Rosie Replay: "Fighting at Kids Sporting Events"

With Jim on vaction until Friday, we pulled this one from the archives.  Original airdate: 3-12-24.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
It remains one of the best signs I've ever seen.
Hanging on a fence next to the gate that lets
you into a little league baseball field, the sign reads
no college scholarships will be handed out today, a warning
to parents behave yourselves. We need more of those signs.

(00:20):
Lincoln police handed out citations yesterday disturbing the peace. Went
to two parents who lost their cool at the state
high school basketball tournament got into a fight in the stands.
Security gave them the bum's rush out the door, but
took names. Maybe this will scare them into civility. Don't
bet on it habit at halftime. So fortunately the kids

(00:41):
didn't see it. Sadly, often they do. Angry parents, second
guessing coaches, be rating officials, belittling the other team, sometimes
their own. When did kids' sports stop being for the
fun of it easy? When parents started parking the car,
not just dropping the kid off. Years ago, Hollywood produced

(01:01):
a movie called The sand Lot about a kid who
moved to a new city. His mom ordered him out
of the house to go find some new friends. He
does a bunch of kids who play baseball every day
in a neighborhood sand lot. No coaches, no umpires, no parents.
They do everything together. They go to the pool, they
play ball by the light of fireworks, chew tobacco, and

(01:24):
then vomit together. Sure, they grow up, but they never
lose the joy of being a kid. Today's parents are
robbing kids of that very thing. A poll taken by
the National Alliance of Youth Sports tells us that seventy
percent of kids quit sports by age thirteen. They say
it stopped being fun. How is that easy? Culturally, economically,

(01:48):
and systematically, we've created a system of youth sports that
ignores the benefits of prior by prioritizing results. Win or
it's no fun, play or bother. This is what gave
rise to elite select teams, manufactured collections of kids whose
families spend a fortune. Kids who practice too much don't

(02:10):
have to compete for playing time, take all of it
way too seriously. These days, we ask the kids to specialize.
That leads to a loss of experience, but adds to
the chances of long term injury, robs them of the
experience of trying other stuff, and stats prove does nothing
to enhance chances of one day turning pro Culturally, the

(02:32):
new message is if I'm not the best player on
the team. Why bother. The institution has been hijacked by
a single metric outcomes, win or give up instead of
learning how to fail and recover. The message we're sending
our kids is find something else. And then there is
the money. It is not uncommon for select sport athletes

(02:53):
families to spend fifty to seventy five thousand dollars a
year on the team. The gear, the gar games, the travel,
the camps, the instruction. They sacrifice everything, treating junior here
like a commodity. I sat next to a tortured select
mom one day at a baseball game years ago. Her
platooned kid took the field and said, that's my kitchen

(03:17):
out there at first base. What they don't say is
he's not my son. He's an investment. And as he
gets closer to high school, the countdown begins. Time to
school shop. Forget about childhood friends, the disruption, the quality
of the teachers, which place prioritizes academics. Now we got
to find the place that best showcases his athletic skills

(03:40):
or gives him the best chance to play right now.
I know a family who shopped their quarterback to three
different high schools in three different states. Imagine the pressure
the kid feels. He can count, he knows who's writing
the checks. You think the kid made those calls. If
only parents could see what their doing through their kids' eyes,

(04:02):
might compel a few of them to stay home