Latest / I Hate Soccer with Jason Collinsworth / I Hate Soccer #126 - David Murray, he wrote a book about raising his daughter in soccer from birth to D1!

Transcript

I Hate Soccer #126 - David Murray, he wrote a book about raising his daughter in soccer from birth to D1! · I Hate Soccer with Jason Collinsworth

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: David Murray is the author of Soccer Dad, and he was kind enough to allow me to swing by at his house in Chicago on my way back from Milwaukee working with Elmbrook United.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: And he's just that.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: He is a writer and a soccer dad.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: A soccer dad who has been through it all.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: Everything that you think that you're going through as a soccer parent, he's gone through.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: The recruiting process, watching his daughter play in maybe a toxic environment.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: The triumphs and the tribulation.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: He's seen it all and he has supported his daughter all the way through.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: And she just finished her career at a Division I program in the Mac conference.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: I can't recommend this book enough, but this podcast, I can't, uh it's vital.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: Once you listen to this, you're gonna want to read his book.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: I couldn't thank him enough for his hospitality and hanging out with his dog, Eddie.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: Some of you are wondering if all of this is worth it.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: All of this worth it.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: Hopefully, listening to this podcast and then getting the book and reading the book will help you realize that it is.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: Many of you know by now that I'm about to head out west and go on a mountain desert tour in Idaho, Utah, and Nevada.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: It means that in the upcoming weeks, we might be uploading three times per week.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure that you are subscribed on YouTube to make sure that you get updates and that you don't miss an episode.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: 70% of you that are gonna watch this aren't subscribed.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Please subscribe.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: It helps me do more tours, talk to more people, helps me get to Chicago to talk to David.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's worth it.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Please do it.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it's free.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: Enjoy getting to know soccer dad, David Murray.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: I hate soccer.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_02: So why did you write the book?
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_02: It started as a really whimsical project.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, she had just graduated.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_02: She was it was gone to OU, uh, my daughter.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um and it was kind of a I just thought, I've I have sort of parented this kid from you know third three years old to D1.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_02: I thought that job was over, by the way.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_02: It wasn't over.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_02: But uh I thought, like, oh, I've done this, and a lot of parents want to do this, and I could just sort of write kind of a whimsical kind of a guide to doing it.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_02: And it was, and it was really nice at first because she was at OU.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_02: Sh, you know, I would write in the morning at six six in the morning till eight, and then she'd kind of call me on the way back from practice and and I'd say, Oh, I just wrote this story about when you were six and you scored your first goal or whatever.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_02: And it was kind of a it was kind of like a denouement for her for her career, and it was just fun for me.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_02: It got serious and it turned into something entirely different when I realized that I was gonna have to write about her college career and that her college career was gonna be harder than the rest of her career combined.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, basically, if you read the book, about the first half of it is kindergarten through go to college, and the second half of it is the intense madness of trying to be a soccer parent to a college D1 college player.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_02: So the book started out as one thing and it became something else.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_02: And it became much more important to me because ultimately it became about more than soccer, more than sports.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_02: It became kind of a book about my philosophy of parenting and my relationship with my daughter.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_02: So what's more important to a dad than that?
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like your most prized possession, and you're writing about your most prized possession, just about, yeah.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: And and it's gotta be okay.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: So she's done playing now.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: Looking back, obviously there's no regrets.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_02: Or is there regret is a regret is a just a problematic fact of life.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_02: I think what you have is you realize things could have been different.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_02: You might have done something different.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_02: I'll give you an example.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_02: She didn't play a lot of ECNL soccer.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, she played at a low level, most lower level until late in her career, mostly because her dad and her mom were kind of hippie parents.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_02: We weren't like those parents figuring out exactly where she should go based on her talent level, based on yeah.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_02: At nine years old, at 10 years old.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_02: We were always just like, she's good, she loves it, she'll rise to the top, she'll rise to wherever she needs to rise to, and you know, and we believed club coaches that would say, Oh, she's D1 material.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_02: She was D1 material, but they were telling her that because they didn't want her to leave her club, their club.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_02: And like, we so should she have gone to ECNL level a year before she did?
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_02: If she had, would she have had more options for colleges to play in?
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_02: Would she have had more confidence when she played in college?
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_02: Would she have felt a little less imposter syndrome?
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_02: But do I call that a regret?
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_02: No, because I also see the total upside in the fact that she didn't get burned out at that level.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_02: When she got to college, she was the most joyful of all her teammates.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_02: Her teammates were all fried from you know years of of ECNL, of top-level club soccer.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_02: And they were like, they looked like soldiers from that just came out of a war.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_02: And Scott was like, let's play soccer.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so you know, it's like you can see, you know, you can see alternatives.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_02: I think college, I think um travel sports absolutely um precludes other things.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_02: It's so much, it's it takes up so much time.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_02: And you could be like, Well, we spent a lot of times at Hampton Inns and Panera Breads and on the road at soccer things when we might have been doing other stuff.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_02: Would Scott have, you know, become a more well well-rounded, I don't know, who knows?
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_02: Like right.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_02: So no regrets.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but but certainly things I would do differently if I if I had it to do over again.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_02: What I say is that, you know, I wouldn't take it less seriously.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_02: I would have taken this more seriously.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_02: I think when I when I was a a young parent, I thought school getting our kid through school would be hard.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you'd have to, you know, to get she whatever, that would be hard.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_02: Relationships.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_02: I I expected a lot of work with parenting.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_02: I thought this sports parenting thing was just the fun part.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_02: Would be the fun part, right?
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_02: The easy part.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we set up our camping chair, we cheer.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_02: This is like totally fun.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_02: I had no idea how hard it would be, and no idea that it was probably the hardest thing that we did uh over over that time.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um, we didn't know much about travel sports.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_02: My whole generation didn't know much about travel sports because we didn't have it when we grew up.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, figuring out how to do this and doing it right, you know, we were we were we were kind of lazy about it.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_02: I would have taken it more seriously um than I did.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: I think, and you nailed it.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: When I when I was a kid, when you were a kid, think about think about the expectations of our parents when they dropped us off at soccer or basketball or whatever.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: Have fun, yeah, don't get hurt.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah now it's like the demands, it's like we want three training sessions, we want a half a field, we want to play on turf, yeah, we want to go to every single event.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's like when did this whole thing just flip or change?
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I always laugh when play a player says, My father never missed a game.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, Did your father not have any life at all?
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_02: Why why wouldn't he miss the game?
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_02: It's not that big a deal.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_02: You know, yeah.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_02: And when I was a kid, when I was a kid, my daughter or my sister was my younger sister was in ballet.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_02: Ballet, I thought was ridiculous.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_02: I thought my mom was irresponsible to get her into it.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_02: It was totally overwhelming.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_02: It was four uh rehearsals a week.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_02: It was it was eating disorders, injuries, uh crazy uh stage mothers.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_02: I thought I steered Scout away into soccer because I was trying to get her away from that craziness.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_02: And then I end up steering her into soccer and soccer is the case.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_02: That's a lot of the same stuff.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_02: And I had no idea that that was going to be the case when she was three years old when we got her into this stuff.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_02: No idea.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_02: Were you shocked by the sticker price too of what it became?
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, what it's become.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_02: A little bit of a frog boiling in in uh in in water.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_02: Like the f I remember the first year for travel, she was probably seven or eight, and it was like two thousand bucks a year.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, oh, that's a lot of money, but yeah, we weren't traveling very much, so it really was two thousand, not two thousand plus twenty trips, plus fifteen thousand in travel.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_02: So then it got bigger and bigger, and then, but I always felt so lonely about it because you know, all the other parents were like, I always felt like I was getting them riled up.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_02: I was trying to get them riled up about things like um, you know, oh, we have a$500 uniform we have to pay for, or or there's a there's a tournament next week in Rockford that they just announced.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_02: And the other parents were always kind of like, well, it's travel soccer, what do you expect?
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, You're the same generation as I am, and you know this is bullshit, and I know it's bullshit, and but I always felt kind of lonely in that in that position, and uh that's one of the reasons I wrote this book.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_02: I want parents to realize, yes, this is bullshit, some of this stuff is bullshit, and you should be you should be friendly toward one another and you should be understanding of one another when somebody has a meltdown over one of these stupid things, right?
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: When you get feedback from parents, is it mostly like the you nine parent, and they're like, Oh, thank you for opening up our eyes, or is it more like the college players that have done everything?
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: Really?
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: This is just like my dog.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: My dog's been on the podcast before, so I love it.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_02: Eddie, enough.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_02: Go on.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_02: I love where's his bone?
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_02: Sorry, so uh yeah, who who is like who am I getting most of the feedback from?
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: Who yeah, yeah, or is it like college parents saying, Oh my god, this is exactly what we went through.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_02: It is he's done panting into the thing.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_02: Just push him through there.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_02: Go on, Eddie, go on, seriously.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so most of the feedback I get, um, it comes from both sides.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_02: It comes from the person who's like, I've got a six-year-old and thank you so much.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_02: This really helps me think about this.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_02: But then the most emotional I get is from you know, somebody who's a parent of a ninth or tenth grader who's they already see their kids slipping into this and they they're scared of it.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_02: This, you know, that that that recruiting process is scary, and it feels like it feels like you're never gonna get found no matter who, unless you're just a total superstar, your kid's never gonna get found, and she's gonna be disappointed.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_02: And you, you know, you put she putting her whole heart into the line, and she's not gonna on the line here, and she's not gonna get recruited.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_02: That's just a terrible process.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_02: And I get like emotional crying and laughing uh responses from people who like I read the book in one sitting on the flight home from the ECNL tournament in Seattle, and I was crying and yeah, like it's really intense reaction that people give me.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean, think about it.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: On the girl side, it is almost like freshman year, you gotta start reaching out to co coaches or at least going to visit colleges and find out like what you or where you want to go, and you have no idea what you want to do with your life.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: No idea.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: We're asking 15-year-olds to make life-changing d decisions, and then if you're on a team where one girl commits like in August, you start to stress out, like, uh oh, is it gonna happen?
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I think when did Scott when did she commit?
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_02: Her mess thing was messed up by COVID, so she didn't commit uh until the summer of her junior year, like the right right before she went to her senior year, she committed.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: See, I think, and this is what I've been telling my parents and players now.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the later you commit, yeah, the more likely it's gonna be a good exp college experience.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you're gonna you're more likely to find the right fit if you wait.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: If you commit the first time that you the first month that you're able to, a lot of that backfires, and those are the kids in the transfer portal.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: Because they decided when they were 15 and they didn't know what they wanted at 15.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I know.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: Or they're not the same player.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we have a close uh relative who's uh who is committed at uh like between her sophomore and her junior year, and it also just seems to me like, and it's fine, she's really happy uh and and she's totally excited, but to me it's like god, that kid is 15 and she's committing the next six years of her life to this decision.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_02: It's it seems sounds like the army a little bit to me.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_02: I hope it works out great, and I think it will, but like it's I'm I'm almost envious.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_02: I'm almost thinking Scout had the better situation.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_02: I agree with you.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: I think, and I get emails or messages from on the boys' side, they're like, When uh my son is going into freshman year, do we need to start contacting coaches?
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, no, not on the boys' side, on the boys' side, it's so much later.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: And every female coach that I've talked to uh in college, they wish it was later, they don't want to be reaching out on June 15th or whatever it is of their junior summer going into their junior year, they want to push it back.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they want it to go to January or even May of their junior year, and they're still becoming better players, like exactly you might have a better opportunity.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_02: Your junior year, you're still getting better.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: You're right, you're right.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: And you probably, if you waited a little bit, you might have been able to go even a step further or a step higher.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, maybe it's unbelievable.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_02: But the other thing that I think that the book does for people is it there there's one uh whole chapter, as you know, that's basically a diary of of her year.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_02: I it was it was it's a diary of Scout's junior year of college.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_02: I thought the book was finished, but for some reason I just got this idea like I'm gonna write down every conversation that I have with Scout from the very beginning of training in the in in July to the end of the season in November or October.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that chapter might be the most valuable to somebody who's thinking about going D1 or D3 or D2.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_02: Because this chap this this chapter, this this year was not an untypical year.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_02: It's incredibly hard to play D1 uh college sports.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_02: And there are injuries, everybody has injuries, everybody has uh has um their uh confidence goes goes and comes and goes.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_02: You have high points, you have low points.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_02: And when you when you contemplate this one season from this one kid at Ohio University and see what she went through, you could I think it's a gut check.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_02: I think a kid or a parent should go, do we want to do this?
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_02: Is this what we want, or should we be, or should we be looking at D3?
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_02: Or should we look be looking at no no college soccer?
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, for Scout, it was worth it, but it was barely worth it a lot of times.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_02: And um, I think that people just have a very hard time figuring out what what college soccer is like.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_02: Uh a pod another podcaster I talked to has talked to uh hundreds of uh ex-college players, and she asks every single one of them, what was your favorite moment playing soccer in your life?
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_02: She said, Not one has ever said college soccer.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_02: They don't all hate it, they don't all say it was hell, but every one of them says something else.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_02: They say, like, oh, I was on this great team in eighth grade, and we went to this tournament and we won, or my high school most of it is high school.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_02: It's high school.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_02: Most of them are high school.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_02: Scouts' favorite time was high school.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_02: You are playing for your friends, your family, you're playing for your school.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_02: That is so much just better spiritually than that grim travel stuff, which which is all every day, every practice is a tryout, uh, every tournament is a showcase, and it's and it's grim.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's business.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: I asked you to do this off air, but did you ever did she ever want to just quit during her youth career?
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_02: No, she didn't.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_02: There is a funny moment in the book when she retires at age five.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_02: She retired.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_02: And I because she got a coach who was boring and and they were doing futsal drills and stuff, and she says, I I I want to retire.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, I said to her, honey, we've we've invested a lot of years in your soccer.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_02: And then I realized, how many, how many years could we have invested?
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_02: That's great.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_02: So she came out of retirement like a lot of athletes around six.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_02: That is great.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_02: But no, she loved soccer, and she, you know, she says, like, you know, she we talked, we've talked about this difficult experience she had with with ECNL in the Chicago area, and she drove up to North Brook from Chicago an hour each way, crying all the she said, I brought brought tissues.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_02: It's an hour away, it's about 45 minutes or 50 minutes in traffic, okay.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_02: You know, like rush hour traffic.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_02: And so she was, if she was 16, she had her driver's license.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_02: She she would go up there and she'd cry all the way.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_02: She said, I brought a tissue, I would listen to my music, and I would just cry all the way up there.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_02: And then I would will myself to go and practice, and I would get back in the car, and sometimes I'd cry all the way home.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_02: And she said, That's when I knew I wanted this.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_02: If I was gonna put up with that, I was gonna put myself through that, that's when I knew I wanted to play D1.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_02: I wanted to find out how good I could possibly be.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_02: Wow, so that was it's to some extent that was torture, but she only did it for like two seasons.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's a really mature way to approach that.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: Not everybody would would be like that or have that response, yeah.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: And people ask all the time, they go, Why uh why is it called I Hate Soccer?
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: Is that because in my role as a technical trainer, supplemental no club affiliation, I heard stories like that all the time, yeah.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I've had uh the girls who who's at big time schools now that would enter my training facility and just start crying because of the pressure that is put on them by coaches, by parents.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: How many how many college soccer players do you think are playing college soccer because they feel pressure from their parents to give them an ROI for six years in the ECNL and paying upwards of twenty thousand dollars a year in all the travel?
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think it's uh you usually, at least in college soccer, I don't think it's uh I don't think that's a direct problem.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_02: I I don't think I don't think parents say you owe us, we've we've invested this, we got to get the money out.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_02: I I think in college soccer, you know, I I say in the book that the the weird thing about travel sports these days and and college scholarships is that families who can afford to do travel sports, that family doesn't need a college scholarship.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_02: That was one of my favorite things that you said in the book.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_02: And and families that need a college scholarship cannot even begin to play this stuff.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_02: No, I think it's more pernicious than that.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_02: I think the the pressure that kids feel, um, and I think uh parents are in denial about this, and I think I was in denial about it.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_02: The whole family has organized itself around this project.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_02: By the time they're playing travel, high school sports, the entire family has revolved around sports.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_02: So if you're a kid and you're gonna tell your parents, I don't want to do this anymore, that's like the hardest thing to imagine you telling your parents.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_02: And even I don't think you can even admit it to yourself, maybe, but like there is this feeling that like my family revolves around this project.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_02: My parents take great pride in this.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_02: I see them talking to other parents, even if they're not pressuring me directly, you know, and it's also hard for a kid.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_02: This is what makes them special.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_02: They're playing soccer, they're 16, they're soccer players, they're athletes.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_02: Who wants to give up the thing that makes them special?
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_02: It's like giving up being special, right?
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_02: So I just think like parents I think this thing, this is what going back to that ballet business.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_02: I just thought that was too all-encompassing, and it just sucked up too much of a childhood.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_02: It almost turns every kid into like a child Hollywood star.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_02: And we all know those people go crazy.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_02: So I I just think there's real danger in the in the amount of madness around this, even with when parents are trying to be as relaxed about it as they possibly can.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: And one of my best friends, he now has four kids.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: But right around like the market crash in 2008, he bought a lake house in uh on up in the thumb of Michigan, as like Lake McCerie or Lake Ontario.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, dude, when you have kids, you're not gonna be able to go up to the lake house.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: And then he's like, What are you talking about?
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna go up all the time.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, dude, no, you're not.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: Because once you you because you're as an athlete, you want your kids to play sports, right?
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: You your entire family is going to be relying around what sport season it is.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_02: It eats your family.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_02: And and uh, and there are, you know, I think it for a parent, uh, either there's a great dad in the book who I I I identify a couple hero dads in the book.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_02: There's one who was like he was determined to give his kids cultural experiences at so he'd be on a we'd be on a tournament and everybody else would be eating at Buffalo Wild Wings, and he'd be taking his daughter to some like you know, site where there was a a union battle uh 50 50 years ago or a hundred years ago.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_02: And he was like almost comically determined because as a parent, your job is to introduce your kid to all the wonders of life, right?
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_02: Which is not just sports, there's art, there's music, there's there's beauty, there's there's and this sports thing starts eating up so much time that it it makes it awfully difficult to to sort of raise a well-rounded kid.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um, yeah.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: And it's the self-awareness.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I think if you give your kid more experiences, they are gonna really find out what they like.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and that's the multiple sport thing.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: Like, let them play multiple sports.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: How do you know that you love soccer if you've never played basketball or baseball or football or whatever?
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I just like now, does she identify as a soccer player?
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_02: Or like it was that herself, like yeah, oh, yeah, and uh and as a D1 athlete, like that was that was her the hat what she hung her hat on in high, you know, in late high school when she got that scholarship.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_02: And like, yes, that was absolutely her identity.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_02: It was her friend's identity.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_02: All her friends, you know, when you go to play college soccer, all your friends are the people on the soccer team, and for good or for ill, like those are your people.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_02: You you can you might meet somebody in class and you might, but basically, you those are the people you live with every single day, and uh they became sisters to her, exactly.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_02: But they're all athletes, like it's really I mean, I'm seeing her right now.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_02: She's just moving to Chicago and uh getting to know people who aren't athletes and getting to know the whole world.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like watching her, you know, see the world in color a little bit.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_02: Like she truly loved her teammates and loved playing soccer.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't think there's one regret that she has about that.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_02: But I think she's seeing some stuff now that she's never seen before.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_02: And I think she's discovering, I hope she's discovering parts of herself that she'll never that she hasn't discovered before.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: And she had the option of doing the five and five, and she was like content saying she didn't get the option.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_02: Her coach sort of joked and dangled that in front of her, but the very thought gave her like a oh my god, I could do this one more year.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that was kind of a shock to her.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_02: That was a conversation she had a couple weeks ago.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_02: But no, she didn't really have that option, and she's she's content that she's not playing soccer anymore.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_02: She's finding her way, though.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that's the other thing.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we always talk about for years, we've talked about what pro athletes go through when they stop, when the cheering stops, right?
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_02: We've always known that it was a perilous moment for people like Joe Namath or like, you know, important athletes.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_02: Well, now all these kids are going through that.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_02: These kids have have lived intense sports lives for 15 or 20 years, their entire upbringing, every single one of them is going through what do I, who am I now?
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_02: What do I do now?
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um, like Scout can't figure out she's trying to figure out how to exercise.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_02: Like they just well, they just tell you they make you exercise when you're exactly she's like she she referred the other day to her exercise journey, and I laughed in her face.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_02: But uh she and I are running in a half marathon in this fall, and that's kind of giving some structure, but like she's used to not having to being told what to do to to exercise, she's not used to ex managing that on her own.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_02: It's a packet, or she just goes to a trainer and trains and and she gotta make the beep test, and you know, so you know, these kids there's there's now thousands and thousands of these kids going through this transition, whether it's before college or after college.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't think I don't think we're set up.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think coaches or parents are set up to help manage that.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think that there's a lot of parents that identify as being a soccer dad or a soccer mom?
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I do.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_02: I think there's I think there's there's that.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_02: I think parents the parents that I always thought saw on the sidelines, I always felt like they were playing it cool.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_02: Like their parents were always acting like it's not a big deal, not a big deal.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_02: I don't care.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_02: I I know it all.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_02: My daughter's pretty good, but I don't I always just felt I always felt like I was the only one freaking out.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_02: Like it's so true.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_02: I hate that because it's bullshit.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_02: They don't know.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_02: There's they're my generation, they they're coming to this new what do you think you were freaking out about?
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_02: I was freaking out about college, how much how hard this was gonna be, how much the how much time we were spending, how how much you know.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_02: I spent a whole summer driving her from t college to college trying to get her a look.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_02: That was an insane summer.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, I wish I could say it was fun.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_02: It sounds kind of fun, but it wasn't fun.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_02: It was a total chore, and it was full of anxiety, and she was full of anxiety about what she was missing back at home.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_02: And it was like, you know, I was freaking out about all that stuff.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I wasn't, I don't think I was anybody's nightmare on the sideline, but I I would like to express emotions about this.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_02: When your kid is 16 and 17 years old and they're putting their entire heart on the line for something that they can't control, it's scary for you as a parent.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_02: Like that's why I wanted her to do it, because I I think that a lot of people live their whole lives without ever chasing something with full with a full heart.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's good as a human being to do, but it's also dangerous as hell psychologically.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_02: And so, you know, I think if you're a parent and you love your kid and their kids your kids going through that kind of an adventure and that kind of test, it is you are you are you are faking it if you think you're being cool about this.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_02: There's nothing cool about it.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_02: When did you start writing the book?
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_02: Right when she went uh off to college.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_02: I think it was that's when you started.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I started it then.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_02: And I yeah, and I kind of wrote it for that year, and then I kept writing it because the college experience became such a profound parenting challenge, trying to figure out how to manage that, you know, when to feel sympathetic to her, but when to tell her to but to you know, pull yourself together, when to when to tell her when to tell her her coach it might be full of shit, when to tell her her coach isn't full of shit, when to tell her nothing, and when to just listen to her talk.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh-huh.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_02: How to do all that stuff, how to manage my own emotions.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, watching these games on uh TV, they were on the ESPN plus, right?
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_02: There were some huge highs.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, there was some cool stuff.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_02: Um, uh, and then you know, when she was be introduced and go into the game and play well, and the announcers would say awesome things, but there was a time one time the announcer said we basically think they should switch forwards, they should get get get her out of there and get another forward in there.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, my wife and I are running around the living room screaming obscenities at the top of our lungs, that son of a bitch.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I mean, and we did, we were lucky because we experienced some real highs.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_02: I I won't ruin it at the what's in the book, but like we had a true pinnacle moment with her.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_02: You know, she they won a championship.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_02: She was, you know, some cool things happened, which I don't think happens in most college careers.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_02: Most college careers are the team goes 10 and 10 every every year.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: Most and it and most of the time your season ends in a loss.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: Almost always.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: Almost always.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: If you're in the conference tournament or if you're in the real tournament, yeah, the big tournament.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: You're that's the same in high school too.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because uh at least in Michigan, I don't know about Illinois, but in Michigan, everybody makes playoffs, yeah.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: So there's only four teams that end the season on a on a win.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_02: High school, we kind of got out of that because uh her high school won the city tournament every year.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so we did then would go on to states and lose the second or third game in states, but but like there was always the glory of having won the city championship.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_02: So she had this always like a glorious moment at the end of how many teams are in the city tournament?
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I don't know.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_02: I I felt like they only once they were in the city tournament, there were only about four or five good schools that could even compete.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_02: So it always felt like we just were in the final four and we we won both of those games.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, she had one season in high school where she had hat tricks in the last six games of the season, including the championship game.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_02: Like that's glory.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_02: That's something that they can never take away from you.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and when she's asked, What is your like memory?
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: She's gonna talk about that.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_02: After the last game of that, and they won the city championship.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_02: We went out to dinner and it was a big party, and then we came back here and she was getting ready for bed.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_02: And she goes, Dad, do you think this could turn out to be one of the maybe the best 10 nights of my life?
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_02: And I thought, I thought, yup, you can live a pretty good life and not have nine this good.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_02: That's true, and it was one of the top ten nights of my life.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_02: I I bet.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I bet.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's funny that you that you were, or she worded it like that, because when I have a player that's upset about something, I go, if this is the worst thing that ever happens to you, you're gonna have a good life.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, and it's like trying to trying to put the perspective in everything.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's like this too shall pass, this will get over it.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: Kids don't have perspective.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_02: Remember how they were during COVID?
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_02: They thought COVID lasted 400 years.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_02: Like we we were adults, we could see that it was like just the world's longest and most boring halftime show.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_02: They were just like, This is death, and so they don't have perspective.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_02: How was Chicago?
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_02: It was totally locked down, totally locked down, totally locked down.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_02: She was in the house, like in her room, doing school in her room, depressed, horrible, reaching out to coaches, trying to get coaches to write her back.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_02: Was she a college coach?
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_02: Of course, uh, started her sophomore year.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_02: COVID her sophomore year.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_02: She was one week away from starting her sophomore year in high school soccer, and COVID shut everything down.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_00: She missed the sophomore year.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: Entire sophomore year of high school.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_02: That sucks.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, it was a nightmare.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_02: It was she was just so broken.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_02: It was it was terrible.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_02: And in the middle of that depression, she's cold emailing college coaches, which I look back on, even as I like reread my book for the Audible version.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, that's pretty badass.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_02: Like that, that is a committed human being.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_02: She was really depressed, she was really sad.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_02: It really seemed like a long shot that she was going to be playing college soccer.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_02: And there she is writing to the coach of Pitt, Hi, my name is Scout Murray.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_02: I play for Saraside.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's tough.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, God, what a time.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_00: And it does, it did seem like it was a long time.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: But then, like in Buffalo and Michigan, we started the lockdown in March, and then I started back at training in July.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_02: So we didn't start, she wasn't training until the fall, and they were playing in masks.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, that was awful.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_02: What a shit show.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_02: That was awful.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we were indoors and they had to wear masks, and it's like 100 degrees inside.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: That was sick, and it was so hot.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's like this poor kid can't breathe.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I know.
• 34:05
  unknown: Gosh.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: But that was a that was a hard, crazy time.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: So you started the book and then you thought it was over.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: And then you just it kept on adding it.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_02: It was like that book with Grover and the Sesame Street book where he he says, Don't, don't get to the there's a monster at the end of this book.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_02: Don't get to the end of this book.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_02: Don't turn the page.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_02: It was like it was like that.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_02: The book kept, I kept saying, There's a couple of chapters that's like this book should have ended now.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_02: This is it.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_02: I got my kid into college.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_02: She's playing Division I college.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_02: The dream is is is done.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_02: We did it.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_02: And then it's like, oh, but no, she this is going to be a struggle, and she's going to need me and her mom, and she's going to need a lot of support through this.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_02: Like every one of those college players that you see, those big tough college football players, they're calling their mom and their dad after every practice, saying how practice went.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_02: The coach didn't look at me today.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, the coach was the coach said I did a good job today.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_02: It's a total roller coaster for all those kids.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_00: I'm glad that you added or or added the college seasons because not every parent is a D1 college soccer parent.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_00: And they don't know that.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: They don't know what they're getting into.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_00: And if you just ended at her youth career, there'd be so much.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_02: And then I almost ended it at her moment of glory after her sophomore year.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_02: And that would have been a nice little Frank Capra ending with roll credits.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_02: But then I kept the diary of her junior year.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_02: And that is her hardest.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_02: That was the hardest year.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_02: But it wasn't like if you look at it, it was a hard year.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_02: But I think you should read it and go, that's what a college soccer season is.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_02: That's what it is.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_02: And maybe you're gonna have a better season than that.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_02: And maybe you're gonna have a slightly worse season than that, or you're gonna get injured.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_02: But this is it, baby.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_02: And if you if you find this to be ridiculous, think think about going D3 or something.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_00: So we were talking a little bit earlier about like some club environments can be toxic.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: Was her freshman year at Ohio more like a breath of fresh air because it was l it's not as toxic.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_00: It can't, you cannot have a successful college program if it's a toxic environment.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it wasn't toxic.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_02: It was when she first got there, it was joy.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_02: Like, oh my god, Dad, she's in the sports norm.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_02: She's like all these, all these guys, every single person here is a competitive athlete.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, they she was playing football with football players, she was playing ping pong with football players, betting them on ping pong, whipping their at these huge guys' asses.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_02: She was she was in heaven.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_02: And she's I remember she sent me a a text.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_02: She goes, Dad, I'm in such good shape.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_02: I can run forever.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_02: Like she was so happy that that that August.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_02: But then the season starts, then the then the conference season starts, and it and it's long, and you get tired, and your body's tired, and then you start losing some games, and the pressure comes in.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_02: By the end of that freshman season, she was worn down.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_02: She was sending very tough texts, needed to break, feeling jealous of everybody.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, you've a pretty big party school, and she's she's like they were having fun.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_02: They're having like they have a huge Halloween party, they can't go to that.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_02: Everybody's having a great time.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_02: She's like, We're in soccer jail.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so like that's so it went that season went from total joy and excitement to a real grind.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_02: This the spring off seasons were wonderful, all of them.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_02: Really?
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_02: She loved it.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_02: She felt like she was getting better, she was getting developed, she she had the pressure was off.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_02: They they would play four or five friendlies.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you're right about that.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, she just loved that, and so that was always fun and positive and and great.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_02: And then the season would start, and she again, she would always love, she always loved training, even though it was hot to a days in Athens, because it was like her, she's back with her buddies, they're getting in great shape, the season's out rolling out in front of them, anything's possible, and they're they don't even have school for August, so they're just like soccer and fun.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_02: She loved that.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_02: So, as you can tell, like I am telling you a very mixed, you know, message about what all this is because we had highs and we had lows.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_02: We have highs and lows.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_02: And we loved it and we hated it.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, by the time, by the time senior year rolled around, my wife could barely bring herself to watch those games on ESPN Plus.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_02: Because she she was having Scott was having confidence problems, and we could tell, you know, you can tell your kid, you can tell from from two pitches over whether your kid is feeling confident that day.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know what you can how you can tell, but you can tell by their shoulders, by their and like if she was not playing well, it was agony to us.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_02: Like it was like this is this she wants this so bad, and she's not playing with confidence, and this isn't going well.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_02: And it was really it got to be really hard to watch.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, my wife said, I'm I'm I was glad when this is over.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_02: And I I kind of relate to that.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_02: Four years was enough of this for her.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_00: How he when okay, you went to Kent State.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_00: When did you start writing?
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_02: Uh my parents were both writers.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, I was an English major at Kent State.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, I just didn't have the imagination to do anything else.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_02: I moved to Chicago, um, went went to work for a publisher, and I've been pretty much writing my whole life.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_02: I've read written journalism, I've written books.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um, this is my depending on how you define it, this is my third uh book.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but so I've I've just been writing my whole life.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_02: I write a blog every single day.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_02: I I just that's what I do.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_02: What do you mostly write about?
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_02: Uh well, I I lead, I make a living uh leading this uh global association of professional speech writers.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_02: So if you're if you write speeches for the uh Prime Minister of England, or you write speeches for the CEO of Chevron, you come to my conference every year in Washington, DC, and and I'm I'm the center of your community.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_02: So that's a it's a I'm the only person on the planet who has that job.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_01: That's awesome.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so I do that, and so I'm it fits with my life because I'm kind of conversant with speeches and rhetoric and public conversations, and so it all kind of fits into my other work.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_02: Were you ever anybody's speechwriter?
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_02: No, I hate speechwriting so much that I started the association to get out of doing it myself.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I I almost that's almost true.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I hate speechwriter.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_02: So, like, I'm a good writer, but I don't have the diplomatic skills to go to a really rich billionaire, have that person tell me what they want to say, then I write it down and I send it back to them and they say this isn't right.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_02: It is kind of weird.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_02: It's totally weird and it's absurd and crazy.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_02: And that's why I this works because I admire the people who can do that.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_02: They're they're interesting people, it's a it's an absurd job.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and it and they know that it that it's absurd.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_02: There's there's huge, they're working with people with huge egos and they're telling them what to say, and then that those people are saying, This isn't what I wanted to say at all.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_02: So I love to convene these people, I love to know them, I love to listen to their stories, and they do an important job, but I don't like no, I don't do it myself at all.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_00: And uhything else, like when you were doing journalism, were you more like freelance or did you work for freelance?
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_02: I did, yeah, freelance.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_02: I worked for a publisher, a trade publisher.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_02: I wrote some trade journalism, but no, I wrote for the Chicago Tribune, I wrote for Chicago magazine.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_02: I loved writing long stories about politics.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I I wrote I I went and lived on a nine-hole golf course for two weeks and and worked on the golf course to help get it ready for a tournament and uh their big their big annual tournament and uh and wrote the whole story of that and the whole story of the family.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_02: And I loved that.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_02: I just I uh that's the kind of I love immersing myself in other human beings' points of view and just becoming letting their world become my world for a day or two weeks or however long.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of like what this podcast has done for me is just like just talking to people and getting it.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't it great?
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_00: I I love it.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_00: This is like my favorite thing to do now, and that's why I'm doing this uh full time and partnering with people that I've never met before, and then falling in love with their club and seeing what they're doing, and and it also it also makes me way more positive on the whole soccer land, despite the names.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it makes me more positive on like where the US currently is in soccer.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_02: Because the the actual people, the system sucks, but the people aren't monsters, kinda for the most part, yeah.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_00: And if they are monsters, they're not gonna be on the show.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, that's pretty much how it is.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, I don't know.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I had some experiences as a journalist when I was talking to a monster and they didn't know they were a monster, and I was like, Oh, you're gonna come off like a monster in this article, and they did.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if I have the heart to do that anymore, but there were some politicians.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_00: And then, and then does that hurt or help your career when when somebody comes off as a monster in something that you write?
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that one was good because this is this was a guy who was a he was a real preening, he was a preening uh suburban mayor who thought he was the most important guy and he thought he was the best guy ever.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_02: And I followed him around for a whole day, and he was just a total asshole the entire day.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_02: He was an asshole to every single person he met, and he thought he was showing off for me.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_02: He thought I was gonna be like, Oh, I love the way this guy operates, he's a real shark.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_02: And then and then he gets drunk.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_02: with me he got drunk I didn't uh at an event and says let's go have the big interview now back at my office and then he and then he was crying and full of self-pity the whole time in the office and I thought dude you love yourself a lot but you are not gonna love this article so that was good for yeah it was a really interesting article I yeah you know it was it was but I yeah I I think about that and I go God do I still have the does do I still have the heart to do that I'm not sure I do anymore.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_02: How many like now that she is done playing what do you do instead of watching soccer what what do you do or do you still watch do you still uh well yeah she and I are watching some of the OU games uh we're interested like for for we she's still got a few friends who are on the team yeah uh we had a couple of her teammates come here and visit Chicago this summer I love that when that happens um no what I've I mean I don't know yet because I've been promoting this book that's kind of what I've been doing for the last six months and having conversations like this and I've got um I'm going to Ohio my hometown speaking at my hometown bookstore uh next month and I've got enough things that this is kind of what I'm doing right now but we'll see um that empty nest syndrome is is uh is kind of crazy i you know i we thought we had it but we really didn't because we had this soccer project all the time right and now we have it and talking to her every single day right but now we have it she's living in Chicago in an apartment and we're still talking to her just about every day and she comes and visits I haven't found the rhythm of my new life to to to answer your question.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know what I do.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_00: How how often did you get to go to OU or to watch her in person?
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_02: We probably would go to about seven games or eight games a year maybe um more her senior year because we were trying to suck all the juice out of it but it was seven hours to Athens.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_02: And so it was tough it was tough for her you know after a loss most of those players were from Ohio or West Virginia or local and most of those parents went to all the games so after a tough loss all those parents all those kids would go into the arms of their parents and we wouldn't be there most of the time and it was it was hard for her um but you know we had some joyous stuff we brought we had one spring break we had our whole class about eight or nine women come here and and we we moved to an Airbnb around the corner and we let them have our house for a week and they got to see Chicago they got to see Scouts World.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely and when you grew up in you know Ohio suburban uh ohio you think of Ohio as or you think of Chicago as skyscrapers and bullets and we live in an area in a really leafy neighborhood that you're sitting in right now that's where there's none of that.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_02: So uh they I think her teammates kind of got to understand who she was a little bit by by being here.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_00: What is this area?
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_02: I know Wicker Park is like this is called Ukrainian village.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_02: Ukrainian right after World War II a lot of Ukrainians settled here and they've stayed here and they're wonderful they they are serious about the neighborhood they maintain the neighborhood they're very beautiful they're great neighbors yeah how okay and you've lived here for 15 years yeah since about 2012 yeah yeah and how many ECNL girls actually live like in the city do you think um I think a fair amount just go with her team uh oh like her ecnall team yeah I would say five out of twenty five most of them are suburban kids but if you are a serious soccer player in the city of Chicago um and you're wanting to play D1 there's some exceptions there's her her personal coach has started a a a girls league to make this not true but basically you have to go out to the suburbs and play in on one of these ecnl teams for a little while at least and that's a huge commitment it's 45 minutes or an hour out to the to either of the these places and you're either driving your kid or she's driving herself in the in heavy highway traffic like it's kind of kind of a nightmare so she had a personal trainer that was in the city he was a personal it was a coach who we found he was in the city and he was absolutely instrumental in in all of this because I think you understand as a supplemental coach you are you are you are a a really important part of these kids' psychological lives.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_00: You have a very different relationship with the players versus what you are as a club coach or a college coach.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah because they open up to you yeah most of those sessions became therapy sessions yeah with those girls that's how it was with Robert this this guy Robert Turpin wonderful guy and uh I don't think she would have been able to deal with all that without uh without him because I wasn't I didn't know anything about soccer so I could talk to her about her feelings and about her confidence I'm an athlete so I I could talk to her about that but I couldn't talk to her about soccer.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_02: And there was this one moment I think it's in the book where Robert is she's telling me she comes home from a session with Robert and she said we were working on me not choking when right around the goal when I when it's time to shoot it shoot it and I go oh for God's sakes let's not pathologize that everybody makes mistakes and she looked at me like are you like getting in between me and my coach like that's my coach we're we're having a conversation I'm just telling you about it.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not asking your advice about it and I was so relieved I was like oh God fantastic you've got your guy here that's the one thing like you know we talk about the expense of all this but I would say like if you can find a wonderful coach like I'm sure you are personal person aside it's a great person to blow off steam that's not your parents and that's not your coaches.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly it's really important.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so many times I would have girls they'd be like I only enjoy soccer when I'm here training and it's like that's not a great compliment no I don't take that as a compliment cones should not be your favorite way to train to play soccer.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_00: Right and and and heavy repetition of the exact same thing over and over and over and over again and it's like like it that hurt that hurt me because it's like soccer is supposed to be so much fun but then isn't that the point but then it's crazy and it's and it's way too professionalized.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah like like uh saying it's like when I was a kid dropped off it was like have fun don't get hurt yeah now it's like we expect pro uh professional soccer at 15 years old.
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_02: I mean just just taking the mood at one of these big showcase tournaments there's not much talking the only talking is business it's it's players speaking to players it's more fun to be on any other sideline than one of the these travel soccer sidelines.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_00: And how stressful is it as a player when you look on the sideline and there are a hundred college coaches.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah that can't be right relaxing.
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_00: No you can't be playing your best at a showcase I always got a kick out of that.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's like when you go to playoffs that's a little bit better because you're actually trying to win trying to win the game.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas at a showcase I would have girls they would lose three games and they'd be happy because their top college coach saw them and they individually played well it's like wait a minute what do we why are we what are we teaching here?
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_02: I mean that is the one of the things we talked about this earlier like I I try not to be very opinionated about any of this I I've like here's my story here's how it was for us take your own lessons from it that's how I present my story and and that because that's really all I can say but if I've developed one strong opinion over this time it's it's play play for your high school that is so frequently the best the best thing that you can the best time you have in soccer and the best thing you can do.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_02: And I heard a college coach say recently that he likes to recruit kids who have played for their high school because they know how to play for a community.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_02: They know how to play for the thing on the front of their jersey and not on the back of their jersey they they like that he's like that's what college sports is like I like to them to have that experience and not just be one at somebody who's basically been trying out for the last four years.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I rem I remember the higher level girls when I was coaching high school they'd be like I can't wait for high school soccer because they're burned out of the the grind of playing ECNL or or now GA or whatever.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah and it's a release and it's an escape yeah from that culture.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_00: And now we have clubs all over the country that are going full year on the girls side and on the boys side it's mandated on the at MLS next homegrown.
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_00: So it's there is no escape and they're not allowed to play multiple sports for the most part so it's wrong.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_02: That's that's just wrong.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_02: I I can't that there's there's there's just no scenario where that makes any sense at all.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_00: And everybody just rips on high school coaches and high school soccer it's like there's really good high school coaches now.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_02: It's not like and they had to be the math teacher even if they're not they're playing for two months and we're for a shitty coach and they're playing against shitty talent.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yes it's a little it can be dangerous because you got people who don't know what they're doing out there.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_02: I get all that yeah but I think I think eight out of ten soccer players would say that playing for their high school was the best part of their soccer career.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_02: So you're gonna take that away from them for what to be elite yeah okay I hope you make the Olympics that's ridiculous how how is the book doing great I mean I uh I haven't seen sales figures in a couple months but it it was it it's been increasing rather than decreasing after the launch and I've just been most most importantly I've just been having the most wonderful conversations I mean the reason to write a book the reason to write anything is to have reactions from people and have conversations with people and the the reactions I'm getting to this book are a lot of gratitude for telling the truth about stuff um a lot of emotional reactions I'm getting from parents you know I I I love and I love the conversations I'm having with them about their kids and you know I'm going to these book events and there's okay my ninth grader is thinking about this and what do you and I'm not really an advice giver but I I can tell them I know what that's like that's a that's a scary time uh like I it's just nice to be able to connect these people as I said I've always I always felt lonely on the soccer sideline like I was the only dad going through it and my wife and I've both felt the same way and when you read this book you are connected at least with one dad right we're not going through this alone because somebody else is going through maybe even something worse.
• 54:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah did anybody reach out and you were like whoa somebody just had horror stories uh some of that but more more um amazing and interesting were the were the friends of mine and or more interesting were the friends of mine and the um and the acquaintances and people who read the book who had never been exposed to any of this like oh yeah we we think this is crazy but we have no idea how crazy it really is because we've been in we've been in it for a while like what you know people some people would say it's terrible what scout had to go through like it like she was in world war two and I was like well it's not that bad like it was just travel soccer they're like how could you like let her why did you do this?
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah and I I I think their uh attitude is worth considering and it's legitimate that we you know we've lost our minds in this business because we've been in it for a while I mean I wish I wish more people would would be vocal about what they're like going through as sports parents because there's other sports that are like you were talking about the ballet ballet hockey parents are crazy money's crazier in hockey baseball is crazy money create everybody has to have an individual hitting coach yeah or pitching coach or yeah baseball is tough the only one that isn't I think is football because there's not really that much travel it's there's a high school it's it's all about high school yeah but then of course you're getting your brain beat in yeah oh my god my nephew is in fourth grade he's playing tackle it's like what I told my sister I'm like what are you doing yeah and her oldest or one of her older sons is playing at Eastern Michigan and it's like you're already having him play tackle you know what Peyton went through it's like what are we doing?
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know I don't want to I don't want to tell other parents what their business but I did say in the book I I there I have a little section where I give advice and one of them is like don't let your daughter head the ball until she starts doing it behind your back I mean you know as a parent you can do a lot of bad stuff as a parent and get and still be called a good parent but you do have to protect your child's brain tissue I feel I feel like that's bare minimum.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_00: I even occasionally when I was training I would head a ball and then my head hurt yeah I'm like that can't that was I was like and I would we would we would work on heading the ball all the time it's like and you didn't really head the ball in games until you were like 12 or 13 it's right yeah you'd always miss because you miss and you couldn't judge it you hit the other guy's head yeah gosh yeah yeah when so I just had um an executive director from Elmbrook United and he allowed his son to quit soccer because he was crying about not wanting to go and it's like if you're gonna it basically if you're gonna play club sports we want you to cry because you want to play yeah how old was the kid he was like 11 when he quit and now he's maybe 15 or something like that and he plays football and did you when she was crying on the way and on the way back did you ever think like she shouldn't she should she should leave or she should quit that club I mean I I'm sure I thought that but she was so committed to to it she she said that's how I knew I wanted to do this.
• 58:40
  SPEAKER_02: I wanted to do that I was willing to do that to do this and so you know again I I always had this faith that if a kid is truly chasing her dream this was definitely her dream we didn't know about we didn't care about soccer we cared about her playing soccer we loved to watch her play soccer but we didn't even know much about it we didn't have a particular relationship I don't really watch soccer unless she's watching it with me I like to watch it with her but like so we didn't have that much of a relationship and I and I with it and I just thought if a kid is wanting to pursue a passion all the way as far as she can possibly pursue it, whether it's read whether it's writing or whether it's soccer whatever it is I've had this faith that that would be a good experience for her that would be something she could always draw on in life I don't even know if that's true but that's that was the faith that I had I was confident that she was doing what she needed to do but it was you know it was a toxic environment up there is part of it I'm trying to think like think about high school you're playing with all your friends or at least your friends are there maybe watching or or the and college soccer is the same you're with you're live basically living with out of all of your teammates basically and your coaches really yeah you're family yeah but think about the club culture most of these environments they're not friends they yeah within your own team enemies yeah you you could be represented by 20 different high schools and I think that is part of the toxic culture in a lot of clubs.
• 1:00:31
  SPEAKER_00: The club that I just partnered with up in Milwaukee it's a community club that happens to be MLS uh mls nets and GA but all of them are from that that city and it's amazing they're friends and it's a culture and it's a family.
• 1:00:47
  SPEAKER_02: Well that's wonderful I like that's the when you say you fall in love with clubs that's the foot club to fall in love with this was a bunch of you know coming from three hours every practice is a tryout every practice is to get playing time for that weekend for the showcase there's new girls coming all the time it's like what is she doing here?
• 1:01:04
  SPEAKER_02: And then they they yell at the new girl because they want to impress the coach by being an asshole to the new girl like it's gotta be better scout was most of her crying was it because of the girls you think or was it because of the coach or is it because of the culture that the coach creates in the club creates that make the girls treat each other like garbage all of the above all of the above and I think I think you could have a pretty good coach and still have uh they they didn't have great coaches but uh you could have a pretty good coach and still have that competitiveness still have the girls you know when she walked up there she walks up to a team of 20 girls and they're like who's she all sh all all she is is somebody who might get them off the field for the big showcase that's coming up it's already hard enough to be a 16 year old girl introducing yourself to new friends it's it's hard to introduce yourself to new enemies that's why she cried all the way up there and that's why I still marvel at the character she showed in doing it and the commitment holy shit that's wild and like when I grew up it was a community club and I played with all of my friends.
• 1:02:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah and it's just it's like gone and I think that's happening in every youth sport except again football.
• 1:02:26
  SPEAKER_02: And that's the highest purpose of all this like I talk in the book about how our family sort of had this higher purpose for all this that beyond soccer we didn't you can't just have a college scholarship be your goal for all this it's not it's not a worthy enough goal to give your whole family's life over for a childhood our goal was we we've saw we saw this documentary about the 1999 um women's world cup team yes it's called dare to dream it's it's like you can find it in like chunks on YouTube.
• 1:02:54
  SPEAKER_02: It's kind of it's got a cheesy title but it's a really wonderful documentary.
• 1:02:58
  SPEAKER_02: And we had this family awakening about how women could treat each other those women loved each other they supported each other it was it moved us we would watch that movie once a year it was like a it was like our like a Bible that we would reread reread.
• 1:03:11
  SPEAKER_02: And that's why we did it we thought if sports is the way to get in a community of women or one way to get into a community of women who support each other who make fun of each other who are best buddies together we want some of that and so you know ECNL soccer was a means to an end because it wasn't that she was on teams like that when she was younger she was like on that team like that when she was in college and she had some of those girls are going to be sisters those women are going to be sisters for life we achieved that goal but that was always the highest purpose of all this and I to me that's the highest purpose of sports think about like her relationships with her former teammates I'm sure she's still friends with the girls in high school and she will be lifelong friends with the girls in college.
• 1:03:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah how many teammates at c at her club zero zero that's not good no people need to realize especially when you know she only played about a year of club total I mean when kids play five or six years a club I wish more I hope more and more parents listen to this and realize that you don't have to go to the big club at nine years old because you think that that's the only way to play college soccer first of all why are you thinking about college soccer when your daughter's nine yeah but but you're a prime example of what more parents should do is wait.
• 1:04:42
  SPEAKER_02: Just wait there is no rush if you're good enough you're gonna make that team at 16 you don't have to go at 12 and be identified at 12 for at least 15 like yeah I I think you know I I I think I said to you earlier before we started here that I I think that um and I you know I don't want to make out all these cut club owners and coaches out to be evil I don't think they're evil they're trying to make their own livelihood right but they make their livelihood by playing on two powerful emotions.
• 1:05:13
  SPEAKER_02: When your kid is young they they play on your flatter that flattering they say hey scout's pretty good she should probably play on this club they travel and you go oh scout's pretty good and then they and then the and so you so then your kid is good and and then you go through a few years and then soon enough they start playing on your anxiety well the other kids are on this team I mean their other kids are playing year round I mean do you want your kid to keep up with the other kids if you can play on parents you know on flattering parents and making parents feel like their kid is special and then play on worrying that they're screwing their kid over by not playing them in this league or not doing year round you've got those parents by the short ones.
• 1:06:01
  SPEAKER_02: And it's a powerful thing.
• 1:06:03
  SPEAKER_02: Because you know, and asking parents, I hear I hear people in in you know this increasingly critical youth sports business telling parents, you know, you're free to do whatever you want.
• 1:06:14
  SPEAKER_02: You don't have to do this.
• 1:06:15
  SPEAKER_02: You don't have to do that.
• 1:06:17
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it's their only kid.
• 1:06:19
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 1:06:20
  SPEAKER_02: It's really hard to say you're not going to the Las Vegas uh you know showcase because we think it's ridiculous.
• 1:06:27
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 1:06:28
  SPEAKER_02: You want to you want to give your kid the best chance in a crazy competitive system.
• 1:06:33
  SPEAKER_02: So you know I that's why I another contribution I hope my book makes which is to parents need to band together a little bit.
• 1:06:41
  SPEAKER_02: That's what you have to or you have to organize and you have to say hey we're not going to the Rockford tournament next weekend.
• 1:06:47
  SPEAKER_02: You just told us about that.
• 1:06:48
  SPEAKER_02: That's stupid.
• 1:06:49
  SPEAKER_02: We're not doing that.
• 1:06:50
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 1:06:50
  SPEAKER_02: But instead parents don't do that.
• 1:06:52
  SPEAKER_02: They just all are out for themselves.
• 1:06:54
  SPEAKER_02: And they just say yes to everything.
• 1:06:56
  SPEAKER_02: They say yes to everything.
• 1:06:58
  SPEAKER_02: Because that's what travel soccer is all about.
• 1:07:01
  SPEAKER_02: Well I I'm afraid that if we're gonna make this thing sensible again parents are going to have to do it together.
• 1:07:06
  SPEAKER_02: They're going to have to look at each other and go this is dumb.
• 1:07:10
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:07:11
  SPEAKER_00: And some people say like this bubble will burst and the only way that this bubble bursts is if parents stop paying and stop to stop doing it.
• 1:07:22
  SPEAKER_02: And they will only do that if they do it together if if they could if there's a consensus among them.
• 1:07:27
  SPEAKER_02: And I hope my book and also there's a lot more conversation about all this than there was, you know, it's true 10 years ago or even five years ago.
• 1:07:36
  SPEAKER_02: Your podcast is is is part of it.
• 1:07:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well it's also the mental health of the players and we uh we kind of like forget about that at times.
• 1:07:44
  SPEAKER_02: Sports was supposed to be for mental health it wasn't supposed to create mental health problems.
• 1:07:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's a really good point.
• 1:07:51
  SPEAKER_00: That was the point was mental health that's a really good point.
• 1:07:55
  SPEAKER_00: How do do people reach out to you for advice?
• 1:08:00
  SPEAKER_02: They really seem to want no once they read the book they don't want advice because they because they know I'm not any smarter than anybody else.
• 1:08:07
  SPEAKER_02: In fact they think I'm dumber probably because I was dumb.
• 1:08:11
  SPEAKER_02: I mean that if I was a good soccer parent it's because I was dumb.
• 1:08:14
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't know enough about soccer to like give her a bunch of I was always fine in the car on the way home because I didn't have any advice to give her if I was a baseball if this is baseball I'd have been like why didn't you go down and get that one did you do you think that's better?
• 1:08:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yes I think that's better.
• 1:08:28
  SPEAKER_02: Way better.
• 1:08:29
  SPEAKER_02: It made it easier for me.
• 1:08:31
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't have to soccer people really have to figure out like what am I going to tell my kid like they have to agonize about that stuff.
• 1:08:39
  SPEAKER_02: And then and the kid knows that they have an opinion what did you think of the game mom and then there's quiet in the car from for us it was like look like you look like you got tired in the you know toward there or we like that was about as much detail as we had and it was like well how did it go?
• 1:08:54
  SPEAKER_02: Like she'd ask us how it went we'd say how how did you think it went and so I I always felt like that was so parents don't ask me advice because I don't and I I was just a guy who went through this um I just think that I was pretty good at rendering what it's like to go through it.
• 1:09:10
  SPEAKER_02: And so what they're more likely to do is just tell me their story.
• 1:09:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:09:14
  SPEAKER_02: Which I love to hear like I love to hear everybody's stories about this and their feelings and their impressions of it.
• 1:09:20
  SPEAKER_00: Have you had any backlash from like any coaches or clubs or other parents of foreign teammates?
• 1:09:28
  SPEAKER_02: Uh there was a parent who is who's depicted in the book without his uh his name isn't in there.
• 1:09:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um he's depicted and he didn't like the way he hit the way he uh came across which I said well that's my opinion of you I mean but it but it I I was portraying the two of us as two dads freaking out together.
• 1:09:49
  SPEAKER_02: Like I wasn't I wasn't making him out to be a jerk at least in my in my feeling I was I was trying to show one other dad who was freaking out like I was and Scout's coach uh had an initial intense reaction uh Aaron Rodgers from Ohio University.
• 1:10:05
  SPEAKER_02: And I understand that like it like to him it's like this is the world's longest uh you know performance review and he wasn't named in the book but oh you his name so everybody knew who it was right and he was like he had a and he'll tell you this um he had a really intense emotional reaction it looked to him like he like he thinks of himself in one way he thinks of himself as a loving nurturing guy coach uh who who wants the best for all these women and he wants to win he's a competitor and in the book he's yelling at the players a lot because that's what college coaches do there's a lot of yelling and he and I think he the depiction freaked him out a little bit but he kind of he took a while he started he texting me when he when he was reading it he's like I'm freaking out like this is making me feel really exposed and then over the course of weeks and a couple months he started to see it I think in the context of of how it really was offered and and and he and Scout and I went on another podcast and the three of us had a conversation um about relationships between coaches and parents and players in college which I think is really something that parents need to know about like are you allowed to talk to this coach when are you allowed to talk to this coach what does it feel like when you can't talk to this coach at all and your kid is halfway across the country and this coach is either ruining their lives or making their lives great like this coach has this coach is their parent for four years.
• 1:11:33
  SPEAKER_02: So that was a fun conversation and uh I heard or I think he told me yeah he told me they're at their player meeting uh with the parents this to start this season he was holding the book up and talking about the book so he came to the place where I think he realizes I know he realizes like I'm not he's not perfect he doesn't come off as perfect in the book but he doesn't come he comes off as a college coach he's not the bad guy he's the college coach and like at least he can tell the parents this is me in here I've read this book and I also understand your perspective because I'm friends with the guy who wrote this book and I appreciate this book.
• 1:12:08
  SPEAKER_02: Like that's a lot to be able to tell parents yeah and I think that's where he is and it makes me feel very happy that we had that we have that relationship that is I mean that's communication you know it is it's communication and have the girls have a lot of the girls read it all the players yeah yeah I mean I I think they are mostly just you know it's cool there's a book about them and uh and to be honest with you for Aaron to be cool with it and go on a podcast with you and stuff like that that's only gonna help his recruiting agree I think I think it's a recruiting tool that he can use.
• 1:12:48
  SPEAKER_02: If somebody reads that book and goes I don't want my kid playing for that guy well they shouldn't be playing for that guy.
• 1:12:54
  SPEAKER_02: Right because he's one of the good ones.
• 1:12:56
  SPEAKER_02: The truth is he is like I like the the thing is there really are toxic horrible coaches in college.
• 1:13:01
  SPEAKER_02: And if your kid is going to be with you do you do not I mean I as I said I have a relative who's who's playing who's committing to to uh D1 and uh like when Scott was committing I was just like desperate that she get a play in college like I wanted her to ful fulfill her dream.
• 1:13:21
  SPEAKER_02: With this kid I'm like desperate that she not get into a toxic environment because that will ruin your life you are you are still very young very impressionable very susceptible you are going into a basically a teen cult whether it's a good cult or a bad cult your whole life is there.
• 1:13:38
  SPEAKER_02: And if that coach is a creep watch out like you you better get into the portal before you lose your mind like so I'm I'm like Aaron is a best case scenario for sure really good guy you know uh not toxic.
• 1:13:55
  SPEAKER_02: I said to Scout you know for all the you know times you were mad at Aaron or all the times that you wanted I said you were never afraid of him and she goes no I was never afraid of him I wanted to impress him desperately that I was never afraid to me that's the that was that's the end all be all wanna be afraid of a guy feel some of some coaches want their players to be scared of them.
• 1:14:19
  SPEAKER_00: They certainly want parents to be scared of them.
• 1:14:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah well and I was scared of my own shadow right that's what's so that's what's kind of so rewarding about this conversation with Aaron because I was so desperate not to be the parent who was like saying anything positive about like trying to get points for my daughter that he would come up and just say hi at a like a parent picnic and I'd be like changing the subject to like 16th century French art just just so I wouldn't slip out something like well Scout's pretty fast or like I don't know I was always thought I was about to like say something a fo like a Freudian slip to make it look like I was you know trying to curry favor with him.
• 1:14:55
  SPEAKER_02: So it was really nice to just be able to talk to him about the whole experience.
• 1:14:58
  SPEAKER_02: Are you writing anything now?
• 1:15:00
  SPEAKER_02: Are you working on anything?
• 1:15:01
  SPEAKER_02: No I've written a little sequel to the book I don't know if you've read the sequel the sequel's just a chapter because you know the book leaves off it's a little bit of a cliffhanger.
• 1:15:09
  SPEAKER_02: It leaves off after the junior year.
• 1:15:10
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 1:15:11
  SPEAKER_02: I wrote the senior year story.
• 1:15:13
  SPEAKER_02: I'll send you that yes please maybe you could put it in the show notes or something.
• 1:15:16
  SPEAKER_02: But uh it's it's it's it's kind of it's called how to make an ending happy um and it's about how we went into our senior year going sitting on this porch a lot saying how do we make this this has to end happily we didn't you didn't live your 20 years playing soccer to have this end bitterly in in some shitty rainy game in Oxford Ohio and feel like it all came to nothing how do you go into your senior year determined to have fun determined to to bond with your teammates determined no matter how the season ends and the season's probably going to end badly they they usually do.
• 1:15:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:15:53
  SPEAKER_02: How are you going to make this because all this stuff if you're gonna commit this much time and and energy to your whole childhood to this it has to be the foundation for the rest of your life like you have to be able to build on it.
• 1:16:07
  SPEAKER_02: And so we spent the whole summer talking about that and it turned out to be a very difficult season and you'll you'll see how it ends.
• 1:16:14
  SPEAKER_02: But so I I don't know what I'm writing next.
• 1:16:17
  SPEAKER_02: I've got a few other book ideas but um right now I'm just kind of coming down from you know a few months of this book tour and there's more to do and um and I'm I'm kind of seeing where that goes like there's conferences to go speak at you're you're exploring this world yourself and uh I think this conversation in this country is really taking off and people are really getting I mean I think it's kind of taking over it's a big conversation right now about youth sports.
• 1:16:44
  SPEAKER_00: You should come to uh I was just there uh the North American Soccer Expo it's in Novi Michigan right outside of Detroit yeah that would be I think I'll talk to the the guys that put it on try to get you out there next year.
• 1:16:59
  SPEAKER_02: I would love that I would love to speak and and talk to people are you thinking about adding like another chapter of like life after soccer dad well I am I'm not thinking about that I should probably be taking some notes on that um I kind of I'm of a couple minds on that I've been telling people that this is really weird having she so scout moved back to Chicago but she's living in an apartment I our whole family always scattered.
• 1:17:24
  SPEAKER_02: So having a having my buddy Scout in town and having her in an apartment and having us coming over for dinner once a week wanting to go out for beers on a Monday night like am I are we supposed to be doing that all I don't know so uh so I haven't figured that out but I and so I do feel kind of feel like this is uh I'm I'm like experiencing something and learning something about this next phase of parenting that I didn't feel very prepared for uh but in another sense like stop writing about my childhood dad can I just like live my life like I like has she read it she's oh yeah she's read it she's approved and she's got gone on a bunch of these podcasts with me and and she's she's into it and I think I think she was kind of I think it must be confusing and cool for her to see her life written for strangers and have those strangers have an emotional reaction to it.
• 1:18:17
  SPEAKER_02: Like that's probably pretty healthy actually to figure out how other people see your life uh at that age like you're trying to figure out who you are and what how you represent in the world and what the world thinks of you.
• 1:18:27
  SPEAKER_02: So I feel like that's a good exercise but am I just gonna stalk her for the rest of her life writing writing about how I feel about it.
• 1:18:34
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 1:18:34
  SPEAKER_02: It seems like I should give her a break is she a good writer she's a good she's a solid writer.
• 1:18:40
  SPEAKER_02: She's a solid writer she's she wants to be a shrink she wants to be a psychologist.
• 1:18:44
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 1:18:44
  SPEAKER_02: And I say well why don't you be a sports psychologist because you know how to do it and you know what it's like not enough of those and she goes I don't want to just talk to neurotic athletes all the time.
• 1:18:53
  SPEAKER_02: But I think I get that I get it too but I think you know when she gets her degree she's going to grad school when she gets her degree she's gonna figure out what the world wants from her and if the world wants her to talk to kids about what it's like to you know talk to help kids through this she'll probably end up doing that.
• 1:19:09
  SPEAKER_02: So we'll see.
• 1:19:10
  SPEAKER_02: How often do you like actually go downtown um well more now that she's down there but um not that often like I I stay in these I kind of stay in the these streets.
• 1:19:21
  SPEAKER_02: These yeah I stay around here and then go down there whenever there's a reason and every once in a while if if it's been a while I'm like my God this city's fantastic it's my favorite city like I just live in this little neighborhood and then you go my god I can go to the beach I could go to the beach today.
• 1:19:36
  SPEAKER_02: There's a bar at Montrose Beach tonight I could just decide I'm gonna ride my motorcycle over to Montrose and have a beer at on the beach at a bar why why am I not doing that six six days out of seven I don't know take it for granted what is it like in the winter here like are you guys just like stuck inside I run can you drive yeah you could drive yeah you could drive it's it's very flat here do you have to do you have to like uh are you allowed to park on the street during the winter yeah you can park but I have a garage but yeah you can park on the street and you gotta scrape your car off the snow off your car and stuff like that.
• 1:20:07
  SPEAKER_02: You know you're a Michigander.
• 1:20:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah but um no and I I run out I run I do four mile run every winter and or every day in the winter and it's just a nightmare like it's just like yes like sometimes you you try to run four miles but you run six because you can't stock on the ice there's a dad joke for you there's a soccer dad joke for you.
• 1:20:28
  SPEAKER_02: I love it anyway.
• 1:20:29
  SPEAKER_02: Oh man thanks for doing this where can where can everybody find your blog uh it's writing boots writing hyphen boots okay s dot com um and there's a link to the where you can buy the book there and you could buy the book anywhere else at Amazon borders or not borders uh borders is Michigan uh Barnes and Noble all everybody closed I know and I was a Michigan that was like Ann Arbor was I think the original borders really or Detroit yeah it was a Michigan I didn't know that was only a Michigan thing it started in Michigan I think it went national but yeah Michigan claims borders yeah and obviously Amazon and you said Barnes and Noble yeah Barnes and Noble anywhere you can buy books you could buy it and there's an audible version too and that's my big fantasy my big my the thing I the idea I love the most is picture this you've got a ninth grade girl who's playing soccer or eighth grade and she's on the cusp of going into this machine and she and her parents are driving to Kansas City for a for a tournament and they've got six hours in the car.
• 1:21:33
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's only a three and a half hour read and they listen to it and they experience it together.
• 1:21:38
  SPEAKER_02: Now there's a couple F bombs in there this some salty talk but it's family friendly and I just I just would think a a whole family like sharing this experience and then being able to talk about it you know for years and be like we don't want to do like that like that idiot did or we don't want to you know remember what he said about that I just feel like it would be a great shared reality for a family where can they find the audible it's also on Amazon.
• 1:22:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's also on Amazon yeah I've noticed that on Spotify now there are like free audio well I I pay may maybe it's only for the premium members or whatever but there are audio books on Spotify now and I'm like yeah yeah I think there are and I don't know if uh I I don't know how Audible works like I go straight to audible on my phone to and I download books from Audible okay so you can go to audible and find it or you can order the audible on Amazon but it's a it's a nice listen I like somehow I actually I had a wonderful engineer and it like it's it's a nice book to listen to did you read um or do you read more now hardcover or are you more audible?
• 1:22:46
  SPEAKER_02: I'm listening to uh both both I usually like on my runs I'm listening to an audible book and then at night I'm reading a hardcover book.
• 1:22:54
  SPEAKER_02: Is it the same book?
• 1:22:55
  SPEAKER_00: No my sister yeah my sister cheats so she she commutes like an hour to work to and from and uh so she'll listen to the book and then she'll go to the library and and get the hardcover.
• 1:23:08
  SPEAKER_00: So when she's at home she's reading the hardcover and then when she's in the car she just picks up on chapter seven yeah she gets like 70 books in a year it's unbelievable.
• 1:23:18
  SPEAKER_02: It's fantastic.
• 1:23:19
  SPEAKER_02: It's smart it's good to have the hardcover like when I'm listening to a book that I love I get frustrated because I'm like ah I want the hardcover because I want to turn down pages I want to circle things I want to write stuff down and so sometimes I'll buy the hardcover for that reason.
• 1:23:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah yeah absolutely but yeah thank you so much thank you for coming this has been a great conversation I've enjoyed it yeah I mean and it's just just again actually I think you're my first soccer parent that's not a like a soccer coach as well and it's like just a perspective just a total idiot it's what a what an opportunity I mean a lot of parents want to come on but they're like you can't air it they just want to talk to me yeah because they're worried in the middle of it they're still in the middle of it they're worried about repercussions or their kid getting punished or something like that because of something that they said and this is why I didn't publish this until Scott was out of school like this wasn't going to come out while she was still playing because I didn't want any I didn't want to mess up her career or her relationships with her coaches or her teammates whatsoever.
• 1:24:30
  SPEAKER_02: Do you think it would have yeah I do I think because Aaron's initial reaction Aaron's initial reaction he would have had to process all that while she's still playing I don't know what he I don't think Aaron wouldn't have benched her like he's a good he's he's a smart coach who's trying like I don't know what the repercussions were but there could have been there could have been you got we got a player who doesn't you know one of your teammates you're having a bad time with your teammate she you know like you just don't know and you don't as a parent you don't want to screw your kid up if people want to write a book how how would they do it how do you think like they're not part of a publishing company and they're just like they want to write a book do you write first and then try to just sell it kind of like kind of like a movie script it depends it depends there's a bunch of different ways to do it the the best way to do it is to write a treat what's called a treatment and you can look up the formats for treatments which is basically like here's here's a summary of the book and here are two chapter here are the first two chapters and then you can try to find an agent or you can go to a hybrid because an agent you need an agent to get to a real publisher then you or you can go to a hybrid publisher where you kind of spend some of the money and they kind of spend some of the money but they help you publish it which there's a lot of stuff that a hybrid publisher does that you don't know how to do in terms of distribu distribution and marketing and everything else.
• 1:25:53
  SPEAKER_02: And and or you can self-publish and just say I'm gonna sell it that's what a lot of people are doing.
• 1:25:58
  SPEAKER_02: And you know that is if you're trying to get something down and distribute it to friends and family and other soccer players and coaches and you especially if you have like a you know you you do public speaking and you can distribute in way ways that's fine that's great.
• 1:26:15
  SPEAKER_02: It's it gets it done um but it's just you know if you're trying to sell thousands and thousands of copies it is a it is a hell of a it's a hell of a job promoting a book anyway.
• 1:26:26
  SPEAKER_02: Like it's as much work promoting a book as it is writing it.
• 1:26:29
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 1:26:30
  SPEAKER_00: When's the next time you have to go to DC uh October we've got our big uh world conference in October late uh late October how many people are part of that organization uh the we have about we have about 200 members it's a weird small niche world um and then we have probably about 120 of those people come to the come to the conference every year and then we've got kind of some subgroups just group just groups who of people who write for CEOs and people who write for university presidents and so we've got kind of a lookout I didn't even think uh think of that I didn't even think of that like university presidents have speech writers they have speech writers and they have just people who help them communicate so it's not speech writing is kind of a niche part of that but it's like okay you're the president of the university what do you want to say to who how do you want to present in the community who do you want who do you want to speak to what is your main message what are you good at are you good at video are you good at speeches are you good at interviewing people my job is to help you find your voice find your voice and project to the groups you want to project to it's a big cool job actually for these people especially at universities which are going through a hell of a lot of stuff right now I think it's fascinating yeah it's fun yeah thanks thank you so much Jason it's been a pleasure I hope we keep in touch and I will we will I'd love to see you at that event in Michigan yeah yeah exactly yeah we'll get you in you should look up uh the USC convention too and try to see if uh if there's any interest there okay what is usc uh united soccer coaches okay yeah uh it's in Kansas City this year okay it's in January January yep I'll look that up the one in Michigan is in it's always this the last weekend in July okay so yeah I hope our paths cross oh well yeah yeah for sure yeah cool thank you so much thank you awesome I hate soccer