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The Crisis in Girls’ Sports with Lauren Fleshman and Linda Flanagan · Revisionist History

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin.
0:22
Speaker 2: Hello, Hello, Malcolm Glable. Here, we're back with another conversation
0:26
Speaker 2: from our Revisionist History Live series on Mastery. This took
0:30
Speaker 2: place at the ninety second Street Y in New York.
0:34
Speaker 2: As many of you know, I'm a pretty serious runner,
0:37
Speaker 2: and like most competitive runners, I was most running crazy
0:41
Speaker 2: when I was a kid. I started at thirteen, ran
0:44
Speaker 2: through high school and a little in college. It was
0:47
Speaker 2: the single most fun thing I did growing up. Sports
0:50
Speaker 2: were my refuge from the craziness of adolescence. But one
0:54
Speaker 2: of the things that has become clear in recent years
0:57
Speaker 2: is that youth sports are no longer the oasis they
1:00
Speaker 2: used to be. That something very troubling is happening. Higher pressure,
1:04
Speaker 2: abusive coaches, over involved parents, and it's worse for girls,
1:09
Speaker 2: eating disorders, distorted body images. So I asked two people
1:14
Speaker 2: to come and talk about all this with me and
1:16
Speaker 2: figure out some answers. Lauren Fleshman and Linda Flanagan, both athletes,
1:22
Speaker 2: coaches and parents who've thought a lot about this problem,
1:26
Speaker 2: and by the way, who happened to have the same initials.
1:29
Speaker 2: So just to be clear, this is Linda.
1:32
Speaker 3: That's strangely, when many parents don't step in, they raise
1:37
Speaker 3: hell when you know their child is put in right field.
1:40
Speaker 3: But if there's like just a lot of nastiness and
1:45
Speaker 3: a terrible team culture, they're quiet.
1:48
Speaker 2: Linda Flanagan, author of Take Back the Game, How money
1:51
Speaker 2: and mania are ruining kids sports and why it matters.
1:55
Speaker 2: And here is Lauren.
1:58
Speaker 4: Truly like my sport experience always felt like it was mine.
2:02
Speaker 2: Lauren Fleshman, world class runner, author of Good for a Girl,
2:06
Speaker 2: A Woman Running in a man's world. Linda and Lauren
2:10
Speaker 2: gave me exactly what I wanted. I won't say we
2:14
Speaker 2: fixed kid sports, but I do see a future worth
2:17
Speaker 2: believing in.
2:19
Speaker 1: Take a listen.
2:25
Speaker 2: For those of you who don't know, Laura was one
2:29
Speaker 2: of the great distance runners of her generation. She is
2:33
Speaker 2: an entrepreneur and now she's a writer. Now she's written
2:36
Speaker 2: this wonderful book. Linda, also accomplished runner. Has done a
2:42
Speaker 2: number of things, interesting things over the course of your career,
2:45
Speaker 2: but of relevance to this evening, you coach for many
2:48
Speaker 2: years at the high school level, and it's really out
2:52
Speaker 2: of those experiences that you came to write your book,
2:55
Speaker 2: Take Back the Game. And I am interested in the
2:59
Speaker 2: two of you for a number of reasons. But I'm
3:01
Speaker 2: also a runner, not nearly as accomplished as either of you.
3:06
Speaker 2: In fact, I thought that we could all go for
3:09
Speaker 2: run this afternoon, and I asked, So I asked first,
3:12
Speaker 2: So I said, let's go for run, say, and so
3:15
Speaker 2: Linda says, well, I'm not running with Lauren. She's world class,
3:19
Speaker 2: so you flake. And then I said, all right, I'll
3:21
Speaker 2: go running with Lauren. And then Lauren says, no, I'm
3:24
Speaker 2: not going right, I'm gonna go for a runner early
3:26
Speaker 2: in the day. And I think, what happened to Krug
3:29
Speaker 2: and found wrong? Lauren, you looked at my strata. You said,
3:33
Speaker 2: he's so slow. Why would I waste a good running day?
3:37
Speaker 1: So I ran alone.
3:38
Speaker 4: So I said, you should have gone in the morning
3:41
Speaker 4: with me.
3:44
Speaker 2: So I'll get over that though. I so both of
3:48
Speaker 2: you have written books about the crisis in youth sports.
3:54
Speaker 2: We said girls sports, and I think probably we should.
3:57
Speaker 2: We're going to talk probably more about girls than boys
4:00
Speaker 2: in this because I think both of you would agree
4:03
Speaker 2: that problems are more acute with girls. And just to
4:06
Speaker 2: set things up, I wanted to I'm going to just describe.
4:11
Speaker 1: The manner in which this conversation is going to take place.
4:13
Speaker 2: Because we want to play a little game, the Martian game,
4:16
Speaker 2: and the Martian game is that. Imagine there's a Martian
4:19
Speaker 2: who doesn't know anything about America, American culture, sports in America, nothing,
4:25
Speaker 2: just a Martian in one of those balloons, and all
4:29
Speaker 2: he's been given is your two books. So he reads
4:32
Speaker 2: your two books and he reaches a series of He
4:35
Speaker 2: has no context, he has no inhibitions, he's not worried
4:37
Speaker 2: about asking. So I am the Martian, and I'm going
4:41
Speaker 2: to ask a series of questions, unconstrained by any kind
4:45
Speaker 2: of you know, other ideological positions of mine, previous experiences.
4:50
Speaker 2: I'm just drawing what might seem like extreme conclusions from
4:55
Speaker 2: both of your books, and I want you to respond
4:57
Speaker 2: to these conclusions.
4:59
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, right.
5:02
Speaker 2: The martians first statement is the Martians says, huh, should
5:07
Speaker 2: we ban men from ever coaching women?
5:11
Speaker 1: Again?
5:15
Speaker 3: It might not be a bad idea. Tell me why, Well,
5:23
Speaker 3: there are too many men coaching women. For one thing,
5:26
Speaker 3: women need women and girls need female role models in
5:31
Speaker 3: leadership positions. Everyone thinks of sports as that's where you
5:35
Speaker 3: learn how to be a leader. And yet you know,
5:40
Speaker 3: very few girls are actually coached by women and even
5:44
Speaker 3: at the collegiate level it's about forty two. High school
5:47
Speaker 3: level it's in the twenties, and in youth sports is
5:50
Speaker 3: twenty five percent. So let's get more women in there
5:54
Speaker 3: so that young girls and teenagers can see that women
5:58
Speaker 3: can be leaders too.
6:02
Speaker 1: Lauren, do you have thoughts on the Martians band?
6:07
Speaker 4: Well, I like these points.
6:09
Speaker 5: I agree, and running only seventeen percent of the coaches
6:13
Speaker 5: and runninger women, which I was really surprised, even lower
6:16
Speaker 5: than the average. I would say, let's not ban them
6:22
Speaker 5: until we've given them a chance to fill the giant
6:27
Speaker 5: gap of knowledge that we all are living with when
6:30
Speaker 5: it comes to female.
6:31
Speaker 4: Bodies and how they develop and how they operate. Let's
6:38
Speaker 4: let them.
6:39
Speaker 5: Let's give them a chance to learn. Let's see how
6:41
Speaker 5: many of them want to and the ones that want
6:43
Speaker 5: to and are willing.
6:44
Speaker 4: To, and we'll do the work.
6:45
Speaker 5: Let's let them stay and then let's do all the
6:47
Speaker 5: stuff that Flinda's talking about enlightened.
6:51
Speaker 2: I was struck in reading your book, Laurin, by a
6:54
Speaker 2: big chunk of your book is It is a very
6:57
Speaker 2: powerful and insightful explanation of the difference in the physiological
7:03
Speaker 2: trajectories of young women and young men, and you make this,
7:07
Speaker 2: you would talk about your time at Stanford to the
7:10
Speaker 2: young man, are a man or a boar? Whatever they
7:14
Speaker 2: are between of college age is at their physical peak.
7:20
Speaker 2: They get better almost automatically every year. They're full of
7:24
Speaker 2: all the every positive hormone own demand, and whereas the
7:28
Speaker 2: women are going through a much more complicated process. And
7:33
Speaker 2: the reason the Martian asks that question is that Martian says,
7:36
Speaker 2: how can a man ever fully understand what.
7:39
Speaker 1: A young woman is going through if he's never gone
7:43
Speaker 1: through it himself.
7:45
Speaker 5: Well, I would say to the Martian, we can't apply
7:48
Speaker 5: that logic to the problems of the world, or else
7:51
Speaker 5: the problems would only be able to be solved by
7:54
Speaker 5: people who've had an identical experience. And the problems are
7:58
Speaker 5: big enough that we need everyone involved. And I don't
8:02
Speaker 5: think there's anything that mysterious about the female body that
8:08
Speaker 5: anybody couldn't learn if they wanted to.
8:12
Speaker 4: It's just what we've Yeah, but we've.
8:14
Speaker 2: Been added for years and years and years now. And
8:18
Speaker 2: you know, just reading that your book and that little
8:22
Speaker 2: section it's not in, you know, there's we have an
8:26
Speaker 2: overwhelming we have a largely male group of coaches, and
8:31
Speaker 2: yet we still have. We have a persistence of these
8:33
Speaker 2: kinds of problems, and I'm wondering whether as the first
8:36
Speaker 2: step in solving the problem is to is to replace
8:42
Speaker 2: them with people who maybe have a better chance of understanding.
8:45
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, with women coaches, you have a higher likelihood
8:49
Speaker 5: that they've gone through something similar. But you also have
8:53
Speaker 5: plenty of female coaches perpetuating the same harm that their
8:57
Speaker 5: male coaches you know, passed down to them and repeat
9:01
Speaker 5: the culture. And so there's there's the knowledge is needed
9:05
Speaker 5: by female coaches too. I get a lot of messages
9:07
Speaker 5: of people who've read the book women men who are like, Wow,
9:10
Speaker 5: I didn't know any of this stuff. I feel really
9:12
Speaker 5: bad now. I've been coaching for ten years, fifteen years.
9:14
Speaker 5: I wish I could go back and have some different
9:16
Speaker 5: conversations with my athletes than I had. There was no
9:19
Speaker 5: understanding of why the women were making the decisions they
9:22
Speaker 5: were making, why they were breaking their bodies were breaking
9:26
Speaker 5: down at higher rates than our male peers. And I mean,
9:30
Speaker 5: we don't study female bodies enough. We don't have enough
9:33
Speaker 5: research on femal bodies. So I can't really like blame
9:36
Speaker 5: coaches for not knowing these things. Plus we sexualize most
9:39
Speaker 5: of the things that are specifically female, you know, or
9:41
Speaker 5: we make them dirty, like the menstrual cycle has this
9:46
Speaker 5: reputation for being something you can't talk about without using euphemisms.
9:49
Speaker 5: Breasts are sexualized as soon as you're twelve and a
9:52
Speaker 5: half and get them, so it makes it hard to
9:53
Speaker 5: talk about our bodies and hard to talk about our
9:56
Speaker 5: bodies with ground ups, especially.
10:00
Speaker 2: Linda, what did your athlete you coach for many, many years?
10:04
Speaker 2: What did your athletes get from you as a woman
10:07
Speaker 2: that they couldn't have gotten from a man? Or is
10:09
Speaker 2: that or do you think that there.
10:11
Speaker 1: Was no.
10:13
Speaker 3: I don't think that they got something from me that
10:16
Speaker 3: they couldn't get from a man. In fact, there's a
10:19
Speaker 3: man out here in the audience who I coached with,
10:21
Speaker 3: who is a fabulous coach and role model for me,
10:24
Speaker 3: who was very sensitive to the girls, you know, feelings
10:31
Speaker 3: and wishes and dreams. So I don't. The more I
10:36
Speaker 3: think about it, I have to I have to go
10:38
Speaker 3: back and tell the Martian that we should not We
10:40
Speaker 3: don't need to ban male coaches, but we should be
10:43
Speaker 3: educating them along with women coaches, who, as Lauren points out,
10:48
Speaker 3: are also guilty of a lot of the nonsense that
10:51
Speaker 3: we're reading about. I mean, you look at the Harvard
10:53
Speaker 3: ice hockey coach. I mean, every week there's another story
10:56
Speaker 3: about some egregious behavior on the part of a you know,
11:02
Speaker 3: professional coach, and there are oftentimes women too.
11:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, what about this though? The second thing.
11:14
Speaker 2: That I took from reading both of your books, was
11:17
Speaker 2: particularly from Lawrence, was this notion, this idea that I
11:22
Speaker 2: talked about Bray briefly before, about that you spent a
11:24
Speaker 2: lot of time on the book that the trajectory of
11:27
Speaker 2: young men and women is different, and that many women
11:30
Speaker 2: have this kind of in their late teens early twenties,
11:33
Speaker 2: have a kind of performance plateau, and so they observe
11:36
Speaker 2: the men getting better and better efforts every year, many
11:39
Speaker 2: of them hit a period of a couple of years
11:41
Speaker 2: where their times are not getting better, in some cases
11:44
Speaker 2: are going backwards, and that triggers all kinds of.
11:49
Speaker 1: What is that does? How do you deal with that issue?
11:52
Speaker 2: I mean, is it is it? Is there a case
11:55
Speaker 2: to be made for some somehow separating out the cultures
12:00
Speaker 2: of male and female running it out with that age?
12:02
Speaker 1: So there isn't this.
12:03
Speaker 2: Kind of of the women looking at the men and
12:06
Speaker 2: thinking they should be doing the same.
12:08
Speaker 5: I think that it's fine to have different experiences. You
12:10
Speaker 5: just need the different experiences normalized from day one. Like
12:14
Speaker 5: when the coaches are having their conversations with parents and students,
12:17
Speaker 5: that's the time to lay out, hey, we have a
12:20
Speaker 5: cross country team or track team or basketball team, and
12:22
Speaker 5: we are working with thirteen to eighteen year olds, for example,
12:26
Speaker 5: and female bodies are going to be going through something
12:29
Speaker 5: that looks more like this, which is like, if you
12:30
Speaker 5: just look at all the data on performance, really doesn't
12:32
Speaker 5: matter what the sport is. By age sixteen seventeen, female
12:36
Speaker 5: gains performance gains on average or like one to one
12:39
Speaker 5: and a half percent.
12:40
Speaker 4: Whereas their male counterparts are they go like this, do
12:43
Speaker 4: do do do do? And the female athletes go like
12:45
Speaker 4: EWW like this.
12:47
Speaker 5: But we haven't been telling them during that stage of
12:50
Speaker 5: life that hey, this is temporary. This is like a
12:53
Speaker 5: blip in your long term progression, and your prime is
12:56
Speaker 5: in your mid to late twenties and beyond.
12:58
Speaker 4: So really we just need.
12:59
Speaker 5: To Every coach of an adolescent female person should should
13:04
Speaker 5: be telling them, hey, this is going to be part
13:06
Speaker 5: of your normal progression. More than likely you're going to
13:08
Speaker 5: have a plateau or even a short term dip. I
13:10
Speaker 5: will be coaching you through that experience as teammates. You're
13:14
Speaker 5: going to be navigating this with your teammates. Some of
13:17
Speaker 5: you will be on this part of the curve, some
13:19
Speaker 5: will you be on this, will be on this. So
13:21
Speaker 5: part of team culture needs to be supporting each other
13:24
Speaker 5: through that rocky road from day one and not looking
13:27
Speaker 5: at it as a bad thing.
13:28
Speaker 4: It's just a different path.
13:29
Speaker 5: Like, is there going to be feelings of disappointment, sure,
13:32
Speaker 5: you know, and we can make space for that without
13:34
Speaker 5: pathologizing it. And that's what we've been doing, is because
13:37
Speaker 5: we don't recognize that females have this performance wave instead
13:41
Speaker 5: of this performance line when they hit the plateau.
13:45
Speaker 4: I mean there's parents who have been like.
13:46
Speaker 5: I sent my kid to a sports psychologist because I
13:49
Speaker 5: thought they just didn't care enough anymore, or I sent
13:51
Speaker 5: them to a dietician because I thought that they were
13:54
Speaker 5: their nutrition was sloppy. I'm like, that's just puberty. You
13:58
Speaker 5: just pathologized puberty, you know, Yeah.
14:02
Speaker 3: But see the trouble. I totally agree with you, And
14:05
Speaker 3: yet I think that implies that you coaches have room
14:10
Speaker 3: for the time and that athletes are patient and that
14:14
Speaker 3: their parents are patient, and at least in my experience
14:18
Speaker 3: with high school parents, of course, many were wonderful. I
14:21
Speaker 3: love them. I always have to say that you said it,
14:23
Speaker 3: good job. But there's this this drive to achieve and
14:29
Speaker 3: to get results right away, you know, there's not and
14:32
Speaker 3: if they're plateauing or getting worse than again, like what's
14:37
Speaker 3: the problem here? And so it is about coaching education, it.
14:40
Speaker 4: Is, and it's also there's some things we can't change.
14:43
Speaker 5: I mean, sport as we know it was built around
14:45
Speaker 5: the male body, so high school sports. We invest a
14:48
Speaker 5: ton of money in high school sports and college sports,
14:50
Speaker 5: and that's ages thirteen to twenty two. That's a great
14:53
Speaker 5: time to be a male in sport, right, And that's
14:56
Speaker 5: why they're I'm guessing, so integrated into our education systems.
15:00
Speaker 5: It's like a and why scholarships are given out based on.
15:04
Speaker 4: Who's the best seventeen or eighteen year old.
15:06
Speaker 5: That's a better predictor for a male body person than
15:09
Speaker 5: a female body person of what your future potential is.
15:12
Speaker 5: But the scholarships and that whole system was created long
15:16
Speaker 5: before female athletes were like up in there asking.
15:20
Speaker 4: For their share of the scholarship pie.
15:22
Speaker 5: But now there's no getting around the fact that seventeen
15:24
Speaker 5: and eighteen year olds are the ones getting offered the
15:26
Speaker 5: scholarships or not. And so that adds this enormous pressure
15:30
Speaker 5: right during development, right during your puberty experiences of change,
15:35
Speaker 5: where you're like, Okay, you're telling me to accept this
15:37
Speaker 5: temporary state of plateau. But there's a lot on the line,
15:43
Speaker 5: hundreds of thousands of dollars of scholarship and opportunity. And
15:48
Speaker 5: if I just restrict my diet, if I fight puberty,
15:51
Speaker 5: if I try to aim for this body that I've
15:55
Speaker 5: been told is the ideal performance body, now, then I
15:58
Speaker 5: can give myself a chance to have those opportunities.
16:02
Speaker 4: But then you pay the price later.
16:04
Speaker 2: Well, this brings us to the Martian's second point, which
16:07
Speaker 2: is one that Linda raises explicitly in her book, which
16:12
Speaker 2: when I came to that part of Europe, I was like, Amen,
16:15
Speaker 2: I'm with you on this as both as Malcolm and
16:18
Speaker 2: as the Martian. That is it time to pull the
16:24
Speaker 2: plug on athletic scholarships and preferences. You know, if you're Lord,
16:30
Speaker 2: you're describing this kind of the level of pressure that
16:36
Speaker 2: is brought to bear on the seventeen year old girl
16:39
Speaker 2: at a time in her development when you can't make,
16:44
Speaker 2: you know, a kind of reasonable prediction about where. So
16:47
Speaker 2: this whole we have this whole system in place that's
16:50
Speaker 2: being driven by the enormous cost of college education, by
16:53
Speaker 2: the expectations that come with scholarships. What if we just
16:56
Speaker 2: ended them.
16:57
Speaker 3: I'm all for it, And of course, you know, many
17:00
Speaker 3: of the kids going through it now would be like,
17:03
Speaker 3: but wait, that's not fair. I'm you know, that's just
17:05
Speaker 3: what we've been counting on. But you know it would
17:10
Speaker 3: just if there were no admissions advantage and no athletic
17:14
Speaker 3: scholarship of any kind available to college kids, then it
17:19
Speaker 3: would it would completely change the way we provide sports
17:24
Speaker 3: to kids now because there wouldn't be this race, pardon
17:28
Speaker 3: the pun, you know, to achieve by thirteen, because you
17:32
Speaker 3: might all disappear. And also, you know, I love sports
17:37
Speaker 3: and I'm a runner, and I think they're wonderful. But
17:42
Speaker 3: it's not clear to me why a high school athlete
17:45
Speaker 3: should get get an advantage over someone who plays the
17:50
Speaker 3: obo or who's an a choir, Like, why aren't there
17:52
Speaker 3: special dispensations for them? They don't aren't entitled to special
17:57
Speaker 3: scholarships or admissions advantages or streamline admissions process. So I
18:02
Speaker 3: think it's it would be more fair. I think it
18:04
Speaker 3: would also be impossible to claud back, or at least
18:07
Speaker 3: very difficult.
18:09
Speaker 5: I love that part of your book though, because I've
18:11
Speaker 5: often thought, man, if we could just get rid of
18:13
Speaker 5: the scholarships, it would release so much pressure on athletes,
18:19
Speaker 5: especially girls.
18:20
Speaker 4: I think that the pressures would just go way down.
18:22
Speaker 5: We'd be way more likely to allow development and change
18:25
Speaker 5: to happen on its timeline. But reading your book, I
18:28
Speaker 5: was like, oh my gosh, there's this whole other side
18:30
Speaker 5: of it, the whole big business of youth sports that's
18:32
Speaker 5: also driven entirely towards that same aim. And as someone
18:36
Speaker 5: who has a nine year old and a five year
18:37
Speaker 5: old and i'd like them to participate in sports, I
18:39
Speaker 5: don't want to be a part of that mania.
18:41
Speaker 4: I don't want to be.
18:42
Speaker 5: Having to travel for hours every weekend to give my
18:46
Speaker 5: kids this the top top performance opportunity. I want the
18:50
Speaker 5: kind of sports that you describe in your book as
18:53
Speaker 5: an ideal, and so I am for getting rid of
18:55
Speaker 5: athletic scholarships. But what had prevented me in the past,
18:59
Speaker 5: was what would we replace it with? And in your
19:02
Speaker 5: book you also provide some really great ideas like that
19:05
Speaker 5: there are other models, and I think sometimes we like
19:08
Speaker 5: lack of imaginations helpful to see other ways people are
19:11
Speaker 5: doing it. And I can't remember the one that you described,
19:14
Speaker 5: and you could talk about it.
19:15
Speaker 3: I mean, what that would be. No, Well, certainly in
19:19
Speaker 3: Europe they don't do youth sports like we do it
19:21
Speaker 3: at all, so you know, there's no school based sports,
19:25
Speaker 3: it's the after school. It's community based sports. So that
19:29
Speaker 3: also sets up the whole the college level. And when
19:33
Speaker 3: when I was running in England, you know there was
19:37
Speaker 3: there were no teams. It was there were teams, but
19:40
Speaker 3: it was completely alien to the way we do it here,
19:43
Speaker 3: and there was no coach. It was like student led, right,
19:46
Speaker 3: totally student led. It was probably comparable to intramurals here,
19:49
Speaker 3: and it was very serious and organic, and I don't
19:53
Speaker 3: see why that's not you know, replicable here. And I
19:57
Speaker 3: think at the college level. You know, another possible suggestion
20:03
Speaker 3: I had, which will never happen, is well, how about
20:05
Speaker 3: if we just abolished college sports as if? But but I
20:11
Speaker 3: say that, but why not club and intramural. I mean,
20:14
Speaker 3: it's not saying kids can't.
20:16
Speaker 1: Why not about it?
20:17
Speaker 2: You're talking about intercollegiate sports.
20:21
Speaker 5: Like, yeah, well, what's ironic about this is in research
20:25
Speaker 5: for my book, what women had in sports was club
20:29
Speaker 5: and intermural before Title nine. But there was a huge discrepancy.
20:35
Speaker 5: Obviously there was no scholarships for us, but there were for.
20:38
Speaker 4: Men in the n C Double A.
20:39
Speaker 5: There was more media, all these things that come with
20:44
Speaker 5: that infrastructure from men's sports. We wanted it too, when
20:48
Speaker 5: maybe all along we wanted equality, but maybe they should
20:51
Speaker 5: have followed our lead.
20:55
Speaker 4: Maybe we were onto something.
20:57
Speaker 5: Well, when Title nine happened, there was a discussion for
20:59
Speaker 5: the first couple of years about will we fold into
21:01
Speaker 5: the existing men's programs or will we run our own
21:04
Speaker 5: show here, Like we've guaranteed we have that the schools
21:07
Speaker 5: need to provide the opportunities, don't necessarily have to run
21:10
Speaker 5: it exactly like the NC DOBLEA, And it took a
21:12
Speaker 5: little bit before the decision was made to join.
21:14
Speaker 4: The NC Double A. And like essentially one of the
21:18
Speaker 4: arguments in my book is that we should be recreating.
21:20
Speaker 5: Sports with female bodies at the center so that they
21:24
Speaker 5: can have an equal chance to thrive in the sports system,
21:27
Speaker 5: and that we kind of need to take it back
21:29
Speaker 5: and be able to do that, because giving people the
21:32
Speaker 5: same thing the exact same way isn't going.
21:34
Speaker 4: To get you the same results, right.
21:38
Speaker 2: So how can we level the proverbial playing field and
21:41
Speaker 2: youth sports that's after the break. I mean, one of
21:55
Speaker 2: the things that's along these lines that I've often wondered
22:00
Speaker 2: about it is whether there's an inherent contradiction between designing
22:04
Speaker 2: sports programs for the for the fiftile and designing them
22:10
Speaker 2: for the ninety fifth percentile, and that maybe those two
22:13
Speaker 2: things are in some sense incompatible. So if we do
22:17
Speaker 2: away with high pressure intercollegiate sports and scholarships and things,
22:25
Speaker 2: maybe we produce fewer Maybe we don't, but maybe this
22:28
Speaker 2: chance we produce fewer world class runners she's running as
22:32
Speaker 2: an example, But maybe we also produce way more people
22:35
Speaker 2: who are happy and contented and run their whole lives,
22:38
Speaker 2: and maybe we get fewer you know, two twenty five
22:42
Speaker 2: marathoners and more two fifty marathoners. I mean, I would
22:47
Speaker 2: be happy with that, but you know, a lot there
22:49
Speaker 2: are some people in the kind of elite sports community
22:52
Speaker 2: who consider that a tragedy.
22:54
Speaker 3: Well, so few kids, not enough kids participating in sports now,
22:58
Speaker 3: and I think if we can move the model to
23:00
Speaker 3: try to get more participation. I mean, there was just
23:04
Speaker 3: an article on the paper yesterday about the income gap
23:07
Speaker 3: between the wealthy, wealthy families, you know, earning over one
23:12
Speaker 3: hundred thousand dollars, seventy percent of those kids play sports,
23:16
Speaker 3: and in families earning twenty five thousand dollars in less
23:20
Speaker 3: thirty one percent play sports. So I think this is
23:22
Speaker 3: part of the same conversation that the way we have
23:28
Speaker 3: developed the youth sports system, with its high cost and
23:34
Speaker 3: just relentlessness, has pushed more kids out so that there
23:40
Speaker 3: are fewer kids, you know, gaining any advantages.
23:44
Speaker 5: Cross country is one of the ones that I think
23:46
Speaker 5: has the least access problems, considering that they generally don't
23:51
Speaker 5: have cuts, and you don't have to have been in
23:54
Speaker 5: the youth sports high performance pipeline to join a team,
23:59
Speaker 5: and often you benefit if you haven't. I mean, I
24:01
Speaker 5: certainly like when I started as a ninth grader running,
24:04
Speaker 5: there had been plenty of people in my town had
24:05
Speaker 5: been running a long time.
24:07
Speaker 3: And you were not at a disadvantage.
24:08
Speaker 4: I was not at all at a disadvantage of anything.
24:10
Speaker 4: I felt like I was at an advantage.
24:12
Speaker 5: That's how it was framed to me, because you were fresh, yeah,
24:14
Speaker 5: and you have plenty of years ahead. It's just like
24:16
Speaker 5: making you know, like recognizing this timeline. But with my
24:19
Speaker 5: kid interested in soccer, I think I spent five hundred
24:23
Speaker 5: dollars for a spring soccer.
24:25
Speaker 4: Experience for the kid.
24:27
Speaker 5: He's not even leaving town, you know, so I don't
24:30
Speaker 5: really understand.
24:33
Speaker 4: He's had one practice.
24:34
Speaker 5: He's nine, Like, I don't understand how anyone how people
24:37
Speaker 5: are affording this and continuing to do this.
24:40
Speaker 3: Well, if I can just point out that in my town,
24:42
Speaker 3: we have a Junior pre Academy for U fours, which
24:46
Speaker 3: is three year olds. What well, it's a junior pre
24:51
Speaker 3: academy because then there's also the pre Academy, which is
24:55
Speaker 3: for you.
24:56
Speaker 4: Five like pre k.
24:58
Speaker 3: Yes, But so by the time, you know, there's a
25:00
Speaker 3: junior peer academy, pre academy, then there's academy and futures,
25:04
Speaker 3: and then there's travel by the like they've been playing
25:06
Speaker 3: for six years and they're nine years old, you know,
25:09
Speaker 3: and at each one it's you know, five hundred dollars
25:12
Speaker 3: or more, which isn't you know what the problem we
25:14
Speaker 3: were talking about with the money and I don't know
25:16
Speaker 3: how you do that?
25:18
Speaker 2: No, the way, So, the biggest obstacle, and you mentioned this, Linda,
25:22
Speaker 2: and I would like you to be more blunt about
25:24
Speaker 2: this because you're being two. The biggest obstacle to the
25:28
Speaker 2: kind of de escalation of youth.
25:31
Speaker 1: Sports is the parents.
25:33
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, so, and I'm reminded, you know, anyone who
25:38
Speaker 2: has to deal with parent My brother was a elementary
25:42
Speaker 2: school principal. He's now retired, so I can now say
25:44
Speaker 2: this about him. And he loved his job and loved
25:47
Speaker 2: the kids. It's just the parents that were and he,
25:52
Speaker 2: you know, fifty percent I think of his anxiety and
25:56
Speaker 2: came from parents, not from kids.
25:59
Speaker 1: He was prepared for the kids. He wasn't prepared.
26:01
Speaker 2: And he also had this is very tangential, had this
26:05
Speaker 2: hilarious riff about how the parent the teachers that the
26:08
Speaker 2: parents think the best teachers are always the worst teachers.
26:11
Speaker 2: So he was like, not only are they paying the ass,
26:14
Speaker 2: they don't know who the good teachers are. It's like
26:16
Speaker 2: there's something so but I want to so Martian says,
26:19
Speaker 2: why don't we ban parents from Jati, Well, you can
26:24
Speaker 2: we give them one.
26:26
Speaker 1: They can go to one media or one of them.
26:28
Speaker 1: That's it. They got to kick one and then they're done.
26:30
Speaker 3: Okay, Well here's a good model. Is actually the way
26:32
Speaker 3: boarding schools do is because they parents don't go to
26:37
Speaker 3: those because in those sports programs, from what I understand,
26:42
Speaker 3: do pretty well and the kids it's pretty healthy between
26:45
Speaker 3: with the coaches and the players because the parents aren't,
26:48
Speaker 3: you know, standing at the chain link fence observing. But
26:53
Speaker 3: you know, in the absence of that, I think definitely
26:57
Speaker 3: restricting the parents is a good idea. And again I
27:00
Speaker 3: would like to say I had a lot of wonderful
27:01
Speaker 3: parents my mom, but they're handful or not great.
27:06
Speaker 5: Well, the stuff that you were talking about in your
27:07
Speaker 5: book about how as parents we get sucked into our
27:13
Speaker 5: achievement as parents is shown in our kids' accomplishments, and
27:18
Speaker 5: that that's a relatively new phenomenon generationally and my parents.
27:23
Speaker 5: My high school coach just retired after thirty years, and
27:25
Speaker 5: at his retirement party, he again he told me this
27:28
Speaker 5: all the time.
27:28
Speaker 4: He's like, your parents were.
27:29
Speaker 5: My favorite parents of all the parents in the thirty years,
27:33
Speaker 5: because they showed up to the first meeting. They came
27:36
Speaker 5: to like three to five events perfect. They never once screamed,
27:42
Speaker 5: you know, and they never told him how to do
27:45
Speaker 5: his job. They showed up enough, like you say in
27:48
Speaker 5: your book, to get to know the person who's spending
27:51
Speaker 5: crazy amounts of time with your kid. That's important. Get
27:54
Speaker 5: to know them a little bit, and then get out
27:55
Speaker 5: of the way. And truly, like my sport experience always
27:59
Speaker 5: felt like it was mine and that agency, that autonomy
28:04
Speaker 5: kind of leaved me to the sport in a way
28:06
Speaker 5: that I think got me through the ups and downs
28:08
Speaker 5: a lot better. And like they, I don't know, I
28:12
Speaker 5: just I'm like, I was so grateful for my parental experience,
28:15
Speaker 5: and then wanting to your book was very affirming and like, oh, okay,
28:19
Speaker 5: they were actually.
28:20
Speaker 4: Doing a good job. So well, I mean, I try
28:22
Speaker 4: to do it.
28:22
Speaker 3: Like how you turned out as a runner. I mean,
28:24
Speaker 3: you're the fantastic runner, and obviously you know they were
28:28
Speaker 3: doing something right by just stepping back.
28:31
Speaker 2: My dad came to in my entire running curtain high
28:34
Speaker 2: school one event, and he immediately volunteered to help with
28:42
Speaker 2: the long jump, so he was raking the hit and
28:45
Speaker 2: as I was, I will say a modesty that I won.
28:48
Speaker 2: This was the Terror Championships I won that day. And
28:51
Speaker 2: as I'm rounding the final bend on my way to victory,
28:54
Speaker 2: I look into the infield and I see my dad.
28:57
Speaker 1: He's raking and then he raises the rake and he
28:59
Speaker 1: goes go. Malcolm rakes the dad. That was the extent
29:03
Speaker 1: of his involvement and I love that.
29:05
Speaker 2: But to your point, the thing about them being involved
29:10
Speaker 2: is that it allows you to also frame your successes
29:13
Speaker 2: and failures the way you want to frame them, because
29:16
Speaker 2: the parental frame is very different.
29:18
Speaker 1: They're much more they're they're far.
29:21
Speaker 2: More sensitive, I think in some ways to set backs
29:24
Speaker 2: to they don't understand the context in which you're operating,
29:27
Speaker 2: the social network that that you're you're competing in.
29:32
Speaker 3: You know what has really struck me and both as
29:35
Speaker 3: a coach and since when I've talked to a lot
29:36
Speaker 3: of parents is just how anxious they are. It's all
29:40
Speaker 3: this anxiety about how their kids are going to turn out,
29:43
Speaker 3: which I get, you know, that's what happens when you're
29:46
Speaker 3: a parent, but somehow it's it's played out in sports.
29:51
Speaker 3: It's also played out in school. But because sports are
29:54
Speaker 3: so visible, I think you know, your your value as
29:59
Speaker 3: a parent is so easily measured by how well your
30:03
Speaker 3: child does. And you know, I just I've been over
30:06
Speaker 3: overwhelmingly impressed by how anxious parents are about it. And
30:11
Speaker 3: that's why they're freaking out and you know, complaining and
30:14
Speaker 3: shrieking and you know, trying to get you fired because
30:19
Speaker 3: you know you're not doing enough for your child to
30:22
Speaker 3: get that child to the next level.
30:24
Speaker 2: Did that did dealing with parents? How much of an
30:29
Speaker 2: obstacle is that for people? For coaches continuing to coach,
30:35
Speaker 2: deciding to enter coaching, is that constraining our supply?
30:41
Speaker 3: Well, I have an important stat here to share as
30:43
Speaker 3: we were discussing this is accurate too. Fifty eight percent
30:47
Speaker 3: of coaches the per surveyed about five years ago, and
30:50
Speaker 3: I'm sure it's gotten worse, said they've thought about quitting
30:53
Speaker 3: because of parents. Two thirds of coaches set in a
30:58
Speaker 3: more recent survey said parents are always criticizing their child,
31:01
Speaker 3: they're criticizing their officials. I mean, coaches are really down
31:06
Speaker 3: on parents right now. And it's well, it's interestingly enough
31:10
Speaker 3: in this Aspen Institute survey that the parents are like,
31:13
Speaker 3: we love our coaches, So there's kind of this weird
31:17
Speaker 3: disconnect there. But coaches are really down on parents.
31:21
Speaker 5: And.
31:23
Speaker 3: This is unfair, and I think I so many parents
31:27
Speaker 3: are trying to do the right thing and don't want
31:31
Speaker 3: to be that parent. I've heard that so many times.
31:33
Speaker 3: I don't want to be that parent. But can you
31:39
Speaker 3: do more? Mile repeats, you know, But I would like
31:43
Speaker 3: to say though, that there is a time when they
31:46
Speaker 3: should interject, when they should be you know, not complaining,
31:51
Speaker 3: but raising talking to the coach or talking to the
31:53
Speaker 3: athletic director. And that's when there's some funny business going on.
31:58
Speaker 3: And you know, more the kids, the higher the level
32:01
Speaker 3: of athlete the child is, the more elite, the more
32:04
Speaker 3: likely they are to be emotionally abused and physically abused.
32:07
Speaker 3: And I think that's strangely when many parents don't step in.
32:12
Speaker 3: They raise hell when you know their child is put
32:15
Speaker 3: in right field. But if there's like just a lot
32:19
Speaker 3: of nastiness and a terrible team culture, they're quiet as
32:23
Speaker 3: long as the team is doing well.
32:26
Speaker 5: And that's it's intimidating, I imagine, you know, because you're
32:30
Speaker 5: like dealing with an expert, you would we tend to
32:32
Speaker 5: assume that they they have a method that's vetted, or
32:37
Speaker 5: they wouldn't have gotten to where they are well.
32:39
Speaker 3: And if they're successful in particular, yes, But meanwhile, there's
32:43
Speaker 3: a lot of tolerance of the terrible things that we
32:46
Speaker 3: shouldn't be tolerating just because the coach has a great reputation.
32:49
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, that's true.
32:52
Speaker 2: No, you talk quite movingly and honestly about your own
32:56
Speaker 2: father in your book, some of the best parts of
32:59
Speaker 2: the book. And in the beginning of the book, I thought,
33:04
Speaker 2: I thought your father, your father came across as a
33:07
Speaker 2: much less sympathetic figure than he does by the And
33:11
Speaker 2: and I'm wondering, how do you judge you're the elite
33:14
Speaker 2: runner here, how do you judge your own parents? Do
33:18
Speaker 2: you think your father's.
33:22
Speaker 1: Role in your life.
33:23
Speaker 2: Helped you as a runner, was neutral or hurts she
33:26
Speaker 2: as a runner?
33:27
Speaker 4: I think that overall he was a really positive force.
33:30
Speaker 5: He was an alcoholic for people who haven't read the book,
33:32
Speaker 5: and he worked really long hours as a prop maker,
33:35
Speaker 5: and when he got home there was about a ninety
33:38
Speaker 5: minute window where I could catch him sober before he
33:42
Speaker 5: would have too many drinks, where I didn't know what
33:44
Speaker 5: kind of dat I was going to get. And so
33:47
Speaker 5: I developed this habit of trying to really get his
33:51
Speaker 5: attention through excellence during those ninety minutes, because he really
33:55
Speaker 5: loved excellence, excellence in everything, music, sports, you know, culture,
33:59
Speaker 5: Like he just it lit him up to see people
34:02
Speaker 5: at their peak doing something incredible. So I wanted to
34:06
Speaker 5: have his light on me in that way. So from
34:08
Speaker 5: that respect, I can't even really blame him for that.
34:11
Speaker 5: That's just one of those childhood things where a dynamic emerges.
34:14
Speaker 5: The alcoholism was not ideal. Definitely would have preferred that
34:18
Speaker 5: not to be there, but then gosh, throughout my career
34:22
Speaker 5: he was, so he just had It was a constant positive,
34:27
Speaker 5: like I always knew I'd be loved and matter what.
34:30
Speaker 4: The result was when I came home.
34:32
Speaker 5: So even though I like desperately wanted to please him
34:34
Speaker 5: and be excellent for him, he never was, Like, he
34:37
Speaker 5: never came down on me when I failed.
34:40
Speaker 4: So from that.
34:40
Speaker 5: Perspective, I just I would like to be that kind
34:43
Speaker 5: of parent for my kids.
34:46
Speaker 1: Wait, the Martian has another question.
34:47
Speaker 4: Yes, Martian, this.
34:49
Speaker 1: Is the mark.
34:49
Speaker 2: This is the martians most trivial, frivolous privilege suggestion, although
34:59
Speaker 2: maybe not. The Martian says, wonders why given the all
35:06
Speaker 2: of the body issues that aflict girls in sports, why
35:14
Speaker 2: female runners wear bun huggers and crop.
35:16
Speaker 4: Tops, Well, very easy question to answer for the Martian.
35:21
Speaker 5: It's because our culture feels that female bodies are there
35:25
Speaker 5: to be viewed, objectified, commented on, and in order to
35:32
Speaker 5: do that, they need to be wearing less fabric and
35:35
Speaker 5: tighter fitting fabric. And that is how female athletes got
35:41
Speaker 5: their start. Post title nine. Was a movement to make
35:45
Speaker 5: really this is true, to make up for the fact
35:47
Speaker 5: that people would need to be watching inferior performances, and so.
35:52
Speaker 4: They needed to be a visual spectacle.
35:54
Speaker 5: And that's where the uniform differences came from, and gender
35:59
Speaker 5: specific clothing and sport, which, of course women will say
36:02
Speaker 5: they wanted. They didn't want to be wearing like a
36:04
Speaker 5: men's extra large hoodie necessarily all the time. They wanted
36:07
Speaker 5: things that fit and performed, But it took this esthetic
36:11
Speaker 5: angle that was yeah, so that's why.
36:13
Speaker 2: I because I was looking I read your book, and
36:16
Speaker 2: then I was looking at pictures of h I think
36:22
Speaker 2: it was not I think some cross country team. I
36:24
Speaker 2: forgot which women's cross country team, and all of a
36:26
Speaker 2: sudden I was aware of the fact that here are
36:29
Speaker 2: Here were five young women, all of whom had six packs,
36:33
Speaker 2: all of whom had not a stitch of fat on them,
36:37
Speaker 2: all of whom looked shiny and healthy. And I was like, Jesus,
36:42
Speaker 2: that's a high bar for somebody who is not an
36:45
Speaker 2: elite Division one runner or someone if I was an
36:49
Speaker 2: eleven twelve year old girl thinking about running in high
36:53
Speaker 2: school and and I go on line and I see
36:56
Speaker 2: that picture, That's what I'm Can we at least just
36:59
Speaker 2: wear a T shirt and a bear a bag of
37:01
Speaker 2: shorts and just make it just that little bit easier
37:04
Speaker 2: on that eleven year old who wants to join in.
37:06
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, the thing is that probably only well, I
37:10
Speaker 5: don't think a six pack is necessary for high performance
37:13
Speaker 5: at all. And there is a fixation with looking the
37:17
Speaker 5: part more than being the part, and the uniform creates
37:20
Speaker 5: that dynamic. I mean that played a huge part in
37:22
Speaker 5: my life. Throughout my whole career. It was like, Okay,
37:25
Speaker 5: my workouts are good, but like, what do I look
37:27
Speaker 5: like in my uniform? I don't look race ready, so
37:29
Speaker 5: I'm not race ready. Or the scale doesn't say I'm
37:31
Speaker 5: race ready, so I'm not race ready. Ors like those
37:34
Speaker 5: are not the most important indicators, not even close. And like,
37:38
Speaker 5: we have these concepts of race weight that are created
37:41
Speaker 5: and perpetuated by men, primarily who have way less monthly
37:45
Speaker 5: fluctuation hormonally, and they are being applied to female athletes
37:51
Speaker 5: as if we can somehow have a magic number on
37:53
Speaker 5: a scale that if we can stay this number, we
37:56
Speaker 5: will perform optimally based on physics formulas.
38:00
Speaker 4: But that's not how our bodies work.
38:02
Speaker 5: And then it creates this very narrow band that you
38:05
Speaker 5: have to try to exist in and achieve in order
38:08
Speaker 5: to be vsed as elite. And I mean I watched
38:13
Speaker 5: it happen on my teams where women who didn't look
38:16
Speaker 5: like that were shamed, you know, made to feel like
38:20
Speaker 5: they weren't committed enough just because they didn't have the
38:24
Speaker 5: six pack, didn't really matter how fast they were running.
38:27
Speaker 3: That's your college team. Yeah, because in our town, the
38:30
Speaker 3: high school girls wear all those uniforms.
38:33
Speaker 4: Yeah.
38:33
Speaker 3: I just think that's terrible.
38:35
Speaker 5: I just think that there's not a performance advantage or
38:38
Speaker 5: the or the men and boys would do it.
38:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, So it's just at the school you at the
38:45
Speaker 2: school you coached at.
38:47
Speaker 1: So you were coaching girls cross country, did they wear.
38:50
Speaker 3: Oh no, there's no way I would have let them.
38:53
Speaker 1: Oh, you put your foot down.
38:55
Speaker 2: The one of my favorite images of Des Linden when
39:00
Speaker 2: she won the Boston Marathon.
39:02
Speaker 1: She's wearing those baggy shorts for some reason.
39:04
Speaker 2: It's just the whole thing is so fantastic and badass
39:07
Speaker 2: and like, I just really so, it's much It's almost
39:10
Speaker 2: it's much more powerful emotionally to watch her because she's
39:15
Speaker 2: not pretending to be or wearing that uniform.
39:18
Speaker 1: She's just sort of being her.
39:20
Speaker 4: Yeah, she's just wearing the things she wants to wear.
39:22
Speaker 4: Wasn't she also wearing basically a parachute of a running jacket.
39:26
Speaker 4: I feel she was learning a jacket. Wow, Yeah, there
39:32
Speaker 4: was a time.
39:32
Speaker 1: For those of you don't, Des Linden is.
39:34
Speaker 2: A very very very very good American marathoner who won
39:40
Speaker 2: the year. There was a year that the Boston Marathon
39:42
Speaker 2: took place in a gale and the only way anyone
39:46
Speaker 2: you could win. I mean it was so nuts that, like,
39:49
Speaker 2: the only way you could win is if you were
39:51
Speaker 2: the single toughest, most badass and DEAs Linden just sailed through.
39:57
Speaker 1: I can't.
39:58
Speaker 2: I likely wept the last three miles of that watching
40:01
Speaker 2: on TV, I was like, I could not believe how
40:03
Speaker 2: emotional it was.
40:03
Speaker 5: She broke an incredibly long drought in the event for
40:07
Speaker 5: American winner.
40:07
Speaker 4: And yeah, and her book's coming out in like a week.
40:12
Speaker 1: I think that's right.
40:13
Speaker 4: We should do it again with day Yeah, definitely, maybe.
40:16
Speaker 1: She'll be running with me.
40:17
Speaker 2: I'm like, when we returned, we don't find me a
40:23
Speaker 2: running partner, but we do settle on a grand solution
40:27
Speaker 2: to fix youth sports once and for all.
40:38
Speaker 1: Oh the Martian wonders. So here's the It's really me,
40:42
Speaker 1: not the Marshal on this one.
40:45
Speaker 2: You know, I ran competitively in high school and stopped
40:50
Speaker 2: for thirty five years.
40:52
Speaker 1: Let's started again.
40:54
Speaker 2: And I stopped because although I was very successful as
40:58
Speaker 2: a runner, the pressure I was thirteen and fourteen and
41:03
Speaker 2: fifteen and I found the pressure of racing it grew
41:07
Speaker 2: unbearable and I just couldn't do it anymore. And I've
41:11
Speaker 2: often and I lost track of how much joy I
41:17
Speaker 2: found in running, and got consumed by the fact that
41:21
Speaker 2: the only measure of me as a runner was whether
41:23
Speaker 2: I could win a race, and that like, and I
41:26
Speaker 2: lost out on thirty five years of pleasure as a
41:29
Speaker 2: result of this is too bad.
41:31
Speaker 1: And now I'm wondering.
41:35
Speaker 2: Should we should we since we're banning stuff, lots of stuff,
41:39
Speaker 2: should we be should we be banning kind of serious
41:42
Speaker 2: competition until I don't know, fifteen or sixteen or something.
41:48
Speaker 2: Should we push out the Is there any reason why
41:52
Speaker 2: thirteen year old should be competing at.
41:53
Speaker 1: The national level?
41:54
Speaker 3: No? In my view, Well, you know, I was at
41:57
Speaker 3: the Millrose Games about six weeks ago and noticed that
42:00
Speaker 3: they had a race for the fastest eight year old
42:03
Speaker 3: in the world, and they had these, you know, these
42:06
Speaker 3: tiny children lined up and they you know, from different countries.
42:11
Speaker 3: I don't know where they came from, but they all
42:13
Speaker 3: ran like the same time, like ridiculously fast. And this
42:18
Speaker 3: is one you know we're talking about before you mentioned
42:20
Speaker 3: various models for doing things we don't need to do
42:24
Speaker 3: the national championships at age thirteen and twelve, Like maybe
42:29
Speaker 3: in a lot of sports around this country, there are
42:31
Speaker 3: these ridiculous championships of like little children, and there's just
42:38
Speaker 3: there's no reason for that. And the country that doesn't
42:41
Speaker 3: do this is Norway and they have incredibly robust participation
42:46
Speaker 3: and then like great success with their athletes after So
42:49
Speaker 3: I would tell the Martian. Let's let's forget the championships.
42:53
Speaker 3: You know what I was before fifteen?
42:55
Speaker 2: Say I did this, I did this recently and I
42:57
Speaker 2: can't remember what it was. Fifteen year olds with sixteen
42:59
Speaker 2: year olds. Someone made a list of the top English
43:04
Speaker 2: sixteen year old male milers, the enemy runners over the
43:10
Speaker 2: last thirty years somewhat years, and the question raised was
43:14
Speaker 2: how many of them went on to be world class
43:18
Speaker 2: adult milers, And the answer was such a small number
43:22
Speaker 2: that it was like, You're like, wait, what so if
43:25
Speaker 2: we're doing sports at that age, because we're trying to
43:28
Speaker 2: identify people who will be talented as adult athletes, it's
43:33
Speaker 2: just about the worst predictor of imagine, Yeah.
43:34
Speaker 4: It's not working.
43:36
Speaker 5: When I was just thinking in this story, like the
43:38
Speaker 5: reason why we have the National Championships is for the
43:40
Speaker 5: adults exactly, and for the sponsors and the people want
43:43
Speaker 5: to make money hosting it and getting the.
43:46
Speaker 4: TV rights and all that stuff. It's like, show me
43:49
Speaker 4: the eight year.
43:50
Speaker 5: Old who's like, you know, I want to raise the
43:52
Speaker 5: best eight year olds in the world, Mom, can you.
43:55
Speaker 4: Look that upes that exists? Right?
43:57
Speaker 2: You know, hold on, let's go to some questions for
44:04
Speaker 2: Linda how do you as a coach solve the problem
44:07
Speaker 2: that you're more likely to favor the gifted.
44:11
Speaker 1: Ones than the not so gifted ones. Is that a problem?
44:15
Speaker 3: Well, I don't know exactly. I mean, I think you
44:17
Speaker 3: have to be aware of the fact that you may have,
44:20
Speaker 3: you know, favorites, And I mean, I would say it's
44:22
Speaker 3: more about favoritism because sometimes the best one is not
44:25
Speaker 3: your favorite. So I think it's just takes awareness on
44:30
Speaker 3: the part of the coach to recognize that it's not
44:33
Speaker 3: building the team to to focus solely on the best girls.
44:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's hard.
44:39
Speaker 2: I mean, Lauren, if I was your high school coach,
44:42
Speaker 2: I would be famous.
44:43
Speaker 4: Right, I don't know, do you know my high school coach?
44:48
Speaker 1: I mean, I know.
44:50
Speaker 2: My point is that there's a natural the kind of
44:54
Speaker 2: the success of the athlete invariably reflects back in ways
44:59
Speaker 2: that it's not always something that's.
45:01
Speaker 5: Not always The story didn't make the book, but and
45:04
Speaker 5: I'm still a little bit upset about it.
45:05
Speaker 4: No, I'm just kidding.
45:07
Speaker 5: But my high school coach, he by the time my
45:11
Speaker 5: senior year came around, he was getting really swept up
45:14
Speaker 5: in the accolades and how it reflected on him. And
45:18
Speaker 5: there was some indoor meet that I really we never
45:21
Speaker 5: focused on from southern California, like, indoor track is not
45:24
Speaker 5: really a thing, but there is this one place that
45:26
Speaker 5: you can do it with a wooden track, and so
45:27
Speaker 5: we would go and.
45:28
Speaker 4: Sort of have a relay every year there.
45:30
Speaker 5: But he's like, no, you're gonna run the invitational mile
45:33
Speaker 5: and the Invitational two mile. These used to be prestigious
45:35
Speaker 5: races twenty five years ago.
45:37
Speaker 4: I want to coach someone who wins these races.
45:40
Speaker 5: And so we were training over Christmas break for the
45:42
Speaker 5: first time ever, like doing these hard workouts in a
45:45
Speaker 5: time of year when normally we're just going on fun runs.
45:47
Speaker 5: I was not enjoying myself. I was feeling tired from
45:49
Speaker 5: the cross country season. And when we got there, I
45:52
Speaker 5: ran the first race, did terribly and I was like,
45:54
Speaker 5: I don't want to do the second race, and he's like, no,
45:56
Speaker 5: you need to do the second race. This is a
45:57
Speaker 5: big opportunity. Is like pushing me to do it. And
46:00
Speaker 5: I was like, Coach, I'm not your racehorse. And he
46:03
Speaker 5: loves telling that story to people who'll start bust out laughing.
46:05
Speaker 4: He's like, can you believe that?
46:07
Speaker 5: Can you believe she said that to me and then
46:09
Speaker 5: but then he apologized in the car later he was
46:11
Speaker 5: like it was he actually said, he's like, I was
46:14
Speaker 5: getting swept up.
46:15
Speaker 4: I was making out me.
46:16
Speaker 5: I wanted that, and you never wanted it, and I
46:19
Speaker 5: just wasn't listening to you when you were trying.
46:21
Speaker 4: To tell me. So it's real. It's a rare pressure, man,
46:26
Speaker 4: that's a rare coach.
46:28
Speaker 2: So we had a whole series of things we wanted
46:30
Speaker 2: to ban. Oh yes, can we So we wanted to
46:33
Speaker 2: ban bun huggers and crop.
46:35
Speaker 4: Tops around there? What's it man? Around there? I think.
46:44
Speaker 1: Parents were banned parents.
46:46
Speaker 2: We're banning a competition before fifteen fifteen.
46:50
Speaker 1: I think it's a reasonable.
46:51
Speaker 3: Realized Christians are okay, just not.
46:54
Speaker 2: My running crew was over effectively at fifteen, so you've
46:56
Speaker 2: just erased me from.
46:59
Speaker 1: I Now I have nothing.
47:01
Speaker 2: You know, the amount of mileage I've gotten out over
47:03
Speaker 2: the years over my running exploits at the age of
47:05
Speaker 2: fourteen is considerable.
47:08
Speaker 1: That's now gone. Anyways, I'm fine. I'll take it on
47:11
Speaker 1: the champion of the team.
47:13
Speaker 2: What's your favorite band of all the bands? If you
47:15
Speaker 2: could only do one of those, we can bend the
47:17
Speaker 2: parent the Championships, the bun Huggers, and oh and the
47:22
Speaker 2: college scholarships.
47:24
Speaker 1: I know, my favorite band.
47:26
Speaker 5: College scholarships is my favorite band mine. I think it
47:29
Speaker 5: would downstream solve a lot of the other problems. They
47:32
Speaker 5: could basically neutralize parents most of them.
47:36
Speaker 2: Just that expression is so fantastic. Neutralized three parents up
47:43
Speaker 2: on stage talking about the virtues of neutralizing people in
47:46
Speaker 2: our position.
47:49
Speaker 5: Yeah, and then there'd be less motivation to host the
47:51
Speaker 5: eight year old World Championships.
47:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Yeah. Well here's a good question.
47:57
Speaker 2: Does a change in women's girls' sports need to start
47:59
Speaker 2: at the grassroots level or we'll have to or are
48:02
Speaker 2: we talking something has to happen top down? Can there
48:05
Speaker 2: be a can we have a revolution that can change this?
48:08
Speaker 1: Or or or do we not?
48:11
Speaker 2: Is someone that you talk about it kind of you
48:13
Speaker 2: want a czar? You want you wanted Michelle Obama to
48:17
Speaker 2: kind of step in.
48:17
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that would be nice.
48:19
Speaker 2: She's so many people have so many czar jobs for her. Yeah,
48:23
Speaker 2: it's like Michelle not like basically every intactical problem America has,
48:28
Speaker 2: we think oo, William, Michelle.
48:35
Speaker 3: I think it has to be both. I know that's
48:36
Speaker 3: a bit of a cop out, but Okay, let's start
48:38
Speaker 3: with the top though. If we ban the scholarships, that
48:42
Speaker 3: is going to have this trickle down effect and it's
48:44
Speaker 3: going to you know, permeate all the way down. That
48:47
Speaker 3: addresses the larger issues with you sports more than you
48:50
Speaker 3: know the ones the specific to girl problems. But I
48:54
Speaker 3: think it would transform the whole the whole game.
48:58
Speaker 5: And then a similar high level thing I think would
49:00
Speaker 5: be mandatory coaching education for anyone working with female bodied athletes.
49:05
Speaker 5: I think there's I can't think of a single reason
49:07
Speaker 5: why we wouldn't do that with the giant gap and
49:10
Speaker 5: knowledge we have. And then everyone, of course should buy
49:13
Speaker 5: our books because that'll be the grassroots thing that'll create
49:16
Speaker 5: like our own me too moment where you know, I'm
49:19
Speaker 5: not standing for.
49:20
Speaker 2: It on the on the grassroots thing the thing and
49:24
Speaker 2: both of you would have way more knowledge about this
49:27
Speaker 2: than me. But am I being overly optimistic if I
49:31
Speaker 2: say that this the change is going to happen when
49:34
Speaker 2: the girls themselves stand up and just say this is nuts.
49:39
Speaker 1: It's like.
49:42
Speaker 2: If you're the coach of that team and you observe
49:44
Speaker 2: that there are someone's disappeared and no one's really talking
49:49
Speaker 2: about why someone's on her third or fourth unexplainable stress fracture,
49:54
Speaker 2: someone's beliemic someone and then the person who wins the
49:57
Speaker 2: race from the other team is so scarily thin that
49:59
Speaker 2: you're worried about her.
50:00
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, you can normalize anything, just going to say
50:03
Speaker 5: in the culture, right, and so yeah, I think, but
50:06
Speaker 5: I don't think that it's fair to put it on
50:07
Speaker 5: the girls.
50:08
Speaker 4: I think that I really think parents, you know, parents
50:11
Speaker 4: don't have enough to do if they want to get involved.
50:13
Speaker 5: This is how you should get involved, which is like, yeah, like,
50:17
Speaker 5: don't stand for it. Can you talk about that about
50:21
Speaker 5: stepping in, not being afraid to be the parent that says, no,
50:24
Speaker 5: I'm not going to do the extra thing.
50:27
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I think, you know, it's funny. In my book,
50:30
Speaker 3: I was trying to kind of both understand where parents
50:33
Speaker 3: are coming from and also be, you know, offer a critique.
50:38
Speaker 3: And I think that it is important that parents recognize
50:42
Speaker 3: they have agency that they don't have to go along
50:44
Speaker 3: with everything that you know, that extra strength and conditioning
50:48
Speaker 3: training or you know, weight workout that might be helpful.
50:55
Speaker 3: The supplemental training like the soccer club in my town
50:58
Speaker 3: that offers six year olds that they can say no
51:01
Speaker 3: to that. It's okay to say no to that.
51:04
Speaker 5: And from just the other day, when I drop my
51:06
Speaker 5: kid off at the five hundred dollars Spring Soccer Experience
51:10
Speaker 5: at practice, I'm very annoyed.
51:13
Speaker 4: Wait till you hear this part. I was like, see you, Jude.
51:16
Speaker 5: And then one of the parents that I know is
51:19
Speaker 5: a parent of another kid in the class, and she's like,
51:20
Speaker 5: you're not staying. God, So it makes it tough to
51:25
Speaker 5: you know, we're giving each other pressure.
51:28
Speaker 3: We're staying at a practice.
51:29
Speaker 4: Yeah, I wasn't going to stay and watch the practice.
51:32
Speaker 1: God, God, this is what I have to look forward to.
51:35
Speaker 2: Wait where someone is waving frantically at me from off stage.
51:39
Speaker 2: But I so we got to end soon. But I
51:42
Speaker 2: wanted to fill the runners out there. I wanted to
51:47
Speaker 2: get to toss them a bone. And someone asked this
51:50
Speaker 2: question of you, Lawrence. Since you're you're a you're running.
51:53
Speaker 2: It's so rare that we get to hang out with
51:54
Speaker 2: like it's fun. But I'm still bitter about not getting
51:58
Speaker 2: to go running with you.
51:59
Speaker 1: But because you know what, I'll tell you why I
52:01
Speaker 1: was looking for.
52:04
Speaker 4: It's not too late.
52:04
Speaker 1: What are you doing this? This is the thing.
52:08
Speaker 2: The those of us who are just kind of every
52:11
Speaker 2: day runners when we run with people who are at
52:15
Speaker 2: your level.
52:16
Speaker 1: You guys, Floatt, and.
52:18
Speaker 2: We're running and you look over and you're just sh
52:22
Speaker 2: and it's like magic. It's like watching a magician do
52:25
Speaker 2: a trick, right, And you're like, oh my god, you're
52:28
Speaker 2: not even you're not breathing.
52:30
Speaker 1: And not like you're just you're touching the ground and
52:33
Speaker 1: you're like, how is this happening?
52:35
Speaker 5: That sounds like you're an intellectually curious person. Most people
52:39
Speaker 5: are like I'd like, I'm like, do you want to
52:40
Speaker 5: run with me? They're like, oh no, no, no, I
52:42
Speaker 5: would never do that. I'm like, I promise I'll run
52:44
Speaker 5: the pace you want to run, and they're.
52:45
Speaker 4: Just like, no, definitely, right.
52:47
Speaker 2: Well, the question this is really for the two of you,
52:48
Speaker 2: and then we really do have to stop. What did
52:51
Speaker 2: you guys like the most about parathon training? And you start,
52:56
Speaker 2: and then we'll let laurd boy.
52:58
Speaker 3: It's a thousand years ago that I ran.
53:02
Speaker 2: If I had one two forty nine, I would have
53:03
Speaker 2: a T shirt that said, all right, so like willia
53:08
Speaker 2: own horn here?
53:09
Speaker 4: Yeah?
53:09
Speaker 5: And in super shoes, I'd be like two thirty.
53:12
Speaker 3: Right, Oh, you're right. You know, I had a great
53:17
Speaker 3: group to train with, and the training is the fun part,
53:24
Speaker 3: not always, but it's the camaraderie that I got in
53:28
Speaker 3: the marathon training and you're out there a long time.
53:31
Speaker 3: So for those, you know, the training runs were kind
53:34
Speaker 3: of fun to do too, you know, when they weren't miserable.
53:39
Speaker 5: I didn't have a group, but I did get to
53:43
Speaker 5: have my professional coach, Mark Roland at organ Track Club Elite.
53:46
Speaker 4: I had always had him in.
53:47
Speaker 5: A group setting and I was the only one doing
53:50
Speaker 5: a marathon and that's normally the time year I did
53:52
Speaker 5: in New York when track and field athletes are taking
53:54
Speaker 5: a break, and so I had him to myself and
53:56
Speaker 5: he would ride his bike alongside me and we got
53:59
Speaker 5: to have all these really nice chats, and like, I
54:02
Speaker 5: just loved that was the last year we worked together,
54:04
Speaker 5: so to.
54:05
Speaker 4: Have that, I have a lot of fond memories from that.
54:08
Speaker 1: Yeah.
54:09
Speaker 2: I think that's a lovely way to end because it's
54:11
Speaker 2: a reminder we've been talking about what's wrong with running.
54:15
Speaker 2: And the thing that I always try and tell young
54:17
Speaker 2: people when I try to get them to become runners,
54:20
Speaker 2: is that this thing, the camaraderie stuff is something that
54:24
Speaker 2: is just magical, Like going on a long run with
54:27
Speaker 2: a group of people who you are friends with, are
54:30
Speaker 2: close to, and you've worked out with before. There's there's
54:32
Speaker 2: something there that you'll never find anywhere else.
54:34
Speaker 5: It's yeah, and I think that that love, like that's
54:39
Speaker 5: what drove our books. It's like when you know that
54:42
Speaker 5: you have something worth fighting for and protecting, and we
54:45
Speaker 5: really just want to remove a lot of the garbage
54:48
Speaker 5: that's getting in the way of that, right.
54:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, thank you so much to the two of you,
54:54
Speaker 2: and thank you to all of you, and go get
54:58
Speaker 2: you go buy your books and get them some. This
55:06
Speaker 2: episode of Revisionist History was produced by Sam and Giesto
55:10
Speaker 2: with Kiara Powell, Bendadapfh Haffrey, and Jacob Smith. Fact checking
55:14
Speaker 2: by Kishell Williams and Tally Emlin. Our showrunner is Peter Clowney.
55:19
Speaker 2: Original scoring by Luis Qira, mastering by Sarah Bruguier, and
55:23
Speaker 2: engineering by Nina Lawrence. Special thanks to the ninety second
55:27
Speaker 2: Street Why crew and my panel of potential running partners
55:32
Speaker 2: Lauren Fleishman and Linda Flanagan.
55:35
Speaker 1: I'm Malcolm Glappa.