Youth Sports Can Be Disgusting...

[Brian_Grasso]

I was taking a break from organizing the seminar I am presenting in Ireland later on this month and decided to flip on the television... which is odd because I NEVER do that.

I couldn’t believe what I saw...

A show called ‘Tiara Girls’ was on. It profiles the trials and tribulations of teenage girls as they prepare to compete in local beauty pageants.

This particular episode was keyed in on the preparatory timetable of a 15 year old contestant who was vying for the prize of Miss Regional Michigan. Certainly not Miss America, but important to this young lady none the less.

Now, this is not an indictment on pageants or the people who compete in them. This article is meant to illustrate to you how incredibly disastrous any type of youth-based competition truly can be when adults decide to get there greedy little hands involved.

Here’s a recap of the horror I witnessed -

- This young lady’s Mom and Dad routinely (... and I mean DAILY) called this girl fat as a means of ‘motivating’ her to lose weight.

- At one particular point in the show, Dad ordered pizza for dinner. As the family sat and ate together, Dad let lose a tirade about how fat his daughter had become and how little she ‘obviously’ cared about re-gaining a thin appearance.

- Mom didn’t like the way her daughter’s face looked, so decided to pay for lip injections as a means of ‘improving’ the girls smile. The procedure was painful, but Mom was happy with the results.

- Mom tried on several different occasions to convince her daughter that the extreme solution of dirautetics was warranted in order for her daughter to become thin.

- Dad shelled out THOUSANDS of dollars each year on pageant related necessities for his daughter... and summarily used this as leverage when berating the girl for being fat, unattractive and not ‘motivated’.

- Mom and Dad hired an ‘interview’ coach for their daughter as a means of making her ‘sharper’ for the interview portion of the pageant. The interview coach spent a few hours explaining to this young lady that she came off as ‘stupid’ and didn’t even have the skills enough ‘stand’ properly.

- At one point, the teenager had enough of the stress while her Mom was berating her for not wanting to win badly enough. Mom suggested that she re-compose herself in her room and just take a few minutes to calm down. The second the teenager was in the confines of her own room (hoping to decompress a little), Mom came charging in after her and continued the verbal assault.

I couldn’t take it anymore and decided to change the channel.

Here are the lessons I learned from the 20 minutes I watched -

- If I belittle young people long enough and play to their insecurities, I will eventually wear them down and elicit the changes that I feel are necessary for them.

- I can provide poor lifestyle conditions but still expect young people to create success in spite of them (in case you missed my sarcasm above... you want your daughter to lose weight, so you order a pizza for dinner and then berate her for having the gull to eat a slice?).

- I can put young people through physical pain so long as I get what I want out of it... even if that means destroying their self-image.

- The most effective way of teaching young people how to succeed is to suggest radical and potentially dangerous procedures or lifestyle habits.

- I can decide to make sacrifices for young people on my own accord... so long as I can use my sacrifices against them when it serves me to do so.

- It’s not about young people... it’s about me and what I can get from them.

You may be feeling said for that poor teenager and realize the life of low self-esteem she is almost surely to lead.

You may have enjoyed my satirical writing.

You may be feeling as though pageants are awful and feel terribly for the girls who compete in them.

Are you looking in the mirror though?

If you are a parent...

Does your child’s making the ‘best’ travel team in your community mean more to you or them?

If you are a coach...

Does winning this weekends baseball tournament impact your life more so than your teams?

If you are a trainer...

Does increasing your athletes’ vertical jump in 6 weeks mean that they will have a life-long skill that positively effects their sporting success and injury rate or that you will have yet another testimonial to show everyone how successful you are?
Go back and re-read every single point I referenced while watching that show. Now, take this time to change the sentences and apply them to youth soccer, baseball, hockey, football etc.

If an emotional response is generating inside of you right now, maybe it’s time you took a good look at yourself.

Feel free to let me know what you think about this article - brian@developingathletics.com

MAKE SURE YOUR SUBJECT LINE READS ‘ARTICLE’.

I will be happy to post any and all replies in my newsletter.

[Kaiser]

Great points in that article Brian. I couldn't agree with you more - see a lot of parental behavior at sporting events for 4 year olds! My first question to my kids after they play any kind of organized sport is 'Did you have fun?' Then they usually tell me about their participation (if I was not there with them) and if they scored, won, etc. I always try to play the results down and ask them if they had fun (again). If I was there and saw bad behavior (from a parent or kid) and they noted it too, I'll occassionally try to talk a bit with them about sportsmanship, what it means to them, what I think it means, etc. But I always go back to the 'fun' part, because if it isn't fun for them (at age 8 and almost 5), why are they doing it?

Well, that's my philosophy as a parent anyway. Sometimes it feels like I am in the minority though with all the Type-A parents I see pushing their kids today. It probably helps me, though, that I have a former elementary school teacher as a wife - she's a great role model for me on what to emphasize (and not) with our boys.

[Jean-Paul]

I see a lot of that pageant culture living here in the South. To a trainer with no scruples, pageant girls are easy pickin's. They are already insecure with daddy complexes, they usually have domineering hystrionic mothers who are secretly hostile that they were never beauty queens (who incidentally also want to compete for the trainers attention as well), and they have such fragile egos that you could take a girl who looks perfect in every way and tell her you could "get her in shape" and she would read off a laundry list of her flaws that need improvement. To hear them describe themselves you would think that the mere glance at them could turn someone into stone.

Early in my training career I started to get a bunch of pageant girls. Since I got good results more started showing up, and I hated training them. They were whiney, generally had pretty negative attitudes and extremely low self esteems, and their parents were unbearable. I started referring them to another trainer in town.

[Will Haskell]

I wanted to make a post immediately, but getting time with my father took precedent over all else.

I first want to state that in no aspect is this post a shot at the original post and the comments that followed.

However, I feel it is important that a few things be addressed so we can all gain greater understanding of this particular issue and hopefully other issues that bear a striking resemblance.

I hope that we all understand the simple fact that the behavior of the parents in this instance is grossly unacceptable under any circumstances. However, while our talionic impulse has us throwing our hands in the air and raising our voices in objection, are we really seeing that young lady's true parents? National television exposure, a home full of cameras, and possibly some form of compensation could easily deter "normal" parental reactions in this instance. Without question, JP's mention of the overbearing and the potential crazy mother or father that he has dealt with in the past wasn't born from the crypt of imagination. They do exist in real life.
With that being said, camera's or otherwise, it is very sad and unfortunate that a mother and father would willingly sacrifice their daughter and better judgment to play for the camera.

The production of such programs has proven to be a lucrative business in North America. Whether is contestants eating bugs, competing to become the next "Apprentice", or delving into the lives of everyday people such as this, we continue to display the lives of others and frequently question the behaviors seen on the screen because many of them defy all logic.

In this particular instance, upon viewing this segment a predictable action occurred. Brian changed the channel at no fault of his own. Our reactions tend to either shy away and remove ourselves from the unpleasant feelings these instances create. Or, we purposely seek it out either for our own benefit, or for the impact the story might have on others (i.e. United 93, Passion of the Christ). People such as Howard Stern, Paris Hilton, Tom Cruise and others, can act in such as way that could be construed as "questionable" to say the least. However, these folks are seemingly being marked by us all as they reach the height of their popularity. "We want to hear what he is going to say next", many survey responders replied when questioned about the radio personality of Howard Stern.

Is the producer's phone ringing off the hook? Are the parents inboxes, mail boxes and voicemail being bombarded with communication from people wishing to comment on this? We continue to talk amongst ourselves about this issue when the people that would benefit from a conversational conflict are currently continuing unscathed on their destructive path.

So what do we do about this? These parents aren't breaking any laws or statues meant to prevent this type of injustice. Although I'm not a huge Keanu Reeves fan, in the movie "Parenthood", his commentary on his father still rings in my head when I see these types of posts. "You need a license to drive a car, to be a doctor...yet any asshole can be a father."

Do we start licensing parents? Do we sell them a certification or DVD/e-book combo at a special "one-time-only" price? Even if education is the answer, would this particular set of parents be willing to sit at a seminar that exposes them being a bad mother or father?

Personally, I have no greater solution to this problem, just insight. I'm sure many would like to just punch this father in the face, slap the mom around a little in the hopes that we could knock some sense into them. Government officials may introduce a bill to spend millions of tax dollars on some program to educate parents and hire the so-called "experts" to sit on their board.

Unfortunately, our words will still be spoken in silence. The same media that produces what we see and hear is the same media that has to be our voice on these issues.

To anyone who reads this post. Thank you for your time.

Will Haskell
Athletic Development Specialist
will@tsanorthwest.com

[Brian Grasso]

Will emailed this post to me in order to alert my attention to it... Thanks Will!

Will... by the sound of your first few paragraphs, you've been listening to/reading either Jim Labadie or Randy Gage!

I enjoyed Will's post. I don't however, agree with the general statements at the bottom. Mostly, because I don't feel powerless at all against the media, the 'man' or anyone else.

Revolutions are started when internal outcries' become too loud to bare. That is exactly why the IYCA was created with respect to youths and sport/fitness/activity.

What started as a certification company intended on 'showing the light' to a handful of trainers who would listen, has evolved (very quickly I might add) into an international unit of likeminded people working towards a common cause.

The passion and unity demonstrated by the people who have come into the IYCA family is something I would never have dreamed upon start up 4 years ago. Out of nowhere, we have Canadian, New Zealand, African and European IYCA Operation Managers leading various charges in their parts of the world.

Call me crazy/nuts/a dreamer... you pick the appropriate adjective. But the people who DON'T want to hear this message WILL in fact hear this message is due time.

Revolutions are created in such a way. George Washington was 'crazy' according to many (as were the rest of the Founding Fathers). They were an insignificant 'pain in the ass' to the monarchy of Great Britain... until they decided with 100% conviction that their voices WOULD be heard.

I do not have the answers of how... those will present themselves in time. All I know for certain is the fact... a revolution is warranted, needed and will be heard.

Sometimes (and this is a lesson I had to experience many times before I understood it). Searching for the 'how's' of a solution is not nearly as critical as being convicted in your determination to get it done. Amazing things happen when you open yourself up to the energy that flows through our universe.

It's when the seeds of searching for the answer swim through your head that you are farthest away from the solution. Just KNOW you will make a change and live your life passionate about the cause... the solution(s) will present themselves.

Sappy post, I know... but 100% how I feel.

Will... great intellectual insight as always. I've come to expect that from you every time.

Sincerely,


Brian