Latest / Yips and Giggles / Youth Sports & Player Development
Transcript
- speaker-0: What's up guys, welcome to our podcast. speaker-1: She finally realized that it was Okay, and we're back everybody. speaker-0: We are back. Woo. B-A-C-K. speaker-1: Bye bye. Maybe got ⁓ back. We should start playing that in the background for no reason whatsoever. speaker-0: I feel like I'm starting to go delirious. speaker-1: That's okay. ⁓ So huge shout out again. I feel like we shout him out every week now because he's doing speaker-0: I mean, he's just being a superstar recently. speaker-1: She's a superstar. ⁓ Shout out to our superstar best friend, Alex Fitzpatrick. Alex. Would you like to would you like to say what he did this week on you? Last last week. speaker-0: Yeah, you know, just no big deal. Just a regular day in the life of, know, just playing some golf, you know, as he usually does and, you know, ends up winning some random tournament, getting his PGA Tour card as you do. So, he, ⁓ Alex, shout out, won the Zurich Classic with his brother, Matt, and that automatically got him a PGA Tour card. speaker-1: in the office. Yeah, and so he'll be playing in his exemption is through. Yeah, he'll just be grinding on another tour now. And he's doing great already. speaker-0: What? 2028? Yeah, I think it's two years. You Yeah. speaker-1: Alex, you'll be paying for all of our dinners now. ⁓ speaker-0: Yeah, I want to go to a steakhouse next time we see each other, like a really nice one. Just putting that out there in the universe. speaker-1: Yeah, yeah. So that'll be that's I'm so excited to watch him. ⁓ It was hilarious because I obviously didn't see it until the next morning because of the time change. ⁓ But I like called my parents and they were like, ⁓ my God, we were crying when he made the putt. I was like, dad was like crying. Yeah, my God. speaker-0: Yeah, your mom texted me was like, I'm crying and I was like, dead. Like, we're so we're so happy for Alex. Huge congratulations. We knew this would happen. Long time coming. Yeah, we've seen it since the first day we met. speaker-1: Yeah, exactly. Speaking of golf, live tour. Hmm. What's going on there? speaker-0: Yeah, so this past week, it was announced that the Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund or PIF, which is the one that was kind of like backing live golf, they are ending their support after this season, after 2026. They've invested more than five billion into the league since 2022. A lot of money. Five billion with a B. speaker-1: with a speaker-0: Nine zeros. Yeah. So now, Live Golf is scrambling to find outside investors and they're trying to like restructure their leadership to see if they can even like stay afloat beyond this year. Players that, you know, left PGA to go play on the live tour are already trying to petition the PGA to come back. that'll be interesting. speaker-1: That's going to be interesting. speaker-0: ⁓ But some other players said that they're still ⁓ staying committed to the live model and they're going to try to make it work despite the funding concerns. But it'll definitely be interesting to see how that plays out. I think there's a lot of players are kind of like, shoot, trying to come back. And it'll be interesting to see how the PGA responds to that because they weren't so happy when they left. speaker-1: Yeah, I'm not sure how welcoming they'll be on that front. It's like, like what if they just say no? Then what? Start another tour? speaker-0: I think they'll let them back in, but it'll be after some like probationary period or some like punishment, something like that. ⁓ Because at end of the day, having those top players is good for business for PJ. So, right. But I don't think it's going to be without repercussions. speaker-1: Yeah, maybe. Yeah, for sure. ⁓ Speaking of money, I mean, we've seen multiple Division one tennis programs cut this week, multiple. So sad we talked a little bit about Arkansas, and I want to get into that a little bit more because it is such a big one to kind of happen. And so everyone's kind of like speculating like, OK, well, like what actually happened, what's going on? And the statement was quite vague. The statement from the Vice Chancellor and Director of Athletics Hunter Yurachek. He basically said, the landscape of college athletics continues to evolve, which yeah, we see that now, requiring us to make challenging choices as we balance competitive opportunities, resources and the long-term sustainability of our department. Ultimately, we concluded that we are unable to provide the level of support necessary for our tennis programs to consistently compete in the SEC. and nationally at the standard our student athletes, coaches, alumni and supporters deserve. Which like, I don't know, it's kind of empty. ⁓ you like, you don't think, you say that, you know, they don't deserve this, but it's like, you just cut the program. Just, I don't know. It's, it's a weird, weird statement. And speaker-0: It's like... speaker-1: A lot of people are looking at the financials of it and they're like, well, yeah, tennis isn't making a lot, but they also don't cost a lot. why are we going with tennis? That's the question. It's like, there's so many others. Every other sport is losing money except for football and basketball. That's just how it is. that's, and you see that's like a public. speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: you statement and everything, you can actually see the financials and it's like, well, there's a lot of other sports that are losing way more way. speaker-0: Well, yeah, and because they're a lot bigger than tennis, and tennis only has 10 roster spots now, right? Compared to other sports, they have a lot more. They're not making money either. And you got to pay to travel all of those extra people to tournaments. it's just weird. again, I also don't know why tennis is being targeted like this. Like, I'm sure golf isn't making that much money either. And it's the same amount of people too. So... Yeah, it's a pretty sad situation. ⁓ Like players, alumni and supporters have actually launched a petition for the University of Arkansas to reverse that decision. Again, like, I don't know how often petitions actually work, but yeah, you never know. Like they're trying. ⁓ The least you can do is try, right? But people are questioning whether universities are sacrificing long-term athlete development and speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: specifically the Olympic pathway sports in favor of just those like football driven financial models. Right. And at the end of the day, like again, we get that that schools want to make money, but are they going too far and sacrificing student development and their opportunity in favor of revenue generation? Because at that point, just make just only just do football and basketball at that point. Then why do you have every other sport? speaker-1: That's what I mean. speaker-0: Literally, why do you have literally every other sport golf, swimming, track and field, field hockey. speaker-1: It's like, well, professional sports is supposed to be different than college sports. Like wire. Why is that not clicking in everyone's head? Like it's you're supposed to have a range of sports. And it was interesting because they were talking about how with cutting this program now, Arkansas only has 17 sports and I think the minimum is 16. And so it's like, in the sec. And so that's really interesting. But again, like with the NIL stuff. we give so much like attention to it, but it's kind of important to give a lot of attention to it now because it is affecting so many things. College sports is for getting an education and developing as a player in whatever sport that you're doing. That's why I thought that the college model before this was great because you're getting paid through scholarships. You also get stipends, guys. It's not like we were just... We would get some pretty good stipends, like being on a full scholarship and everything. speaker-0: Yep. good chunk of like saved up coming out of college from the stipends. Because the stipends were to cover rent and like food and other stuff and basically like your lack of ability to make money if you had had another job because you basically like couldn't really have another job. But like it was a good amount of money. At least a week forced it was. I'm sure it was at other schools either. Like I had leftover. speaker-1: Yeah, same like and as a college student, what else do you really need? Like you're getting an amazing education, especially if you're on a full scholarship. That's hundreds of thousands of dollars. And you just need grocery money. You need rent if you're staying off campus. Sometimes you're not even staying off campus. So you're staying in dorms, which is cheaper. And that's already being paid for through your scholarship. It's like, OK, we just went a little too far. And now we're seeing the repercussions from it. And I feel like People need to start regulating it like that's just at the end of the day, you got to start regulating it and or else we're just going to start losing all these sports. But some people are talking about how it's not just like the revenue, the expenses and everything. It's a lot about the media attention and the TV deals that other sports get versus tennis. And also another point people are making is the amount of international players that were on those teams. It was very much majority international. And so I want to kind of get into both of those. And so if we're talking about the media and TV deals, it's like, okay, well, I feel like we didn't even try with tennis. It's like, how can we actually make tennis, college tennis more accessible to watch? You know what I mean? speaker-0: I think I saw this tweet the other day that was like, they're showing the NCAA bowling championship on ESPN or something. Like if we can show the- No hate to bowling. No hate to bowling. But like if we can show the bowling championship, why can we not show NCAA tennis? It is so electric. I'm sure bowling is so electric too. But like I feel like tennis is a little more mainstream than bowling. Right. speaker-1: No, 100 % it is. I understand, I think it would be really easy to stream the NCAA tournament. That's not the problem. think it's more people complain about how for singles, it's like six matches at one time. So that's difficult to watch. But I was thinking, what if we had something like NFL red zone, but for tennis, which is basically like, so. You know, obviously with NFL red zone, they're doing like, you know, every touchdown or key play, and they're just skipping to that touchdown, that key play based on, know, whatever's happening for that team. And so, I mean, in tennis, let's do the same thing. Let's show every break point. Let's show every game point match point. So you're seeing different matches at once on one, you know, broadcasting stream, whatever that might be. I mean, Obviously there's a lot of logistics that go behind that and you would have to invest in some way and it would cost money. But at the same time, we've done that for other sports and you've learned how to make a profit off of TV deals, media. So why can't we start doing that? And then we'll see, you know, it'll pay off in the speaker-0: Well, also, they've already done it for tennis. I'm pretty sure like they do that for indoor championships. They have the people from cracked rackets commentate, right? The the indoor the national indoor championships and they hop from court to court whenever there's something big happening. They stay on a court if it's like a little bit, you know, quieter if it's a closer point. And then sometimes they're able to I've I've watched it before they're able to pull up to two matches side by side if there's something going on three matches even. So they can do it, it's just how do we get the right people in the right room to get that moving? And yeah, it is an investment. And again, there's a lot of logistics behind it, but if we can do it with bowling, if we've already done it with tennis for other tournaments, why not make it more accessible? Like put the SEC tournament on there, all of the different conferences, put the big... matchups like UNC versus Duke if they're playing in regular season. So many tennis fans, like so many tennis fans. speaker-1: Like people would be surprised, like even in small cities like Winston-Salem, they love tennis. We have the Winston-Salem open, like for Christ's sake. You know what I mean? So there is a market out there. And I think it's just a matter of actually putting effort and resources into marketing tennis. Like, I feel like we haven't even tried. You know what I mean? So I feel like there's just so many solutions out there. And it's like, all right, let's do a let's do a full swing. Let's do a hard knocks. Like, let's put a. Let's choose a team each season, put them on Netflix. mean, there's just there's I would watch that. speaker-0: Are you kidding me? Tennis is juicy. speaker-1: It's a small world and it is juicy. speaker-0: And again, like it's not like you can even argue that a lot of it is equipment cost because almost every single school nowadays has like play site cameras. You can watch like your child, your friend play. That's what parents do. They just log on to the stream. Even if the stream's not great, take the stream. Right. You know? speaker-1: Yeah. And it's like, okay, just start with, you're probably going to have to start with the big schools, the top ranked schools, give them the resources for it. And then as it becomes bigger, then have it trickle down into, you know, maybe the, the lesser ranked schools and go from there. But I just think it's doable. On the other hand, you know, if we're not, if we're not really talking about the money side of it. Like I said, people have talked about, you know, international versus U.S. players and the fact that the Arkansas team had a lot more international. You've seen like Patrick McEnroe come out and he's like calling for the American colleges to kind of put a cap on the number of international players, which I don't want this to be like discriminatory against international athletes. You know what I mean? Because they completely have a right to come over to the US and play. mean, for God's sakes, my husband did that. Like I'm not saying, like we can't just exclude them. So that that's kind of difficult. But at the same time, when you look at, you know, the percentages and it's like D1 tennis is definitely the most international major sport in collegiate athletics. And it's like when you look at the numbers, it's men's is 64 percent, women's 61 percent. for the number of international players. it's like, ooh, that's kind of crazy because that is a very big difference from 10, 20 years ago. speaker-0: Yeah. And again, like you said, it's because tennis is such a worldwide sport compared to some other sports. And there aren't any models anywhere else in the world that allow athletes to get an education and play at such a high level and develop themselves as a player. So that's that's why a lot of people do want to come to the US. Right. And also the coaches, I think we mentioned this in the last episode or two episodes ago, the coaches also want to recruit the best talent so that they can win, which makes sense. ⁓ But yeah, like the cap on international players, just don't. I get it, like you want to encourage homegrown talent to play in American schools, but... speaker-1: It's a tricky one, and I just think that they didn't phrase it particularly well either. It just seemed like very like you can't come here anymore. And so I feel like it's more like, ⁓ OK, let's phrase it as you need to have a certain number of homegrown players, like American players. So, for example, if you have. 10 players on your team, you need to have a majority of American players. So that'd be six Americans, four international. You know what I mean? So in that sense, I feel like that's not a terrible thing to do. ⁓ Because like, for example, there are caps on certain professional teams where you have to have a certain number of homegrown players on your roster. And so it's a low number, but it's still in their rules. Right. So I've seen it done. But again, I don't want to feel like we are completely blocking international players from coming over to the US because you want the best players, you want your team to be the best. And I think it does grow when you have the world coming over here to play. speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah, I think it's a tricky conversation and I'd like to see some more, I guess, like numbers on things and arguments rather than just being like, ⁓ international players, not good. Like, I want to see some arguments behind each side ⁓ and some like really thoughtful ⁓ problem-solving solutions. Yeah. Yeah. Before people just come out and make all these statements and get people riled up. speaker-1: Thanks speaker-0: and inevitably putting down one side or the other. speaker-1: Yeah. Right. I feel like it's creating a bit of a divide, which I feel like we really don't need. Yeah. Especially right now. And at the end of the day, I feel like a lot of people are asking the question of, it a recruiting problem? Is it a development problem in the U.S.? Is it both? My question is, which I'd really like to like poll or ask coaches is like, are coaches going straight to international players without even taking a look at U.S. players? Like what's going on? Cause I feel like whenever we played smaller schools, it was very much international players on those teams. And it was, that was like the majority of the roster. ⁓ But I feel like even now, like bigger teams are bringing in a lot more international players. And so I do, I would like to see like from a coaching perspective, like how did they go about kind of making that decision of U S versus international. speaker-0: don't know. Yeah, that would definitely be interesting. Yeah, it probably just varies coach to coach. Like, for example, our coach, our team was mostly US. So, and I feel like it was, they like rarely went immediately to recruit international players. It was more US versus, again, other places, maybe like the smaller schools, they just feel like they're going to have a better poll with international players because... speaker-1: American. speaker-0: Maybe they're less well known and the international players don't know as much about the US system, so they feel like they have a better chance of getting them. Not saying that those schools are bad at all, but sometimes people can just be biased. ⁓ speaker-1: We talked about with recruiting, like some international players don't even go to the university on like a visit or anything. They just commit. So they're not going to know, you know, like the difference between one school versus the other, which I think should change. think international players should. There should be at least some way that they can come over and actually look at the school without having to, you know, like break the bank or whatever, if they can only come over like once, you know what I mean? ⁓ But that's another, that's another topic. speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, kind of going back to the future of non-revenue sports as a whole. So financially wise, the median annual expenses for the Division One, ⁓ FBS programs, the football programs, roughly 16 million. And then for basketball, was roughly 5.7 million. For men's basketball, men's. Compared to about like 600 to 800,000 for tennis programs. So guys, do a math. That means a football program can cost about 20 to 25 times more to operate than a tennis team. Again, yes, they bring in a lot more revenue. I get that. Football is one of the only college sports that consistently generates positive net revenue, right? So like football programs bring in on average about 21.7 million in revenue. speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: against 16 million in expenses like we mentioned. So, yes, they're operating at net profit while tennis programs typically operate at a loss. tennis programs bring in a lot more value outside of the financial aspect. Tennis programs, again, like we said, recruit players internationally. Recruit great homegrown talent. that builds a really good alumni network. There are so many donors that are so involved in the tennis community, either their child played tennis, they played on the team before. You're taking away that aspect of it if you start cutting ⁓ these tennis programs. Again, like we mentioned, tennis is such a big stepping point from the juniors to professional. It's a great place to develop talent. Mm-hmm. And I guess just the question that I want to ask now is like, are we equating non-revenue with no value? That just seems unfair. And again, like we said before, then why not just cut the rest of the other programs at this point and just keep football and basketball and maybe baseball if you want? Like, why? What's the point, honestly? speaker-1: But that's what I mean. It's like, it's not, it's if it keeps going down this route, it's not even going to be college sports anymore. Like that's not going to be a thing. Like we are literally turning NCAA college sports into professional sports. And they can only put resources towards the money making sports. just, ⁓ my God, it's actually so frustrating. I just like, I feel like we're in an age where with all this AI, NIL, I'm getting fed up. I'm like, can we be humans for a second? Sorry, I just need to rant for a second. Like it's actually making me mad. My mom and I were talking about this the other day. She's like, no one's gonna have jobs. I know, no one's gonna have sports either because not everyone's gonna play football, sorry. Not all us are gonna have CTE when we're 35 years old. speaker-0: Yeah. That's also a great point because if now families know that, say the scenario is we get to a point where there's only football and basketball left in college sports and families know that you can make millions of dollars through NIL going to college and then potentially making it to the pros, potentially not. But... you know, if there's a higher chance of like going to college than there is going pro. We talked about that in many episodes before. So every single parent starts putting their kid into only football now. They don't put them into soccer. They don't put them into track and field. They don't put them into golf, tennis, whatever. Now there's a bigger pool of kids fighting for the same amount of spots. Are we just going to come up with like, are we just going to expand the rules of football and make it so that teams go from like 125 to 200 players? Are we gonna add more universities, like smaller universities that, like, it's gonna become more competitive. And again, like those kids are gonna be at a disadvantage. speaker-1: Yeah, I, I, I truly I don't know. And if it does get to a point where we're only focusing on football and basketball, like, OK, so what are these kids that are playing other sports going to do? Are they going to like be in high school and try to go pro? Like, are we completely cutting out that middleman that normally is college? I. speaker-0: And also like, what about women? Because we're only talking about football and men's basketball. We're only talking about football and men's basketball. I know women's basketball is growing a lot in popularity, but like it's not at the point right now where it can compete with the other two. Are we just not gonna have any more women's color sports anymore? Cuz there's a thing called Title IX. speaker-1: Yeah, so Title IX. I think Title IX is what's why it's hanging on by a thread right now. I think that's the main reason why women's sports are still surviving. ⁓ That's a great question. I hope we don't get to that point. I hope we don't turn college sports into pro sports. ⁓ But like, think about it. Think about how much has changed in like one year. Think about 10 years from now. What is this going to look like? Are we going to have college sports? speaker-0: You know what the crazy thing is? I remember our coach at Wake telling us this when NIL was happening and I was like, pfft. I was like, pfft. You're overreacting. I'm literally going to like, yeah. I should have listened. speaker-1: I should have listened. You can now say I told you so, because. Tell us so that I vividly remember that I was like, nah. But now I'm like, ⁓ yeah, he was just completely right. ⁓ We'll see. We'll see. I'll try not to get heated for the rest of the episode. ⁓ But I mean, speaking of sort of the, you know, youth sports development and. speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah. ⁓ speaker-1: if we still have that 10 years from now. I wanted to kind of get into what really makes a good environment for youth development, right? So we talk a lot about talent development environments and the good and the bad and what you see works, what doesn't work. And so I think when you think about it, it's like there's usually some pretty common mistakes. across sports and across talent develop environments. And you'll see like putting more into winning rather than like the growth of players. Or we'll talk about also early special specialization, which I really like getting into over training burnout, you know, comparison culture, player to player, team to team. And then the, you know, one size fits all approach to coaching, which that doesn't work. ⁓ speaker-0: New. speaker-1: I ⁓ I feel like that's a pretty like common sense one, but sometimes it's not. ⁓ But I like to look at it in a couple of different ways. So what really makes a successful talent development environment across all sports and across, you know, academies and just any sort of And I think what you have to start with is, are you creating long term aims, you know, for your environment. And so you want that long-term vision. You want to have coherence at every level. So for example, if you have like a youth to a senior program, like for like a national team or something, you have a senior national team, but then you have youth programs below that, you U 20, U 17, U 15. Are you guys all on the same page? I think that is massive because if there's a disconnect between certain levels coming from senior to youth, then what's the point? Like we need to be on the same page and working towards the same goals so that as a whole, you guys have the same kind of mission, vision and idea of how you want your players to develop. So then when they are youth players, they can develop at each stage to then be a successful senior player. Right. Also, I feel like when you're talking about the different levels, it's making sure that you have support at all those levels and support in different categories. support coaching wise, support psychologically, you know, do you have good physios? So support in all of those aspects. I think the biggest one that we like talking about is emphasizing appropriate development, right? So. That can look like a lot of things, but I think where a lot of organizations have failed is rewarding winning and winning percentages over, you know, actually developing players and the long-term growth. And so when you are rewarding the winning percentages, it's like, okay, well, coaches now feel the pressure to have short-term successes rather than that long-term development. So. then that's going to lead to early selection of people and just not having the appropriate development of players. speaker-0: Yeah, and it kind of goes hand hand with just ⁓ something that we talked about, I think, a couple episodes ago of teaching kids the right strategies, the right techniques, like the way to play that is going to benefit them in the long term but might not be as successful in the short term. So, like an example in tennis is ⁓ pushers. So people, again, who like moonballed and like all these things. they dominated in the 12 and unders, maybe even in the 14 and unders. But then they kind of fell off as we got older and people began, people who were playing more of the right way began kind of constructing their game and everything started clicking. But the pushers got rewarded early on in their careers for playing, quote-unquote, not the right way, just pushing. Not that pushing is the wrong way, but... Once you get to a certain level, it's probably not going to work as much. And so, again, like you need to kind of have those coaches, even the parents, like the surrounding community, like, yes, oh my gosh, my kid is winning every single tournament at 11, 12, 13 years old. But recognize that we need to put in the right habits and the right techniques and the right mentality to... continue developing them because once they get to a point when they're 18, 19, 20, that's probably not going to work anymore, especially if you believe that they're going to go really far and get to a really high level. And so I think it's like working on those like technical, tactical, obviously physical and mental, which means like identity and confidence that development, which can be hard, right? It's hard to kind of balance all of those. speaker-1: Yeah, it's very similar in a sense of like in other sports that put more weight in the physical side of a player. So like, for example, like soccer, football, things like that. A lot of the time, I feel like you see a really good middle school or like early high school player who has just hit puberty earlier. And so they're bigger than everyone else. They're stronger than everyone else at that age. But then once a few years pass, you kind of start to see that things start to level out because people get bigger, people get stronger and everyone around it's like, ⁓ well, he's the same height and the same weight as he was, you know, four years ago. And so now everyone's on a level playing field and it's like, okay, well, we probably should have looked at their skill set, their, you know, mental fortitude, things like that. instead of just looking at these physical qualities and looking at these performance metrics that only kind of pertain to how they are physically rather than the actual mental side of things or the skillset side of things. So I do think that's interesting, especially for sports that are much more on the physical side or like contact sports and things like that compared to tennis. speaker-0: And again, the flip side of that coin is if it is someone who physically isn't developing as quickly, still provide them with lots of opportunities and development opportunities. Kind of like you were saying again, don't go through that early selection ⁓ as rigorously because people grow at different rates and also I think development timelines also differ by sport. like baseball prospects take years to develop. gymnastics and figure skating typically peak young, right? Like you look at the Olympics and some of the gymnasts there are like... It's like 20 years old. Yeah, I'm like, ⁓ my God. ⁓ I think distance runners develop a little bit later. Quarterbacks need a lot of experience in like decision-making reps. ⁓ Ice hockey players, they typically play like juniors in between high school and college. So they come to college a little bit older. ⁓ And then kind of tennis development is honestly all over the place. Like, yeah, you can have really young superstars like Cocoa Golf, for example, or you can have people like finally peaking in their late 20s, early 30s. Jessica Bagula, there's a guy that recently in the past like six months has just been like popping off Vashro. Yeah. And he's like, yeah. speaker-1: come out of nowhere. It's crazy. It's something just like clicks. And sometimes that'll happen when you're 16 and sometimes that'll happen when you're 26. speaker-0: Yeah, so again, the point that I'm trying to make is like development is rarely linear, ⁓ both within a sport and for just individuals like in general, like just the way they're growing. speaker-1: going back to the actual team sports, I also feel like it is such a thing now that if you're not playing on a travel team, you're not serious. Like that's very much the culture now in soccer, baseball, football. Like it's such a thing. And I also feel like it's a lot for parents because that's expensive. You're traveling a lot. I kind of, I kind of feel for parents, sports parents, day and age, because it's gotten to a point where it's a lot. speaker-0: Well, it used to be that, you know, it was just all high school sports, and that's kind of just how you would get recruited and start to stand out. And now it feels like, like you said, like if you don't play on a team outside of high school, you're kind of falling behind. again, like you said, that's hard. That's a financial pressure on parents. Not everyone can afford to do that. Not everyone can afford to take the time off to go travel with their kids all the time. speaker-1: Yeah. Right. Especially for like, let's take football, for example, football is huge in like Texas and things like that. And so I feel like playing on your high school team there is huge. Like if you're winning like the state championship there, it's massive. But if you're playing in states where football is not as big of a sport or you're playing in like a smaller state, it's like you do need to travel and go play in other states and play other teams to kind of show that. to recruiters and things like that, that you can compete at that level. So it is kind of a balance that you have to find, but at this point, it's like you kind of have to play it. speaker-0: Or there's also the like boarding schools, right? Like, people send their kids to boarding schools that are known for certain sports. I remember there was one for like ice hockey that a girl that I went to school with, her sister was really good and they sent her specifically to this boarding school in a different state because ice hockey, like specifically women's ice hockey was like not whatever, not big. ⁓ in my high school, like we just had a coed. high school team. speaker-1: Yeah, I mean, and that's a lot of sacrifice for the parents and the player. And that's a lot of like growing up to do when you're living away from your family and things like that. I mean, even I lived away from my family my junior year and part of my senior year because my coach moved to a different state. So it's like it's those kind of sacrifices that you don't really think about when you first get into a sport. And then you're like, This is what I have to do. You know, so ⁓ we'll see how the landscape changes over the years. speaker-0: So. So with all that being said, how do we actually approach player development? Right. Like we've talked about the differences and how it looks sport to sport and some of the more theoretical things like how can we actually put this into practice? I think like for athletes themselves and again, this is hard, especially the younger that you are, like you're a kid. You're not really thinking about a lot of these things, but for athletes, something that you need to focus on is like. the confidence versus competence conversation. And we've talked about this in our confidence episode where athletes want confidence before they take an action, right? And this is not really the best approach because confidence is built through reps and failure recovery. Fear prevents growth and you can't really develop if you avoid that discomfort, right? So again, easier said than done. It kind of depends on the age that you're at, but. Realizing that in order to build up that confidence you actually have to build up those habits ⁓ And do those right right things ⁓ Also realizing that identity and performance don't or shouldn't go hand-in-hand so athletes attach worth to performance We've talked about this again with fear of failure and perfectionism, but that obviously risks burnout, right and it's it's kind of hard to balance it right because you you do want to have good results and sometimes when you don't have good results you start to feel badly about yourself. So what if development starts to feel like a threat to identity because your results become worse and it's kind of just having that mindset in your head of like I know in order for myself to develop that maybe my performance might seem like it'll dip for a little bit of time as I try to figure these things out and work on some of these things but it doesn't mean that I'm any less of a person than I am now. And just overall, I think learning how to work through the struggles. So those ideas of resilience and adaptability and ⁓ just emotional regulation after mistakes. And I think this is a place where coaches, parents, you know, any other support from the outside can really, really help on learning how to bounce back from adversity. So, going off of that, how can coaches and parents kind of help with that development more generally? ⁓ I think psychological safety is massive. Don't make mistakes and losses feel unacceptable to your child, especially when they're young. Like, children pick up on things so quickly, especially when they're young, and if... You're always getting upset after a mistake or after a loss. If you're always showing frustration after they make a mistake, like they're going to pick up on that and they're not going to feel that psychological safety to try new things and to not be afraid of making a mistake, even if it is the right thing to do. ⁓ I think accountability and support is also really big for coaches and parents. You know, you can't just... constantly be sugarcoating things to your kids either. It's kind of finding that balance between like being upset about their losses or their mistakes and on the other hand being like, ⁓ everything's fine, everything's fine and just sugarcoating it. Like you have to be real and honest with your athletes. Like you have to hold them accountable and be fair, but push them to be better, right? Like if they are constantly doing the wrong thing over and over again, Tell them, right? But don't tell them in a way that's like almost degrading them or making them fear failure, right? Right. Or we'll go into this, but... Sometimes specialization, especially early on in a kid's life, might not be the best thing. But once they get to a certain level, individualized coaching might actually help with development. ⁓ versus just being in a group all the time. So it's something that you really need to think about too of like, individualized coaching can help with having more attention on an athlete, it can help them really focus on the things that they need to develop, but not so early on in a kid's life. speaker-1: Yeah. And I like what you were saying before with the parents and the coaches, because it is very much about reinforcing good behaviors, but not punishing when you have bad outcomes. Yeah. Because I think that's when you get in, again, the fear of failure and not being able to take risks because you're so worried about the outcome and things like that. But yeah, I do want to get into what you were talking about, kind of the early specialization versus sampling sports debate, because it has been a debate for a very long time. And in the past, it's always been like, ⁓ if you just practice, you know, the whole like 10,000 hour rule and things like that. Yeah. And so now it's like people are very much combating that and throwing research in that's like, no, no, it's actually not just that. Like you need a lot more to develop and decrease burnout and so they can actually, you know, be successful in their sport. And so what I'll be talking about a lot are kind of two different things, which are deliberate practice and deliberate play. And so a lot of people have probably heard of deliberate practice, but it's basically when. During deliberate practice, you have a very clear goal. You're getting individual instruction and feedback from a coach. You're doing lots of reps, and it's usually not super enjoyable just in itself. mean, it depends on your personality. It depends on who you are. You might like doing that. But yeah, you need lots of motivation to do it, a lot of concentration. It takes a lot of effort. And it's usually very sport specific, specifically what you need to work on in your sport, right? And so, for example, in tennis, that might be like a private lesson where you're working on specific forehand, backhand, volleys, whatever. ⁓ Which, know, I actually didn't mind private lessons because I felt like I could work on what I wanted to work on. And that helped me a lot. At the same time, it wasn't a whole nother extra hour of training. And you're just kind of like, ⁓ my God. speaker-0: You don't really like get a break. You're in group and you can kind of like go stand in the back a little bit and like take a breather. You might make a sloppy mistake and like maybe the coach didn't notice because there was someone else. speaker-1: Exactly. No. So like private lessons, it's like, no, no, it's all on you. ⁓ So that's kind of a deliberate practice in tennis. In soccer, it might look like you're working on specific passing patterns, defensive drills, things like that, just to give like another sport example. Whereas deliberate play is much more about doing small sided games, something unstructured. And it very much builds that motivation in athletes because you're doing something that is more enjoyable. And you know, for, for tennis players, I always like to think of like dingles. And so for people that don't play tennis, basically, okay. Dingles is if you just looking at a court, you've got four people on the court, two on one side, two on the other. And so how it starts is you're playing a cross-court point. So there's two balls going at one time. You're playing a point against your opponent and the other side is playing their opponent. The point. speaker-0: dingles. speaker-1: keeps going, but what happens is if one person, you know, misses a ball or something, you shout, dingles. And then all four players are playing at the same time. So you're going two against two. You're starting one against one on both of those sides. And then you're starting two against two after that. Dingles is called. It is the most fun game ever. speaker-0: so fun. It is so fun. speaker-1: I don't know what it is, like I just love it. Like I love it. speaker-0: You get so competitive. And it's like so much better than just like practicing doubles. speaker-1: Yeah. Like, it's not like you're actually working really on anything super specific. You're just kind of like playing points. But again, it's kind of like not it's not it's semi structured, I would say. But it's not like you are putting in like a certain strategy or something during the point. You know what I mean? So I think it is very important to have those those kinds of. games to play and things like that. I mean, if we were just doing again, like deliberate practice all the time in tennis. speaker-0: You'd lose your mind, I think. Yeah, well, also like, again, like you learn so much from actually, can practice a shot however many times you want, but in a real life, real live situation, right? Like point play, that's kind of where you learn the most. everything's happening a lot quicker. Like you need to put in those practice reps in play as well. speaker-1: Especially when you're young. Yeah, it's you're learning almost like spontaneous decision making. You know what I mean? So and like your reactions and what are you going to do in this situation? ⁓ But I kind of wanted to give an example of what it would look like if someone were to take like an early specialization route versus sampling sports when they're younger and things like that. And I think we can kind of take it into our own personal context as well. But let's say you start. going into sports when you're six years old. So if you're taking an early specialization route with that, pretty much from six years old to, let's say, 18, you're focusing on one sport. You've got a lot of deliberate practice and not a ton of deliberate play. And so again, potential outcome, you could be an elite athlete in that sport. You could have elite performance. However, usually you're also going to see that coupled with reduced physical and mental health, right? So you're going to see a lot more burnout. You're to see a lot more injuries and just not a lot of enjoyment. Like I like to think of it as like, even when you're young, it feels like you're doing a job before you even get into like the hard part of your career. So that's a bit tough. speaker-0: I think the early specialization route is really, really tough unless a child absolutely loves the sport that they're doing, which I think is very, very rare. And even when they do absolutely love, they probably will hit a point where they're like, I'm sick and tired of this. Early specialization is really risky, specifically when kids are fine about the sport that they're doing, but they're not like absolutely obsessed, you know? speaker-1: Yeah, 100%. And let's be honest, like at the end of the day, like it's your parents putting you in sports and just kind of like trial and error, seeing like what fits and what doesn't. ⁓ But that's kind of what I like about sampling sports and that would look very different. So let's say again that you're starting sports at six years old. So from about And you you're probably just getting into it for about a year. I mean, you're six years old, like you're learning things. You know what I mean? And so a lot of the times it's just daycare. But then when you get into like seven to 10 years old, that's when you kind of can start that sampling phase. And that's when you're participating in a lot of sports and you're doing a lot of that, like deliberate play. So like for enjoyment rather than deliberate practice and just like hammering, hammering, hammering one sport. Right. And then once you get into kind of the 11 to 13, almost getting into your real teenage years, then you kind of get into that specializing phase. And so that's when you kind of have to have that balance between the play and the practice because you are kind of getting towards that, that big development phase. And you also are probably going to reduce your involvement in a lot of sports. Like maybe you just take it down to like maybe two, right? Then once you get to the 14, 17-year-old stage, that's when I would very much call it the investment phase. That's when you're kind of switching over to doing a lot more of that deliberate practice, not as much deliberate play. So it's not really like a lot of fun activities, which you'll sprinkle it in here and there, obviously. But you're also focusing on that one sport. And so. I really do think that is a very good route because you can still reach that elite performance. Like that is still very much possible, but you're also probably going to have a lot better physical and mental health. And you're probably still going to have a better chance of still enjoying your sport. I'm not going to guarantee that obviously, but I just think there is a better chance of enjoying what you're doing when you're sampling the sports. early on versus just specializing because. When I think about it, like how I kind of grew up, I mean, when you're little, you're playing every sport known to man that your parents are putting you in. Well, you're a bit of a different, different bird on you. You did ballet, you did piano. That's sampling. That's true. That's sampling. Ballet can transfer to a lot of sports. Come on now. Yes. speaker-0: That is true, yeah. Yeah, so like for me, I guess I did ballet, piano, and like art. So it was a lot more of like, not the traditional like heavy sports sampling, but a lot of like different things, which was a version of sampling, right? Yeah, different outlets. So that was good. But then we did kind of drop everything by the time I was, I'll say 10 maybe, to just focus on like... speaker-1: Really? speaker-0: focus on tennis, think, like 10 or 11. speaker-1: I started playing tennis at 10. speaker-0: Yeah, so like nine or I only started playing tennis. think I like. Six, seven, maybe. speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I I played like I'm thinking when I'm like really little, like again, like six years old, probably like I definitely played soccer, but maybe for only like a year played a lot of basketball. ⁓ Got into volleyball as well. Played tennis, started tennis when I was 10. So I had like a couple sports rotation and in middle school, I was playing basketball, volleyball and tennis. Um, and so that was kind of interesting. Like also, I remember my coaches were like, well, you need to choose. Like they're like, you're you, you can't practice as many hours if you go play basketball. And I'm like, yeah, but I want to play basketball. Yeah. Like I want to be on a team sport. You know what I mean? And for me. speaker-0: And you're like, but I don't want to. speaker-1: Even at that point, when I was in middle school and I was like, what? 12, 11, 12. I felt like tennis was my main sport, so it almost felt like my job already at that point. And then I felt like basketball and volleyball were like my fun on the side sport. I loved volleyball. Like if I didn't play tennis, I 100 % would have played volleyball. But it was almost I think I loved it because tennis had so much investment and pressure in it already that volleyball was almost my outlet. You know what I mean? speaker-0: was like low pressure, it was just for fun. speaker-1: Right, was so fun. And I was decent at it because of tennis, I think. Like my serve was, I was hitting overhand serves as a middle schooler, which is pretty good, like pretty decent. And I mean, not to brag, but we did win our championship. Middle school achievements. But no, I, I love thinking back to that time because like talent transfer is such a thing. ⁓ And I feel like people don't talk about it enough. And when you sample sports, it can very much contribute to other sports. Right. So like once. speaker-0: It was all because of your serve. speaker-1: can make you very good at another sport based on like coordination, agility, endurance, things like that. And so it's funny because the only reason that I not only reason, but the reason I really got into tennis is because one day I was playing baseball with my dad. My dad was a baseball player and I was like hitting really well and I was hitting lefty. And so he was like, Oh, like, I mean, she could play softball, but like also that'd a really good backhand. Like why don't I put her in tennis? speaker-0: And the rest was history. speaker-1: This is history and here we are. So, yeah, I mean, it is things like that that kind of click and you're like, wait, that that could transfer into that sport. But also, like I did, like track and field. Right. And so I think that's a very good basis for really any young athlete to start out in, because you're learning, you know, how to run properly for one thing and you're kind of. body dynamics and cause you, know, you're still a little like awkward at that stage. You're still kind of like thinking about the mechanics and things like that, but you're getting speed, you're getting endurance, which you need in a ton of sports. ⁓ and so I think it's also important to point out that you can be a very quick developer. Basically you have very fast skill acquisition if you know, you're going into a new sport and you have previous sporting experience and in a different sport that kind of like matches up based on the different qualities or techniques or environment of the sport that you're starting in, right? speaker-0: And yeah, I think that's kind of why it's like, it is important to, again, like sample, especially when you're young and to even like identify crossover options or just like comparable skills, elements between sports. Because if you think about like the racket sports, right? Like tennis, pickleball, padelle, ping pong, squash, racket ball, know, like... all of those have some sort of hand-eye coordination with some sort of paddle or racket. That's why you see so many ⁓ professional pickleball players nowadays are like former tennis players. Or for me, when I play ping pong, I'm I'm not like the best ping pong player, but I already have the hand-eye coordination there, right? Like if trained, I could probably get up to speed really quick. Similar example with like futsal and soccer, right? So it just helps with... with just different, I guess, different skills development and not having to take as much time for certain things. And that's why I think sometimes the argument of like, ⁓ well, if you're playing another sport and you know, that means you don't have enough time to practice this other sport, like your coaches were telling you, like, you're still developing useful skills for tennis by playing basketball. Right. Reaction, agility, footwork. You know, like. speaker-1: 100%. Yeah, I, I feel like I learned a lot from other sports. Like, like you said, with, with basketball, you know, you have a lot of explosiveness and jumping lateral movement, quick reactions, which are all extremely important in tennis. And, know, if you're playing tennis and soccer, for example, you're building lower body strength and endurance. You're building balance and agility. ⁓ speaker-0: of time. speaker-1: And like I said, with volleyball, I think that very much helped with like my reaction timing, my serving, because it's a very shockingly similar emotion, right? With at least on the upper body. ⁓ The only thing I will say is I'm a little iffy on sports with different swing patterns. So like, for example, golf, baseball, tennis, because when I go and try and play golf, speaker-0: I look like I'm trying to hit a forehand. speaker-1: Exactly. I'm lefty in golf, which is weird. So. speaker-0: No, I think that's normal. I don't know why I'm already in golf. Yeah. speaker-1: I turn it like a backhand. Yeah. And it does not go well. My driver is horrendous. Horrendous. I'm OK with with the irons. I'm pretty decent at putting because I think, you know, you got a little bit of touch in tennis as well. I am shocking. ⁓ I'm either whiffing the ball. speaker-0: Mine too. like flying to the right. speaker-1: shanking it or hitting it into a house. Like there's literally there's no in between. There's no in between. ⁓ my God. There's also been quite a few studies that have really looked into this and like what sports transfer well with other sports. and I think it's interesting. They kind of make like a difference between a multi-sport and a donor sport. So like a multi-sport is sampling sports with different task demands. And then a donor sport is sampling a sport with similar task demands. So like kind of what we were talking about ⁓ with tennis and pickleball and Padel and things like that. It's like those are very, very similar task demands. It's a very similar environment. You're playing on a court. You've got a net and you've got a racket or paddle, whatever. Right. So. ⁓ I think multi sports is great for early diversification and whereas donor sports is great for that transfer skill that we were talking about. Right. And so I was reading one study and they were looking at this is a very like unique sport that we're looking at canoeing and kayaking, which also that's hard. Like that. And like, you know, you think about rowing and things like that. But so they were kind of looking for multi-sports and donor sports for that canoeing and kayaking team. And they were looking at the different qualities of sports. So for canoeing and kayaking, it's very important to have dynamic balance, core stability, pulling power, speed, endurance, and kind of that rhythm that they need while rowing the boat, which sounds really funny. ⁓ And things that were kind of less important were flexibility. agility, you don't need agility, you don't need to catch something. So like coordinate, like that kind of coordination wasn't important. Jumping like things like that, that makes sense. And so they actually found that good donor sports was were gymnastics and netball, which I thought was really funny. ⁓ I mean, when you think about it, like gymnastics, they always say gymnastics is great to put your kid in when they're like super young. because it's teaching them, you know, that dynamic balance I was talking about. They're getting that core stability and rhythm as well, you you would think. I did find. Right, exactly. Like I said, when you're going through those like awkward stages where you don't really know what you're doing, I think having that gymnastics background would be great. ⁓ And then they also thought that the multi sports that would kind of go hand in hand were. speaker-0: awareness of your body. speaker-1: like basketball, tennis, badminton, handball. And so that would be more like sampling sports with different task demands. Right. ⁓ So I thought that was just like really interesting, especially in a sport that you don't really hear much about. And they obviously did like a whole like they basically took like an entire set list of sports and kind of compared them side by side. speaker-0: No, I really like that. So I think like moral of the story is let your kids, put your kids into different sports, especially when they're young. Try to make it fun for them early on. know, try to help them develop different skills and just overall, like as a parent or as a coach, and even as an athlete, like be very mindful of your mindset and your environment or the things that you're encouraging your kid to do. ⁓ I think patience and willingness to try new things and fail is so important in player development. just don't try to rush any of the processes either. speaker-1: Right. Which is hard to do because I feel like we are in a system that is going to reward rushing. And so I feel like from a system perspective, we do need to change a little bit. Yeah. And focus more on development and developing players and athletes and humans. But yeah, so we hope college sports don't die. ⁓ speaker-0: Yeah, let us know. Write to us if you have any ideas for college sports, because Peyton, can single handedly do that. We just need an idea, obviously. Right. Obviously, you need a really, really rich billionaire who loves like sailing, speaker-1: saving code. Exactly. ⁓ on that note, we'll see you all next week and thanks for listening. speaker-0: See ya.