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Youth Inc. with Greg Olsen
Fixing Youth Sports: Tom Farrey on Accessibility, Participation, and Real Solutions
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- [00:00]
A
Hey, everyone, Greg Olson here. If you're just listening, you're missing half the experience. Head over to the Youthink YouTube channel right now for daily must see content that is made specifically for parents, coaches, and athletes. Now sit back and enjoy the episode. On today's episode of Youth, Inc. We are joined by Tom Ferry. Tom is the executive director of the Aspen Institute's Sports and Society program, which aims to create solutions that that can help sports serve the public interest. Tom gives insights on how America stacks up against other countries in youth sports participation and accessibility. We also discuss the commercialization of sport, what we can do to fix our model, and more. Whether you're an athlete ready to push your limits, a parent looking to support your child, or a coach helping to guide the way, this episode has the insights you need. Join us as we break down the next steps to building the best youth sports experience for our young athletes.
- [00:59]
B
So, Tom, why did you dedicate, you know, so much of your professional time and all of your intellect prowess to youth sport?
- [01:08]
C
Yeah, look, I was an ESPN reporter for 20 years, investigative reporter, outside lines, E60, this kind of thing. And for a long time, I basically put people in the hot seat and, you know, use critical thinking to, like, lay out the problems of sport in our society. And I kind of got to the point where I wanted to help solve them. And the problem that I wanted to solve first and foremost is the one I saw right in front of me. I was raising kids. Three kids. Boy, girl, boy. And my kid was playing. I remember, you know, he's like. He's like 6 years old. Or my daughter was 6 years old, and she was playing on a team with girls who are in their ninth season of soccer at that point, because they've been playing three seasons a year since age four. Right, Greg?
- [01:55]
B
And I just looked at it.
- [01:56]
C
I.
- [01:56]
A
Doing the math, I was like, wait.
- [01:57]
B
How does this work?
- [01:59]
A
Time traveling?
- [02:00]
C
Yeah. No, three seasons a year.
- [02:02]
A
I mean, you're not playing three seasons of soccer. You're not committed.
- [02:05]
B
Mike, you are falling behind.
- [02:06]
A
You got to get with it.
- [02:07]
C
And now it's four seasons a year, you know, a year for these kids. So I'm like, whoa, how did this. I mean, how does this happen? Because, like, I played sports as a kid, I played organized sports. I think I slipped on a uniform for the first time when I was 7 or 8 years old. And even after, I played a variety of sports, but even after that, much of my childhood was unstructured. Free play, making up games with my friends down at the park, hopping on my bike, coming back at sunset. A lot of us, you know, had this kind of experience, like, how did this happen? Just in one generation, we went from that to this. And so I just went down this hard rabbit hole and talked to a lot of people, tried to understand how our sport ecosystem got built the way it did. I looked at the policies, the practices, the partnerships, the key institutions. I traveled to six or seven countries and said, okay, how is their sports system set up? And I'm like, wow, all right, now I know all this stuff. And I did the lecture tour. And people would say, well, thank you for telling us how we got into this mess. Now how do we get out of it? And that's when my interest shifted from breaking down the problem to working with the Aspen Institute and creating these roundtables and having the fortune to talk to guys like you about, how do we fix this? And once you. Once you have that opportunity, it's a very hard thing to walk away from.
- [03:30]
A
So how did we get into it? So give us the Cliff Notes version of what that speaking circuit looked like when you were informing all these policymakers. And everyone's like, hey, in one generation, here's how we went from what you described that we all kind of grew up in, to now what my kids are going through, which is vastly different. What is the Cliff Notes version? How did we end up in this spot where, like, commercialization and private privatization of youth sports is now entering into elementary school?
- [03:56]
C
Yeah, well, there's no one. Cause, of course, things are complex. We're talking about an entire system here. But a couple big things that happened were Title IX became enforced. So Title IX was signed into law in 1972, but really wasn't enforced until the mid to late 80s. Once it was enforced, then schools had to create opportunities for girls playing sports. So it began to push more kids into the space. And it got parents thinking, particularly on the girls side, about college scholarships, the thing that could, you know, the payoff down the road, number one. Number two, ESPN or Disney created the Wide World of Sports out of Orlando. That was the first megacility. That is what opened the door to all of this youth sports tourism. And people are like, whoa, there's a lot of money rolling through the idea.
- [04:46]
B
I never even thought about Disney.
- [04:48]
C
Yeah. And now we've got these megacilities.
- [04:49]
A
They're everywhere.
- [04:50]
C
Everywhere, Right. Yeah. Right. So those are two big reasons.
- [04:53]
A
Interesting. So that's where, like, the commercialization saying, hey, youth sports no longer is just about the betterment and improvement and development of young kids. We can actually make a business model around that versus the traditional model. Even when I was growing up was parks and rec, church leagues, YMCA pals, boys and girls clubs, like it was all like youth centers. They weren't necessarily private businesses running tournaments and events and camps and all.
- [05:20]
C
Yeah, exactly. And you know, as the privatized recreation space began to mature, we had situations like the 2008, you know, economic crisis, which gutted city budgets. So park and recs programs, the local.
- [05:38]
B
Low cost programs, that's, that's where club would have that.
- [05:41]
C
So they got out of the programming business and those fields were now rented out to the local clubs. Right. And so during that recession and even during COVID the travel environment didn't slow down, but the privatized local low cost stuff got hurt.
- [05:58]
B
So with those three elements and then you've got the race or the race to nowhere. What's that phrase that like the just.
- [06:05]
C
Race to the bottom.
- [06:06]
B
I guess the bottom is what I was looking for. And we've got a real intensity in the way that we compete with each other for attention in the modern world. Now what would you give the grade for youth sport in America?
- [06:26]
C
Well, we actually did give a grade and I would base it upon first and foremost the participation rate we looked at last fall. We look at the world's leading sports Systems, looked at 12 countries and how they set up their sports system. We looked in several different categories. How well do they do it? Creating elite athletes or Olympic champions and this type of thing, Number one. Number two, what is the level of government support? I mean, you know, funding and policies and structure. And the third thing is just the other real outcome, which is like how many kids are playing sports. And so in this country it was when we made that evaluation, it was about 51% according to the federal government. And so that merits a C grade. I might even be in a C minus. I have to double check.
- [07:12]
B
51% of the US population ages 6.
- [07:16]
C
To 17 play an organized sport in some form or another according to their parents. And that's a C that, that correlates.
- [07:23]
A
To what's an A? Like what. When you looked at these 12 countries, what's at the top of the list? Like what does great participation look like?
- [07:28]
C
Norway. More than 90 of kids in, in Norway come through clubs, play sports. It's just baked into the, the way they have set up their, their ecosystem there. And oh, and by the way, they also create a lot of elite athletes.
- [07:41]
B
They do it for a small country.
- [07:42]
C
They kill it in the in the Winter Olympics kill Olympic athletes. But even, even in the, even in the summer sports. I mean, Erling Holland. I mean some of the top soccer players in the world and the male side are from Norway now doing a.
- [07:55]
B
Nice job in trock and field.
- [07:56]
A
We're Norwegian. Oh, no big deal.
- [07:57]
C
There you go.
- [07:58]
A
Norwegian. The big Olsen with an e. Oh, it's Sweden. We'll get into that. We'll get into my lineage at another later date. But. So. Yes, but isn't it. It's hard for me to believe though in a, in a country that just seems so sports crazy. Whether it's just as fans and how popular our professional leagues are and college sports are and how, how we just consume live sports. I mean I have to imagine it's, it's up there with anywhere in the country maybe aside from some of those soccer crazy nations. And Mikey.
- [08:29]
C
No, we're number one by far. We are the largest sports market in the world.
- [08:33]
A
So how are we such a large sports market with a middle of the road. We'll call it C grade. As far as participation. Doesn't interest in sport typically drive participation?
- [08:44]
C
Yes. The data shows that, that a child who plays sports is 6.4 times, according to ESPN's research, 6.4 times more likely to become an avid fan of that sport. You know.
- [08:57]
A
Yeah.
- [08:57]
C
You know, the avid fan is what you chase and that is the, that's. That's the person who floats the energy.
- [09:02]
A
That's why all the soccer MLS clubs all have those feeder minorly not minor, but like youth organizations like in Charlotte when, when Charlotte FC made an expansion team to build the MLS team the, in the infrastructure. And the investment into the youth soccer scene in Charlotte was quadrupled because the idea is the more kids playing soccer, the more fans of soccer there are.
- [09:24]
B
NFL, it's correlated flag football.
- [09:26]
A
NFL flag. Yeah.
- [09:28]
B
This feels corrupted to me though. This feels like it's the exact wrong reason why we would want youth sport and the wrong funding source for it.
- [09:36]
C
Yeah.
- [09:36]
B
And of the three measures, I didn't hear the fourth one, which is like a measure or an estimate of a measure of well being, of sense of vigor, you know, sense of vitality for a person. And so even, even what I would consider the most important variable to measure was not on that list. It was, it was measured from, I don't know, some sort of economic impact as opposed to psychological.
- [09:58]
C
Right.
- [09:59]
A
It seems all economically driven.
- [10:00]
C
Yeah. I mean that's one of the reason I like, like I keep talking about Norway. It's a small country you can't really, it's not apples apples with the U.S. but you know, they really get sport right at the base. So they end up creating the top athletes, but they also have among the healthiest and happ nations in the world.
- [10:15]
A
What do they do give us an idea of like what does the sports structure of youth sports look like in Norway?
- [10:20]
C
Well, they weren't always good. That's the important thing. In the early 90s they were not winning like they want to. So the leaders of sports, again easier to do in a small country. They got back together and said we need to kind of rebuild this thing. And one of the very first things they did was create a children's Bill of Rights in sports, which is a statement that every kid in our country should have an opportunity to play sports, to play with their friends and, and should be able to develop as a human being. And love of game. They explicitly put that in there. The goal of sport for kids should be love of game. Our job is to help kids fall in love with sport and then that'll take care of itself. And then, then as kids move into the teenage years, then we're going to put them with the really good coaches and the sports scientists and we're going to turn them into the champions that they, they want to be. But we're not going to try and do that. When kids are six and eight years.
- [11:11]
A
Is there a filtering process for that? Like how do. When they get to that whatever they've declared in that athlete bill of rights is there when it gets to whatever that, you know, 15 years old, 16, whatever the cutoff is who's deciding who gets filtered in with the good coaches, who gets filtered into the academies, who gets the top level training. Is all of that regulated?
- [11:34]
C
First and foremost is the first filter is whether the child wants to do it.
- [11:38]
A
Okay.
- [11:38]
C
If the child wants to be. It's not China. It's not China. Where exactly? That's a, that's a.
- [11:44]
A
But that's real.
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B
I mean I'm asking black world jokes different.
- [11:47]
A
The old Soviet Union, it was just you, you didn't have a choice.
- [11:49]
C
You were, you were right.
- [11:50]
A
It was pre.
- [11:52]
C
Right. Right. We tend to conflate these countries Socialist, communist. But there's a significant difference in terms of how China has gone about their support system. And the Scandinavian countries have. In the Scandinavian country, all of it is like vote. Like the Children's Bill of Rights support. It was all voted on by the national governing bodies, by the Olympic Committee, by representatives from the states. So they create a Consensus around what they want sport to be and then they put the policies in place to support it. It's not Cherry picking a 4 and a 5 and a 10 year old to get into something called the Confederation of Sports.
- [12:27]
A
Is that like a bureaucracy? Is that an element of the federal government?
- [12:30]
C
Yep. So you got like the Olympic Committee, you've got their national governing bodies, you've got the states. And sitting on top of that is something called the Confederation. It reports into the actual government. We don't have a structure like that here in the us we have the Olympic Committee, which has been basically told by Congress you need to be kind of our sports ministry. We've kind of outsourced it to the.
- [12:50]
B
Usopc and it's completely amateur in our, in our country.
- [12:55]
C
Yeah.
- [12:56]
B
So I've worked across four Olympic Games supporting teams. And most of them, by the time they get to the Games, they're kind of broke. So we are cheering every four years or two years, depending on whether it's winter or summer for the young, most vibrant humans on the planet representing our country. And they don't have any money, they're broke. And so it. And that's not the case internationally.
- [13:22]
C
No.
- [13:23]
B
And so it is.
- [13:24]
A
But it's only the case for that in America for certain sports. Right.
- [13:27]
B
Well, we need to take basketball off the table.
- [13:31]
A
Is that the only Olympic sport where America has professionals basketball?
- [13:35]
B
Probably hockey. I think soccer, but I don't know.
- [13:39]
C
There are other.
- [13:39]
B
Soccer's not in the Olympic Games.
- [13:41]
C
Yeah, it's gonna be under 23. They've generally gone to more of a professional title. But you're right, they do not. We do not subsidize the training of our athletes a little bit with stipends a little bit. But it's really, really hard.
- [13:53]
B
Yeah, it's a hard go.
- [13:54]
A
They're just surviving off endorsement dollars. Right?
- [13:56]
B
That's exactly. And. And in some sports, like whatever the winnings and the prizes are, but it's not enough to keep you alive. So it's mostly endorsements. And the challenge for these athletes is that they're only interested in three and a half years, you know, out of a quad. So every three and a half years they're relevant. And so it's really tough.
- [14:16]
A
That's interesting.
- [14:16]
C
Yeah. And that impacts the access question too. So when you look at the winter sports, which are overwhelmingly dominated by white athletes who are from upper income families, it's in part because like lower income kids can't afford these sports or the training that goes into it. So we we end up pushing aside a lot of kids in a lot of sports now because they just simply can't afford the, the training, certainly the training to become an Olympian and represent your country.
- [14:46]
B
And where the Nordic countries have that solved because there's a right to be able to access whatever the sport is of their choice.
- [14:53]
C
Well, what's interesting about the Nordic countries, or at least Norway is, is within the children bill of rights in sports. Not just sort of like a statement, they have policy that backs it. So I know this is sound like a completely wild idea, but there are no national championships before the age of 14. There are no regional championships before the age of 11. And they do that so that these parents and these clubs don't try to create little super teams to win national championships at 8 and 10 and 12, which structurally pushes aside, you know, kids from homes.
- [15:24]
A
Right. And again and again, not to get overly political, there's no way that would fly in America. Right. In a capitalist society, the idea that you can't go into the open market and create a tournament, an opera, a volleyball tournament, a baseball, perfect game, whatever it is, that you can't operate a free business that people can choose voluntarily whether they enter their tournament, you would never be able to outlaw any of that.
- [15:47]
C
Yeah, you got to be, you got.
- [15:48]
A
To have certain parameters as far as what your government is allowed and not allowed to do. In order to pull something like that off.
- [15:53]
C
We need to create a youth centered sport ecosystem that serves all in reflects Americans appreciation of sport. Because I think most Americans would tell you, yeah, every kid should have an opportunity to play sport.
- [16:09]
B
Unless. Wait, let me interrupt. Unless your kid is in the bottom third, you probably know this data. If your kid is in the bottom third, let's say it's school, okay? Not a club or not, not a high level team. If they're in the bottom third of sport and they're forced to play, it's really hard for kids in the U.S. bullying, self esteem, low confidence. It's really hard for those kids.
- [16:35]
C
Yeah.
- [16:35]
B
So I interrupt you for a specific reason to say like I'm not sure everybody that has been bullied through their experience, I'm not sure anybody that has been bullied as a kid because of the way that their body felt or the way what they couldn't do in sport because they were just bad at it, that they would say everybody should be in sport.
- [16:56]
A
This episode of you think is brought to you by Players Health, a company that believes youth athletes deserve the safest and the most accessible environments possible to play the sports, they love. To break this down, I spoke with Tyre Burkes, Players Health's founder and CEO, to hear the mission and principles of Players Health firsthand. We have a really special guest, the founder of Players Health, Tyree Burks. Tyre, thanks for joining us here on youthink. I'd love to just hear a little bit about your background, a little bit about starting and founding of Players Health, and really just why you saw a hole in the youth sports kind of world that you thought needed to be filled, and it is being filled by your work with your team at Players Health.
- [17:39]
D
My background and where I grew up, the environment that I grew up in played a huge part of me creating Players Health. I grew up in the south side of Chicago. Sports truly saved my life. And when I say that, like, I had an opportunity to choose two paths. Either it was the streets or sports. And fortunately enough, I chose sports. I was invited to come out to a youth football practice. I showed up early and I stayed late, and it kept me out of the streets. And so there's been two things that I've been obsessed with. You know, the past, call it 15 years of my, call it professional career as I've been, I've been focused on safety and I've been focused on sports. Like, I've just been obsessed with those things. I know what it feels like to grow up in an environment where safety is a luxury and sports was a safe place for me through that experience. I had all these injuries growing up. I had. I got three bulging discs in my neck. I ended up tearing my hamstrings, broken fingers, ligaments. You know, just playing sports and playing football, we didn't have athletic trainers. Growing up with a school I went to, and then until I went to the college level, I really didn't understand policies and protocols around how these things are managed. And so when I look back over my career, I ended up playing in the Canadian Football League for a couple years, and I decided to hang it up. I started to reflect on my career and go, hey, half these injuries would have been managed a lot better when I was younger. Like, who knows what would have happened, but maybe I would have played a lot longer. And so I started to look at the impact that I wanted to make in my life and also in the world. And sports was such a played a huge role in my life, so I wanted to give back to it. And players helping was my way of going about doing that. And so our mission has been the same mission since day one, which is how do we create the safest environment for an athlete to play the sport that they love. I think this is something that the world needs for our youth. And so we've been focused on leaning into creating those safe spaces here at.
- [19:26]
A
You think we want to bring value to you, the parents, coaches, the athletes listening in everything that we do. Check out players health today and let them know Youth Inc. Sent you. Now back to the episode with all that being said. All right, so now, okay, let's get. Now you said your, your big transition now is getting to not only identifying the problem and you did a great job kind of laying out those points and it's actually very fascinating to hear it broken down. What's your message to the parents? Right. So at the end of the day, the parents control the journey, especially up to a certain age before the kids have the autonomy to start making their own decisions. Call it high school age. Anything below that, this is a parent driven journey. What is the message to the parents? To try to help kind of re correct this and kind of bring things back to reality a little bit. As you said, as it's gotten so commercialized, so privatized and kind of off the rails.
- [20:18]
C
Yeah. I don't spend a whole lot of time in my work blaming parents. Are there crazy parents? Absolutely. Nut job parents? Yeah, we've seen them, you know, but I come in from the perspective of most parents. They love their kids and they want the best for their kids and they're just responding to what's given to them and they don't know how to make educated decisions for their kids. They don't know what quality athletic development looks like. They don't. Your kids are so lucky. You know what kind of influences they need to have at 6 and 8 and 10 and 12. I mean, you're the very best agent for your kids, but a lot of kids don't have that. Their parents are just guessing. And so they're presented with this model of more, more, more travel, travel, travel, spend, spend, spend, just to kind of keep your kid in the system. And so it's hard. It's really. Let's acknowledge that it's really, really hard.
- [21:10]
B
I think it's.
- [21:11]
C
And that parents alone can't do this for me too.
- [21:14]
A
It's hard for me. It's why I started, you think, two years ago.
- [21:16]
B
Yeah. So I'm not, I'm not removed from that challenge. Neither am I. I've been in Pro Sport for 25 years and you've been in your whole life.
- [21:23]
A
I don't have a lot of the answers.
- [21:25]
B
Yeah. So this. I, I, I really appreciate that you brought that up because it's very muddled, and I can't imagine with what everything that I do know about what it takes to invest to be your very best.
- [21:36]
C
Yeah.
- [21:37]
B
And I'm still like that. This isn't right, but there's like, I'll, I'll see behaviors from coaches and, and other parents, and I know that that's, it's off center, but it's like there's an inertia there that it's like, what are you doing?
- [21:50]
C
You know, like, I have all the work I've done on this thing. I've had three kids come through the system. Right. First one played college soccer at Babson, you know, worked out pretty well, but he also came out of college soccer with a lot of injuries. Second one didn't really play travel sports, and her body is in the best shape right now. You know, she's 25, 26 years old, hikes all the time. And, and my third one played soccer just like his big brother did. And he came out of high school with three ACL injuries on the same knee. And so he is done with cutting and pivoting sports the rest of his life, which makes me very sad because much of my adult life has been playing basketball, squash, play a lot of beach volleyball right now, tennis. Like, the idea that he can't do that for the next 40 years makes me sad. And yet everything I know, I couldn't navigate him to age 18 in a way that avoided that. And that's in part because the coaches, I'm not blaming the coaches, but the coaches don't know about knee injury prevention techniques. They don't know how to handle when a kid does get an injury. They don't. You know, the clubs are not being held to best practice standards by the organizations that they're signed up with. So a lot of this stuff is beyond really the control of parents. And all you can do is just educate yourself in quality athletic development. Educate yourself and talk to your child. Talk to your child. What do you want? What do you want to play? What does a good experience look like to you? Is there, you know what I mean? It's. You design from your home out and, and, and just keep the end in mind that it's not really about professional sports or even college sports. It's about having a kid, you know, develop the human skills and, you know, the social skills and the mental health and the physical health and desire to be active the rest of her life, really. Keeping that forefront and understanding. That's the roi, not the scholarship.
- [23:57]
B
Great. And so insight, Great insight.
- [23:59]
A
It's super interesting. And, and, and the fact, I think what you brought up is super interesting because I think there is an element where I think there's a lot of parents, and at times I probably throw myself into this, into this bucket. I think there's a lot of parents that don't necessarily want to take the path they're taking, but they look around and they see no reasonable alternative. And they say, I don't love it. I don't love specialization. I don't love traveling out of town every weekend. But. But my kid loves playing this sport. There's no real other opportunity to do it at the level. So there's like a keeping up with the Joneses effect. Right. And then it just, it kind of snowballs. It's okay. Your kid wants to play on this team. The expectation, if you're going to be on this team, you better be good. So what do you do in your off days? You go get private coaching. You do private workouts and private lessons, because if you don't, you can't be on that team. And then so it just keeps snowballing and snowballing. I think if you ask parents, pause. Are you doing this because you feel like you have no other alternative? Are you doing this because you really, in your heart think this is the best path? I think their answer, if they're being honest, was, we don't want to do this, but we don't know what else to do. Everyone else is doing it, so we're just doing what they're doing.
- [25:11]
C
100. Yeah. You're afraid, like, you just.
- [25:13]
A
You don't know who the one starting it.
- [25:15]
B
I don't want to fall behind.
- [25:16]
A
You don't want to. Everyone's fearful their kids falling behind. And, and if you find out your neighbors down the street are doing three days a week of private shooting practices and they made the top team in travel basketball, okay. It looks like that's the path to making that basketball team. My kid says he wants to make it. We're going to do the same thing. Yeah, I don't want to, but I will.
- [25:34]
C
Yeah. Yeah. It's like the bullet train. You feel like the bullet train is leaving the station at age 8 and you're either going to put your kid on it or they're going to miss out on all the benefits that sports.
- [25:42]
B
And I think most people recognize that if you are a little League pitcher into the World Series, Little League pitcher that that means something. And what we understand is that what that means is that you are a youth, great kid. You're a great pitcher as a, as a kid.
- [26:02]
A
Correct.
- [26:03]
B
It does not mean you're going to make it to the Pros.
- [26:05]
A
If elite 12 year olds meant elite athletes, every kid in the Little League World Series, every kid who was the dominant seventh grade football player that the NFL would now Adrian Peterson was a dominant seventh grade football player. He was a dominant twelfth grade football player. And he's. There's always the exceptions. LeBron James for 99.9% of the families. Those are not the paths that you're even remark. You're even remotely trying to simulate that that does not apply to anyone's kid. That you can almost like carte blanche. They say that across the board. For the amount of people who that path applies to, it's not even worth even really considering that.
- [26:42]
C
And that's why I'm grateful to you, Craig. I don't want to like go hard, too hard down this path, but like you deserve a lot of credit because athletes, former athletes, have incredible credibility. When you talk about the value of multi sport play or you don't have to specialize early or here's what you want from your coaches. You have a voice that no one else does. Parents will listen to athletes like you. So I, you know my thoughts, like how do we bring, how do we basically clone you and like package this stuff in a way that parents get it from all angles and so they know what to ask of their local program. Like hey coaches, or what do you train? Are you trained in this, this and this? Like hey, do you like multi sport play? Do you support my kid at age 10 playing multiple. You know, I mean, I think void. I think athletes can play a huge role.
- [27:33]
B
You know where I agree double down on that. There's not a critical mass at this point of former elite athlete saying what you're suggesting. And my experience with youth coaches is they tend to say the right thing, but then their actions are very different. So you know, the system is supporting a single sport at this point, which makes it really tricky.
- [27:55]
C
Yeah.
- [27:55]
B
And then there's the mental health side of things. Right. Do you have any data that, that is interesting to you about mental health and sports that you pay attention to?
- [28:03]
C
Yeah, I don't have it off the top of my head on the numbers, but it, the research is clear that kids who, who move their body do better in terms of mental health. It just, it just you, the brain works better if you're moving your body than you are sitting in your inert. If you're moving your body and you're doing it with other people now, you get the social benefits. And so you deal with the social isolation and some of the problems we see in our society right now. So all this talk about how we're going to address the mental health crisis. Oh, and by the way, you know what happens when kids are playing sports? They're not holding a phone. You actually take it out of their hand.
- [28:43]
A
We've talked about this a lot today. I never have to remind my kids to play video games.
- [28:48]
C
Right. So, like, if you want to address the mental health crisis in this country, my thought is like, can we, can we have some huge national call to action around both of making sport accessible to every kid who wants to play?
- [29:00]
B
Well, both interesting. Both of our kids at schools, they don't have. They just eliminate cell phones on campus.
- [29:08]
A
Yep.
- [29:09]
B
For the entire day. No, that is a massive gift. I think all of us 100. I'd love to see that nationwide. That is a really cool movement. And then at high school. So club and high school are different. At my son's high school, they encourage that. Oh, you have to take a sport every year they encourage multiple sports. But then you get into the club system, which is a fast track to somewhere, nowhere. The bottom, maybe not, I don't know. But it's. But they. Those philosophies differ.
- [29:38]
A
I think the key to all sport achievement, the kids who improve the longest, not the fastest, not the most severe, the kids who just continue to creep up in perpetuity, just forever.
- [29:54]
B
I love the frame.
- [29:55]
A
They win.
- [29:56]
B
When you think about, if you. If we wanted to build a tall, sturdy structure, we'd have a really wide base. This is an engineering principle that's been around forever.
- [30:05]
C
Yeah.
- [30:05]
B
And when you play multiple sports, you're building a base. You're not over conditioning one grooved set of muscles. You're also adding psychologically lots of interesting reference points and experiences. Different cultures, different standards and expectations, different sophistications. There's something for the, for the parent who's listening right now. There's. This is before we get into formalized sport. Okay. So that the younger ages. There's two things that you can do if you want to help somebody get better at something. It's called formal instruction or guided discovery. Formal. Formal instruction is, let's say that I'm going to teach your kid, Greg, how to roll down a hill. Okay. Put your chin to your chest, tuck your head and then look at your belly button, kind of arch over and then roll. Okay, good, good. Do that again. Okay, come up here. Let's do it again. Now this time, keep your arms in and roll. Okay, so formal instruction, they will get better, faster. Okay, but they're missing the guided discovery. And so the guide to discovery is you offer a suggestion to somebody and you say, hey, let's roll down this. You go first. Now, this is not supposed to be a dangerous thing, but sometimes it is. Okay, and then what's going to happen to that kid? They're going to roll sideways, they're going to roll on an angle, they're going to roll backwards. They're going to try all these different dimensions, which in return creates a bigger base of reference points. Points, a bigger base of internal trust. You're getting so many different, like, sensory information from that. But that kid takes longer to get good. But they'll stay longer because they have all the reference points. And what do we do in the US for sure, flat out. I'm going to use the race to the bottom one more time. Formal instructor instruction over and over and over again until they burn out or blow out. So that's the scenario that if there's one little thing that the parent can hear here or the youth coach is encourage guided discovery. Encourage playing in that unknown space where you figure out and innovate and create something net new both for your brain and maybe for the industry if you stay in it long enough.
- [32:23]
A
Have you ever read talent code? Oh, yeah, that's exactly what it dives into. Like the Brazilians playing.
- [32:30]
B
Dan Coyle, right?
- [32:31]
A
Yeah, Dan, not soccer, but futsal. Thanks. My soccer aficionado over there, Mikey, off camera. But he dives into exactly that. Like, what is it about these certain hotbeds and what do they do? And he talks about futsal and deep learning and how there's no coach telling these kids they put them in a small, little concentrated environment. A lot of touches. Small ball, small field play. Figure it out. And now more from my conversation with the team at Players Health. What would you say has been probably the most impactful policy that you guys have consulted on? You've been part of the conversation implementing and. And kind of outlining, like, was it the concussion stuff? Is there something else? Like, where is there one conversation and big movement that you guys have been a part of that you feel like has made a significant impact on the youth sports landscape?
- [33:22]
D
Yeah, I'd have to hyper focus specifically around our abuse prevention policies and the reason why I gravitate to that and not that concussions are not a big deal because they are but an incident specifically around emotional, physical, sexual abuse within a youth athlete will change their life forever. And so I always like to say that at Players Health, our focus is to make sure that the transaction between an athlete, athlete in their sports organization, we want it to be positive. We want them to be depositing good things into kids and not taking things away from them. And so when we look at abuse prevention policies, we recognize that this is a life on the line. And so when, when we look at how we prepare in credential coaches, we need to make sure that these adults are actually, you know, been credentialed before they come in contact with an athlete. And what are the signs should we be looking for around bad behavior, around communication? What are the things should we be making sure that we understand? And then do we have a reporting mechanism in place so that we, the athlete has a voice, their parents, all of the folks around that are our eyes and ears, do they now have a mechanism to communicate that this is happening? And then do we have preventative measures or temporary measures are being put in place to stop the bleeding? If we do find a behavioral issue with a coach or a staff member, have we removed them? Do we have an investigative process in place? That policy changes everything and it limits the likelihood that something that will change a life forever from happening. We only want sports to be positive, but we recognize that there are experiences that kids are having that. That are negatively impacting their lives forever. So I'd say that that's the definitely the number one policy. Health, of course, is a big focus, but I think on the safety piece, it can't get bigger than that.
- [35:19]
A
It's a shame how much is going on in the world of youth sports, but people like yourself that are passionate and companies like Players Health that are very passionate about improving the experience for all people, adults, but mostly children in youth sports. My hat's off to you, man. What you guys are building, the services and the. And the policies you guys are implementing and creating are changing the landscape of youth sports for thousands of kids all across the country. And you guys should be applauded for it. So I appreciate you joining us here on on you think. I appreciate you sharing your vision, your journey, and look forward to continuing to work with you guys going forward.
- [35:56]
D
Absolutely appreciate you. Great. Talk to you soon here at you.
- [35:59]
A
Think we want to bring value to you, the parents, coaches, the athletes listening in everything that we do. Check out Players Health today and let them know Youth Inc. Sent you now back to the episode.
- [36:12]
B
Tom, I think you'll really appreciate this, is that I didn't fit in traditional, traditional stick and ball sport as a young kid. I didn't understand these man made rules and these adults screaming at me. I didn't get it. I thought, I thought you guys were whack. And I found action sports. And in action sports, surfing, skateboarding, motocross, there's really no rules other than what mother Nature will demand of you. So. And there's no formal coaching, but the. And it takes a long time to get good at those sports because it's not a repetitive environment. I'll tell you what I learned so much about how to trust myself, how to stand in my own himself, how to face down and give an assessment of risk. And when we got these adults, I asked my son the other day, hey, how are we doing? My wife and I, how are we doing? Like helicopter parenting? You know, like, my wife is second generation, so there's a little bit more hovering. You know, she's in, our family's an immigrant. And he said, you guys are not helicopters. But I can hear the drone.
- [37:18]
A
It's a good way to put it. I'll take a drone.
- [37:19]
B
I'll take a drone right now.
- [37:20]
C
Right?
- [37:21]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [37:23]
B
So. So anyways, I'm having fun with it. But the point is for the, the listener, viewer, like encourage environments where they're taking risks and they're doing it in the safest possible way, but things can go wrong.
- [37:36]
C
Yeah.
- [37:36]
B
And when they learn how to know how to, when they learn how to work within themselves, it's a lifelong lesson as well.
- [37:42]
C
The name of my book I deliberately named the Way is Game on the All American Race to Make Champions of Our Children. And what I was trying to do is be ironic and say you actually can't make a champion. You can't manufacture an elite athlete. They come out with good clay and from there you can just not screw it up. But you can put them with good coaches and you can put them in environments where they can problem solve. And that's what you were doing. You were learning to be a problem solver. And isn't that what we want with all of our kids? We want our kids to be in an uncertainty, certain environment and not have someone tell them how to solve a problem, to read, react, and come up with a solution. So how do we, I mean, how do we get more kids to have your kind of experience?
- [38:25]
B
Well, that, that. And I'll add a little bit more nuanced piece here by the age of 15, I probably almost drowned 10 times. So, like, there's real danger in those types of environments. So you can't manufacture the type of risk I'm talking about. And we're so afraid of that. Like, my parents didn't want me to die, of course, but they wanted me to be a fully formed human and go for it. And I was the kid that was always zigging when the world was zagging. I didn't want to be coached by these adults that were screaming like, that's about you. This is not about me. I'm going to a place where it can be about me. And so I'm not encouraging danger, but to a point, he's on record.
- [39:06]
C
Kids don't look Michael Gervais.
- [39:07]
A
I'm not encouraging danger. That's going to be his new saying.
- [39:11]
C
The thing is, parents need understand they don't own the lives of their children. Their children. They have their own lives.
- [39:16]
B
Yeah.
- [39:16]
C
You know, and so how do you strike that balance of letting them have enough risk? You'll never hear me, like, say bubble wrap. Kids avoid every safety. You know, Every safety. You gotta. You gotta manage this.
- [39:28]
B
Are you guys okay if your kids came home with a broken bone?
- [39:31]
A
Yeah.
- [39:31]
C
Yeah.
- [39:32]
A
Well, I guess it depends what they did.
- [39:34]
B
Fell out of a tree. Oh, you don't like that one?
- [39:38]
A
Well, I wouldn't love him getting hurt right before a football game. Climbed a tree.
- [39:41]
B
Yeah. But there's. There's a response we have. Like, there's. I think there's a case to be made for broken bones.
- [39:46]
C
Yeah.
- [39:46]
B
And, like, it sounds like I'm callous here.
- [39:49]
A
Joking.
- [39:50]
B
You're not joking. No.
- [39:51]
A
You're serious. I tell my kids after every football practice, be careful tomorrow and pe. Do not get hurt.
- [39:58]
B
Oh, my God. Okay, encourage. How about you encourage them? Like, get after it, have a blast. Because when they're really getting after it, they're more likely to be focused and not hesitating. It's the hesitation that gets us hurt.
- [40:10]
C
Yeah. Lean into it. Lean into the turn.
- [40:13]
A
I said don't get hurt. We got seven more games.
- [40:18]
B
There's a truth in that, too.
- [40:20]
C
There is a truth.
- [40:21]
A
Just being honest.
- [40:22]
B
It's cool.
- [40:23]
A
Well, this was awesome, Tom. Appreciate you, man. Our conversations. I feel like we cover a lot of. We cover a lot of ground every time we chat.
- [40:29]
C
We do. And I appreciate you. Great.
- [40:31]
A
Appreciate you.
- [40:31]
C
Yeah.
- [40:32]
B
Well done, Tom.
- [40:32]
C
Thank you. Thank you.
- [40:34]
A
Thanks for listening to today's episode with Tom Ferry. Now, let's cover the key takeaways from our conversation. Tom shared his insights on how our youth sports environment stacks up against other countries and how the United States lacks in youth participation rates and accessibility. We also discussed the commercialization of sport in the US and ways we can work to fix its problems. Finally, we covered the immense benefits that staying active has on mental health and the importance of youth involvement in sport. Thanks, as always, for listening. We'll catch you again soon, right here on youthink.