold.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
I'm Peter Leonard and I'm the poet Gold, and.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
We're on the air with Bill Hoynes, William Hoynes, and Chrispishorek,
author's co authors of a book called More Than Just
a Game. And you're going to want to find out
what that's about. But before you do, we're going to
go right to the poet Cold for her weekly poem
prayer incantation Gold, let it roll.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
I'm going to do one of the stanzas from be
the Poem, Be the poem that breathes the breath, to
dream out loud, discover the wonders residing above the clouds.
For Helius's chariot brings hope with each day. The time
is now to make life your way, board of ships,
set sail to see. Be brave, my friends, be the
(00:40):
poem in your life, Be your life, be poetry.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
It's more likely in air before the poem, I mean,
it was more good work from the poet Gold. And
you know, I know both of you have very experienced teachers.
Advasa and Bill. How long have you been at it?
Speaker 4 (01:00):
Thirty three years?
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Thirty three Way about you Chris twenty one. Okay, so
over fifty is of experience, right, fifty is a vaster experience. Right,
it's a table today called and oh yeah, I was
there for thirty years, so and that's eighty. My wife's
forty six years. So we're up to one hundred and
(01:22):
twenty five years of vaster experience. Man, we made a
lot of money in one hundred and twenty six years.
But you know, you guys collaborate on the book. One
of the things I would be curious about on a
personal level, what made you collaborate in other what brought
you together to have a collaboration.
Speaker 5 (01:43):
Yeah, I remember very clearly the conversation that led to
the book. And Bill and I were walking home at
the end of the day and we bumped into each
other in a parking lot and just ask each other
what we were doing. Coincidentally, we both said that we
were thinking of doing research projects that would look at
the current state of the youth worst industry, because as parents,
we felt like there wasn't a lot of information out there.
(02:04):
And so we were friends, we were colleagues, and we
talkt why don't we do this together? And I'm really
glad that we did because it's been such a great experience.
Speaker 4 (02:11):
Yeah, I learned a lot from working with Chris. And
one of the things worth noticing it took us about
ten years to do this project. We were doing other things,
but we also were talking to lots of people and
learning a lot as we went, and of course we
had the pandemic in the middle of it. But it
was a great collaborative experience where I think one of
the most important things is we became good friends in
writing this book together.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Now I'm assuming I could be wrong. Both of you
have children.
Speaker 4 (02:32):
We all do have children who played youth sports in
the Hudson Valley.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
Got you, okay, so that's why you went down this
rabbit hole, so to speak.
Speaker 4 (02:38):
And in fact, our kids played on rival high school,
so we used to see each other on the sidelines
back in I don't know, twenty eleven, twelve thirteen, and
got struck up a conversation. Then that probably is what
led to that parking line, and it.
Speaker 5 (02:51):
Never came to blows.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
I was going to say, were you the well behaved
parents or were you the you know, the other parents
of people we see ourselves as the well behave.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Say that comes up from the book, he will behave parents,
so that the point that build is your sociologist and
Chris's and the education field. What is it, uh, the
sociological about this book? I mean, because it's written in
a style that anybody who likes to read is gonna
(03:25):
like it and find it easy reading. But what but
what is there a component of it that's sociological that
you might want to comment on?
Speaker 4 (03:32):
Yeah, it's a great question. When we started the project,
I think we thought of it as an academic project
trying to think about the relationshiptween youth sports and questions
of community identity, inequality, some core themes in sociology. But
the more that we worked on the project, the more
we realized who we wanted to write the book for
were other parents. And that's partly or largely, I guess,
I would say, because when we were going through this
(03:54):
with our kids, we felt very unprepared for how to
guide support our it's through the youth sports world, and
we were looking for advice and I think we just
kind of, I don't know, in some sense, followed the crowd,
talked to our neighbors who weren't experts, did what everyone
else was doing, and we thought, well, we've learned a lot,
(04:15):
and if we can do a study, we can learn
some more. And rather than write for academics, but let's
write for a broader audience and hope the parents might
be able to read it. So thanks for saying that
about it being readable. We hope to make it readable,
be not be full of academic jargon. And that was
actually a challenge for us because Chris and I are
used to writing academic jargon.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
And I guess I want to ask the complimentary question
answer Chris, you know, being in education and thinking of education,
you know, basically all your adult life. I think people
are vaguely aware that the role of sports has changed
in education, and if you could give us a sense
of what your perspective is on that, I.
Speaker 5 (04:55):
Would say that the role of sports has changed and
the role of parent the approach to parenting has changed significantly,
and they're both relevant to this work. So what we
found was when we were in high school and played sports,
you or even younger, you played on a little league
team or for the why, you played basketball for the
Why for a couple of months, and then your parents
(05:16):
would drop you off, and that was kind of it.
But what we discovered was our kids today are under
intense pressure from the time they're eight nine years old
to specialize and that puts, you know, a lot of
pressure on parents too, who feel like they're obligated to
do whatever they can to make their kids exceptional rather
than just have, you know, steer them into fun, interesting activities.
(05:39):
And so we wanted to get a handle on that
because we found that as parents, you're so emotionally connected
to your kids that you kind of lose perspective. It's
hard to have a clear sense of what's going on
in how you're affecting your kids, and so we thought
we need to step back, and we interviewed probably one
hundred parents and tried to benefit from their insights and
(06:02):
what they learned about being a sport parent and to
pull that all together and hopefully help parents today that
need more information.
Speaker 4 (06:10):
And one of the things that just from those interviews
we learned is that parents were often up with some prodding,
maybe like the kind that you do with your guests,
reflective about their experience, but they often began by talking
about the ways in which they and this is language
that the parents use, not our language. They manage their
children's careers, and the kids could be eight, nine, ten
(06:31):
years old, maybe they could be fifteen, sixteen, But and
the more that we talked to them, we got a
sense that they felt a kind of obligation to see
the world that way because of the way that youse
sports as structured as an industry. And the more that
they reflected, the more that they thought about the lessons
that they learned and were really happy that we were
talking to them because they thought maybe their experiences might
(06:52):
help some other parents. And we certainly learned a lot
from talking to people in many ways was consistent with
our experience as parents. Really pushed us to interrogate our
own experience as well.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
You know, I didn't have an opportunity to read your
book when I'm going to because I used to coach
youth basketball female girls basketball team, and I did read
a little bit of the first chapter, and it was
just hitting home for me somewhere around I think two
thousand there was, at least from my experience as shift.
(07:25):
I remember the first team that I volunteered to coach
and our daughter had a dental appointment that day, so
we had to leave the pick early, and the other
coaches were quite upset that I was leaving, and I said,
it's They're like, it won't be fair to you, and
I'm like, it's okay, we're gonna win anyway. Give me
the grunts, give me all the ones that you don't
(07:47):
want for the season, and we did win the season
because for me, it was really more about finding the
gifts in each individual child versus and I had all
kinds of beautiful kids at the time. They're all delts now,
but versus trying to make this child a basketball player.
Speaker 5 (08:06):
You know, Yeah, I think that's a really relevant story
because it highlights one of the points we try and
make in the book, and that is that because of
the commercialization of the industry, there's so much pressure on
families to go all in and to pay exorbit amounts
for their kids to get specialized training and to sign
up for a club that advertises itself as preparing kids
(08:27):
to get college scholarship. And that is one reality that
we observe. But we also found that there are a
lot of fantastic coaches out there who don't put that
pressure on their players, that want them to have fun
and develop and work together cooperatively. But what we find
happens is that parents don't really give a lot of
thought to this, and it's easy to give in to
this pressure to go, you know, to do as much
(08:49):
intensive parenting as you can. But we're encouraging parents step back,
you know, take a breath, and look for coaches who
are going to kind of embody the values you wipen.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
And then your kids will get that.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
That is that is so true because the parents that
I had put their kids into sports for different reasons.
You know, one put a child in for weight loss.
The other one put a child in, uh because she
just wanted to meet more people. Another parent put a
child in because they weren't as athletic and they wanted
them to have some activity. But but no one ever
(09:22):
came to me and said, you know, we want our
kid to take this all the way and and get
a scholarship for school. They were just you know, kids,
They were letting them be kids. If you're just tuning in,
you're listening to finding out with Pete and the poet
gold I'm Peter and I'm the poet Golden. We're here
today with co authors Chris B. York and William Hoynes
(09:43):
talking about their book more than just a game.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
It was notarring to you, Chris, but it was jarring
to me. And a bill of course, gave out no
emotion even when you use word sports industry. That's the
first summer I read the book and I've read that phrase,
but it's didn't ring some and so you said it
it was so casual and a youth sports industry. Could
you give us a sense on basically what the business
(10:07):
of it is, both from actual people making money in
a self conscious way and the families and the individual
athletes who were sort of subjects to that.
Speaker 5 (10:18):
So just to give a quick overview, all of this
started to change in the nineteen eighties. So in the
nineteen eighties sports were mostly locally organized, parent overseeing and
low pressure. But then due to cuts in public support
for sports programming and recreational program these are entrepreneurs saw
a market and created programs related to the sports that
(10:41):
they could make money off, and it's just expanded rapidly.
When we started working on this book, it was an
eighteen billion dollar industry, which at the time I thought
was incredible. In that ten years it's gone up to
forty billion dollars. So this isn't small change. We're talking
about it now dwarfs other forms of entertainment, and it's
(11:02):
you know, probably going to get more and more intense
as you know, private equity sees this, entrepreneurs se future markets.
It's big money.
Speaker 4 (11:09):
And to give a sense of how it is a
twenty to forty billion dollar industry. Some of the costs
are private organizations run high end travel teams that parents
pay fifteen hundred to five thousand dollars year just to
be on. They travel to what are often perceived or
called national tournaments that are in strategically located places lots
(11:34):
of soccer or baseball fields or basketball courts, and they
pay money just to stay hotels and for meals and
for all of the accessories associated with that. Once they
get to be eight or nine or ten years old,
those whose parents take it really seriously try to play
or almost exclusively play these days for teams that hire
(11:54):
private coaches. So that's in addition to your registration fees.
And then many of the students of the play. I'm
thinking that as and educator of students, many of the
youth players also have than private trainers that and you
can keep spinning this out further and further, but it
that more and more costs, more and more demand that
if you want to succeed, you're going to pay this cost.
(12:15):
And to Chris's point, it's perceived as an incredible opportunity
to make money because it continues to grow. It's almost
like it's and my eyes are wide about this. It's
almost like it's it's unending in its potential growth. The
numbers we saw in the twenty teens we were shocked by,
and now it's double that.
Speaker 5 (12:35):
I would add that one really troubling aspect of this
is it's really exacerbated the gap between the haves and
the have nots because a lot of parents can't afford
to spend that much money on their kids' sports activities,
and so they're in a bind. And the sports entrepreneurs
have an eye on on where they're going to make
the most profits. So these specialized teams tend to be
(12:55):
in areas where there are a lot of there's a
lot of money, and in urban areas or in areas
with a lot of poverty, kids don't have those options.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
And I mean, that's fascinating stuff. You know, it's the
business of it and there's your points out. If you're
a working class family or even a sony the middle
class family, you can't afford what could wand opinion twelve
to fifteen thousand dollars a year for soccer or whatever
it is. So you know there are social dimensions to it.
(13:26):
But have either one of you Let me stop from
what I'm really saying. I never heard a parent talk
about their kids athletics and I was interested in and
have you is the question? I mean, because parents usually
have a huge vision in terms of how great their
kid is and therefore how great they you are? Now
(13:47):
out of my brains by that.
Speaker 4 (13:49):
Yeah, well, I think just to go back to what
I was saying about when prodded parents became more reflective,
certainly many parents do want to talk about how wonderful
their their kids are, whatever activity in including sports. And
you know, one of the things that we observed we
did a survey of five hundred plus parents at youth
sports tournaments in the Hudson Valley and we found even
(14:11):
the kids under ten, more than half of their parents
thought their kids were likely to play in college. Now
that's way that inflates the possibility dramatically, you know, maybe
about one in ten kids have the opportunity to play
at some level in college, and about one in one
hundred have the opportunity to get a scholarship. But huge
numbers of parents evaluate their kids likelihood to succeed, both
(14:34):
in terms of their skill level and also in terms
of their likelihood to pay off in the long term
with scholarships, they wildly inflate it. But let me say
the thing that we learned and we found really helpful
was as we talked more with parents about their experiences,
kind of at the end of the day, most of
them settled on they thought their kids were learning something
valuable that it wasn't about cashing in. They were learning resilience.
(14:57):
They were learning how to manage failure. They were learning
about what it means to be part of a team.
They were learning about how important is to practice something
that really requires you to improve. They were learning about
how to take criticism. And I would say some very
large percentage of parents we did they used the language
of putting quotes life lessons because that was the language is.
(15:18):
We didn't impose that in interviews. We asked them about
their experience and they used this language, and we found
that really heartening that the parents were thinking that way.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
And let me tell you another way to learn things.
Having experiences, you know, social and political experiences, makes you
more gracious and more skill that evading questions. So when
I asked, Bill, did you ever run a parent who
was interesting talkt about their kids' sports? He said, well,
as I said, before their parents became more reflective, they
(15:47):
have to speaking to him for a while, and then
you went into a very interesting thing. But you didn't say, man,
you really got a way through some stuff. What the
parent's talking about their kids. You might be in the NBA,
I mean. And so congratulations. And Bill was the genie
of the faculty, which in the vaster world was a
(16:07):
very high position, and where they teach your life skills
like avoiding questions. Part of that was editorial, but.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
I think also going back to your point, is that
the scholarship, the college scholarship, is a real driver with
some of these parents.
Speaker 5 (16:24):
Absolutely, And I would say another dimension of what Bill
is just talking about is that parents tend to start
out when their kids first start playing, with really noble intentions, right.
They want the best for their kids. They don't want
to put a lot of pressure on them. But because
of this commercialization of the industry, they're pressed to invest
a lot of time and money when the kids are
very young, and what's become really prevalent is to sign
(16:47):
their kids up for these travel the teams that play
all year round. And what we found happens is even
parents with great goals for their kids, after they've spent six, seven,
eight years, paying three thousand dollars a year all their
free time, you know, doing things related to the travel team,
they kind of shift their expectations and suddenly they think,
(17:09):
I spent all this money, I spend all this time,
I deserve something. My kid deserves something, and that often
translates into a college scholarship. And it's still observed the
chances getting a college scholarship are tiny, and so it
kind of sets them up for disappointment.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Absolutely, disappointment is something we've all experienced and nobody wants
to be disappointed. But it also sets you up to
be foolish in other words, and that's something Disappointment is
not as bad as being foolish. And I think one
of the values of this book is for a parent
(17:47):
who is involved in this youth sports industry to read
the book, your chances of becoming foolish are diminished by
reading it. So of value to that, and I'm.
Speaker 5 (18:02):
So glad to hear you thought that that was kind
of our goal in writing this book.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
And I would say, I guess almost as as a
criticism of it. Yeah, you know, I certainly picked that
up from the book. But the book, I think is
written in a way that academics tend to be strive
to be value free, you know, theor is not have
their own values and pinged and I suspected your attitudes
(18:33):
were more more closely aligned with what you're saying now
than in the more value free way in which you're
your writing comes across.
Speaker 4 (18:43):
Well, it's an interesting question. I mean, I think that
one of the things that we we started with reading
a bunch of books that basically say the es sports
industry is toxic. And it's a pretty easy argument to make.
You go to the sidelines and you see the crazy
parents yelling yeah, and you see kids crying, right, so,
and now you know, one of the things we learned
is that happens, but it's much less prevalent than you know,
(19:06):
we might think it is. But yes, that's part of
it at the same time, we both felt like we
had positive experiences and our kids had positive experiences. So
but we knew that it was a complicated and messy world.
And we also know that we live in a privileged
community where we had resources. We didn't go all the
way in with these huge, really expensive commitments, but we
(19:27):
were adjacent to that. I think both of us and
when our kids were in the twenty teens. So we're
trying to was find our way through this without trying
to say it's toxic or celebrated. So maybe maybe that's
a kind of value for you, but we thought it
was a trying to trying to understand the complexity of
it and try to write about that in a clear
and compelling.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
And you want to be objective, Yeah, to.
Speaker 5 (19:50):
Give parents information that was reliable, I would give them
a sense of the larger picture and so that they weren't,
you know, feeling obligated to make prep decisions very quickly
without thinking through the consequence.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
And I think, you know, my criticism there was really
beautifully answered, So thanks for that, because it was a
genuine criticism and both of you handled it very graciously.
But I will say Bill and Chris, they don't use
phrases in the book like the crazy parents are yelling
and the kids crying.
Speaker 3 (20:22):
That's so if you're just tuning in, you're listening to
Finding Out with Pete and the poet Gold and I'm
the poet Gold, and we're here with co authors Chris B.
York and William Hoynes speaking about their book More Than
Just a Game.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
You know, one of the things Bill, you mentioned in
the beginning when I asked him what you mention is
the sociological You use the word identity, and you know,
identity is a largely socially constructed thing. And I find
even now, you know, besides all the madness around sports,
(20:56):
you know, I care that somebody know I was good
at something. You know, so I was good at swimming.
It's sort of fun if somebody knows that about me,
and I didn't have to suffer all this kind of stuff.
But if you could talk about identity and sports, I'd
appreciate that.
Speaker 4 (21:13):
Yeah, it's a great question. I think it's a really
good example you're saying about people wanting to be recognized
for what's important to them. One of the things that
we found is that many young children consider themselves and
identify as athletes. Like when you ask them how they
see themselves, they see themselves as athletes. And then many
(21:33):
parents interestingly see themselves as youth sports parents, and it
becomes a central part of their identity. Their friends or
youth sports parents. They do holidays with other youth sports parents,
they organize their lives around that world, and they find
real satisfaction and meaning in it. And one of the
things that we were interested in is when inevitably, as
(21:54):
we say, pretty much everyone stops playing, even that you
know one in a million person who ends up playing
into their twenties or so, whether it's at the time
they start high school, a the time they end high school,
sometime in or after college. And one of the things
we found is that parents experience a kind of almost
grieving at the loss of that identity of being a
youth sports parent. You're not that anymore and the community
you've built around that, you don't have that anymore. And
(22:16):
we were interested to talk to people about how they
have they struggled with that, maybe not for long term struggle,
but at least in a short moments of when there
was this change, will you build.
Speaker 5 (22:27):
Well, one of the explanations we came up with, all
this makes sense. This doesn't happen in a vacuum. And
one of the reasons that parents feel this way is
that then this builds on a lot of sociological research.
Is it our neighborhoods are disintegrating? A lot of adults
don't feel connected to the people who live around them.
They feel kind of unmoored, and these sports teams provide
(22:48):
an anchor to them. They anchor the parents' social lives
as well as their children, and so the parent that
helps to explain why their parents, the parents are so
invested in these activities because it's for the kids, but
it also becomes for the.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
Parents absolutely, And I totally totally agree with you, because
I know when I moved out of the city into
a more rural environment, that was the thing that was
the community.
Speaker 5 (23:13):
And that was the way probably for you to make friends.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Right exactly.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
And so you know, the sports team parents we got together.
You know, we partied together, We took our kids to
the pizzeria together.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
That was the community.
Speaker 5 (23:27):
And one other layer of this is those relationships were
probably a lot richer than so many of these online
relationships that adults have now that they know people just
through Facebook or Instagram, whereas their travel team parents they
see every day every week, They commiserate, they share stories,
and so those relationships between really central to their lives.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
I thought that you both made it very clear in
the book how that worked, and it's sort of like
mobile neighborhoods. Apparently. One of the things that struck me,
I think it was implicit, maybe even explicit in the writing,
is that the parent group around it, or the neighborhood
(24:09):
group around it winds up inevitably depending to some degree
on the success of the particular athletes. So if one
of the basketball players is exceptionally good, he'll be praised
by other adults as being good, and his parents will
have a status that seems perverse to me. And so
(24:33):
to have the community values being led by a twelve
year old seems the opposite of rich.
Speaker 4 (24:42):
Yeah, I think perverse is a good word. It's a
strange thing that successful young athletes bring status to their
parents in these communities. And one of the things that
that becomes even more complicated is that become so successful
they might leave that travel team and go to a
more elite team, and then there's loss of the parents
that they they they lose their community connection. And this
(25:05):
sort of happens repeatedly over time as players come and go.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
Because always repeatedly, almost inevitably yeah yeah, yeah, So it
seems like for most parents it's a losing proposition unless
they're armed with some sort of forethought and more than
just the game is the beginning of the individual parents forethought.
Speaker 5 (25:33):
That's the goal. That what I mean throughout the process,
the thing that was driving us was this desire to
give parents information and perspective that would help them make
good decisions and to set their kids up for success
in and off the field. And one thing I would
add that I found really interesting was that we also
interviewed a bunch of college coaches, and the college coaches,
(25:55):
believe it or not, were big proponents of sampling different sports.
Have kids lead balance lives, not pushing them to specialize
them when they're really young, because they find by the
time they do get to college, then they have a
variety of skills, they're still enthusiastic, they are healthy. Yeah,
they're healthy, and they don't burn out. Because that's a
(26:17):
real danger of the current situation is that a lot
of kids who play a sport all year around from
the time their eight just burn.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
Out right right right, you know.
Speaker 3 (26:27):
And it's so true because the amount of pressure that
you're putting on the child, even though your intentions I
think for the parents that your intention is initially in
the right place. I think someone said earlier that it's
a noble position to have in the beginning, and then
somewhere it takes that turn.
Speaker 5 (26:50):
That's such a great way to put it, because what
you said just kind of crystallize the point of the
book in my mind, and that is to help parents,
to give them the tools they'll need to match their
intentions with their actions, to help them come up with
concrete strategies that they'll benefit and their kids will benefit from.
Speaker 3 (27:10):
And before we go into the next topic, how can
we have really discuss how can people get the book?
Speaker 2 (27:16):
Where's the book?
Speaker 4 (27:17):
The easiest place to get it is online. It's the
press is Cent for Recovery Press. You can go to
their website or that large company that sells all things
that everyone goes to that I probably won't mention, but yes,
it's widely available at any major bookseller. In fact, local
bookstores if they don't have it in stock. I believe
(27:40):
Oblong Books in rhyme. Beck and Millerton has had it
in stock, but if they don't have in stock, taken
order for you.
Speaker 5 (27:45):
And we consciously chose a press that would publish it
in paperback at a low cost from the beginning. So
the book is less than twenty bucks, easy to get,
easy to read. So we're hoping that parents who are
motivated can buy it.
Speaker 4 (28:00):
Yeah, it just goes back to sort of one of
our motivations to write this was we wish we had
a book like this when our kids were twelve, and
we wanted to write a book that we thought would
have been helpful to us at the time.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (28:09):
And that is accessible and affordable and readable. So we
hope we've we've achieved some of that. But you know,
it's it's a it's a tough industry and uh and
the book isn't really out there that much. So thanks
for taking the time to talk about and it's.
Speaker 3 (28:24):
And it's it's it's helpful for you if you choose
for it to be helpful. You know, like most things
in life, we have to have that consciousness to say, well,
let me learn about this, and oh there's some great
things in here. Let me remain conscious of my own behavior,
(28:44):
my own drives, and remain in that sort of elevated
quote unquote awake state in our engagement.
Speaker 5 (28:53):
And we don't want readers to or listeners to go
away with the idea that the whole system is messed up.
It's inevident that their kids are going to have bad experiences,
because we came across many many coaches parents kids who
had fantastic sporting experiences. So it's possible. You just have
to invest a little thought into the process, right.
Speaker 4 (29:14):
And one of the things that was really interesting to
us is we saw very little what I would call
bitterness among parents as they reflected upon what their kids'
experience has been. We saw a lot of parents reflect
on how the thick they thought things might have gone differently,
But there wasn't a lot of a sense of profound disappointment.
There was more reflective. We wish we knew some of this,
(29:34):
and we'd like to impart some of the knowledge we
have now as parents of nineteen twenty year olds to
our neighbors who are our only have eight year olds.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
A lot of good advice from nice people may go
out and buy the book More Than Just a Game
by Bill Hoynes and Chris Sure, and thank you very
much for being with us.
Speaker 3 (29:53):
And thank you to our listeners for finding out Pete
and the Poego. We truly appreciate you that both of you.
Thank you once again for coming on. Go out and
get the book More Than Just a Game.
Speaker 4 (30:01):
Thanks very
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