Greg Olson (2:56)

Who's it built for? Right? Do I have to be the parent of an elite athlete? Young, old, like, give me a sense in the perfect world, who are the families that you target? What are the types of athletes that you are? Like, we are for you, you belong here.

Brent Richards (3:12)

The answer should be anyone that's serious about sports and getting amazing life skill education, improving in their sport and a pathway to college. That's who it's for. The boarding school is unique. It's a physical place in Florida, amazing 400 acre campus, certainly well known for elite athletes. And we send five to 10 student athletes to professional every year. Probably the only school in the world that does that. We also send 5 to 10 to the Ivy Leagues every year and we're certainly the only school in the world that does both of those things. 100% of the kids from IMG Academy will matriculate and go to college. So I view it as a pathway to college. It's an opportunity to get great education, academics, environment as well as developing your Sport. We have 20 basketball teams, so it tends to be, it tends to be. People talk about the one basketball team, the national team, the. But the whole point of IMG is it's more about you being serious about being in this kind of environment, developing, being the best you can be and you know, committing to the program than it is about necessarily being elite. And that's what I think is, is super special about it.

Greg Olson (4:23)

Is it hard to keep the balance with the academic stuff? You know, is, you know, I send my kid to img. Clearly we value athletics. He wants to play tennis, golf, soccer, basketball, whatever it is. Is it hard to also say, wait a minute, like yes, we are here to play and develop as high level athletes with the goal of being college or professional. But we're also not going to let that come at replacing, you know, the academic element that you would get at a, you know, quote unquote traditional school. Like is that a challenge for you

Brent Richards (4:54)

Guys, we invest a lot in it, so that if you're a parent, you shouldn't. It shouldn't be. A lot of the world says sports or academics. The key with IMG is that on the academic programming, there's different types of students. There needs to be student and family led. So we've got a core program, we've got honors, and we've got AP. If you're on a high academic path, top 25 US news kind of schools, you're going to be doing honors and ap. And by the way, it's hard because you're doing it while you're doing two, three hours of sports. You're traveling, you're getting your homework done on the road. I mean, you are living a high academic college experience in high school and middle school. So it's, it certainly prepares them, but our job is to give them those choices and they can make those choices.

Greg Olson (5:36)

All right, so obviously you guys pursue academics, athletics at a high level. I'm. I'd be genuine. If I was a parent considering sending my kid there. I would be equally, if not more so, interested in how you guys structure, like the social element. Right. I think when you think back to all of our experiences in high school, you've got proms and dances and friends and, you know, know all the things that come with just being a young student. So h. Obviously you guys are aware of it. You understand you're working with a lot of adolescent, teenage boys and girls. Like, how do you also incorporate the social entity for kids that are really coming to you from all over the country, if not all over the world?

Brent Richards (6:15)

Yeah, over 40 countries represented. So all around the world. All around the country, certainly. What's amazing is that they're all bound together. They're all student athletes. Right. So think about when you went to college and how you bond. And they've got teams, they've got. They're organized into groups, so you've got immediate connection. They're also super driven. Right. So they're coming because they want to develop and grow. And also they have to have fun. We always remind ourselves, and they have to have fun. Like sports is fun for most of these families and these student athletes. But, but also, but most, like every school, there's proms, there's homecomings, there's trips to the beach. They go to professional sports games all around, you know, Tampa Bay. But making sure that, hey, they're also kids, you know, is a big part of the conversation. The thing I'd say that we do, that parents are looking for as much as that the safety security kids are looking for fun. It's I'd say the other leg of the stool that we have here that I don't think any school in the world has that we're very proud of is the really the intentional development of the life skills around sports. So when you ask parents, there's the 10%, right, that you know that, that you know, get put in the certain parent category, let's just put it there. But 90% that we see, like they're not so focused on the wins and losses. They do want college matriculation, but they're not super irrational about where their child may or may not go. What they want to know though is, hey, are they developing teamwork? Are they developing resilience? Are they becoming better communicators? Are they understanding how to handle pressure? These are all things that we know sports develops unlike a classroom. And we have 100 people on staff here that all they do is mind and body. So you've got school, you've got sport, and then you've got experts. There's 15 mental performance coaches, you know, on staff. We have five leadership coaches, we have nutritionists, we have data scientists. And so we're super intentional. I always say that, you know, resilience can be taught like algebra. It's just most people don't do it. There's a seated curriculum, there's reinforcement. Sports is the lab. And so we, we just do, we really try to go over the top on ensuring that if you're going to come to IMG that you're not just getting these skills by osmosis, but you're actually being taught and, and learning these things.

Greg Olson (8:30)

I'm fascinated by that. And now like sitting in your seat now as CEO, right? So all of these things report to you are under your umbrella in your time now as CEO, do you view the role of sport in especially youth, you know, society among the youth, like is this always how you viewed it? So it was just a natural fit that you now oversee it? Has it evolved? Because now you're looking at it from a completely different perspective. I know you were an athlete, a former Division 1 soccer player. Like how is your viewpoints on the role of sport for young kids change with this seat prior to, to having it?

Brent Richards (9:04)

First of all, I think kids, not a lot has changed since I was doing it. That's the truth Walking or it's fun to actually be in a place as opposed to talking about this theory of youth sports. They want to have fun, they want A tribe, they want to be with friends. If you're playing serious youth sports, you love competing. Like that's what it's about for the kids. I think there's a lot of headlines and conversation about it's about the money, but it's really not for 98% of the kids, there's 2 or 3% where that's a real conversation now, but for 98, it's all the rest of it. And I think it's always been that way. Sometimes parents or industry or media like sort of inject different storylines into it. But I think that when you really get down and you're with the student athletes and the kids, like, it's still about, it's still about that. I'd say as an adult, looking at it, the concept of self efficacy, like as an educational concept, I didn't know that I was getting when I was in it, but it's so special to see kids that just learn on their own that, hey, if I, I was a soccer player, if I go, not because a coach told me to, not because mom or dad told me to, that's very different. But I go and I go do the extra hour and I kick a soccer ball against him. Old brick building millions of times, thousands of times a day for a number of days in a row. And I see with myself that if I do that work, that I'll see improvement and that gets results. That is the most powerful thing that I think any kid can get out of sports. And I think some kids, when they pull, it's amazing to see if they're pushed into it. It never works. That's my. It's just a matter of time until it never works. And then, and on the parent side, I think that, yeah, I think that most parents I've seen are very grounded in this idea that sports is developing great transferable skills. I would say that parents are definitely starting to put more pressure. It's gotten so hard to get into college in general, especially name brand schools. I definitely think there's a little more pressure on sports as a pathway than there has been before, you know, but, but in general, I'd say that, you know, parents are, are in the bucket of. They're interested in a development, they're certainly interested in a college pathway.

Greg Olson (11:19)

If I had a rank, the purpose of sport for all these young kids, like why my kids play sports and compete and all that stuff. In the old days, everyone aspired to be a professional athlete, right? That was always like this, the ultimate pipe dream and the vast Vast majority of kids never sensed that. But that was always in the back of everyone said I think you're exactly right. I think parents right now if they could rank it the correct, in my mind the correct way, number one is just transferable life skills, right? Whether your son or daughter ever plays anything beyond a varsity level sport at a high school level. Teamwork and adversity and hard work, you know, all the things that we, we preach through sports that have been around as old as time. Number two is for sure access to college. There is no question in my mind, I'm a parent, I have these thoughts, I talk about it with my, with my wife for our two sons and a daughter. Like the reality is for the vast majority of kids that are not just incredibly unique academically, the opportunity to get into a, you know, I always tell my kids use it to get into one college, one bar ahead of where you are. What would your resume if you took your sports one level ahead. Whether that's right, wrong or putting too much pressure on them or not. I think that's how I would argue that's how vast majority of the families are approaching sport. Now you can also take that to the point where you take it too far and it's like college scholarship or bust. And now we have kids graduating 18 years old from high school that think they're failures. So there, there's a fine line for sure.

Brent Richards (12:47)

I think you hit it. I mean one of the things we've tried to do, we've done research, we have access to just lots of these families, right? Very targeted access, not just boarding school, but more, more broad based than the unique boarding school. And we said, because you know, there's these headlines that say, you know, 15% of every youth sports parent thinks their kid is going pro and they get put out there and it creates this crazy parent narrative. And what's missing in that is we've done our own studies and yes, 10 to 15% of parents think their kids have professional potential. Is that high relative to reality? Yes. If you ask most parents about their kids prospects in anything, not just sports, would it be high relative to reality? Probably more importantly, what people don't ask is give me the ordering of the things that matter and we have that and we'll send you so your team can link it if you want. But. And it was 89%, something like close to 90% of families responded to this question, to us said life skills. And then the next was college pathways. And then somewhere distant down here was professional and even more distant was like nil and money in college. Right. And yet one of the hard things in all of this is that the stories and the headlines are really over here. And I. What I've learned is that what's really happening on you sports sports fields in America is, is really more in the masses. What you and I are talking about, it's just not as, it's not as fun of a headline.

Greg Olson (14:15)

No, it's not as fun to talk about the 12 year old that's trying to get an nil deal for. For sneakers. Not. And I get it. And obviously the brand that you guys have built, you. You guys probably find yourself having to defend a lot of these narratives fairly unfairly wherever they vary all of it.

Brent Richards (14:31)

We Send kids to Power4Football and we also send your kids to D2, D3 and NAI than you know, any education brand in the world. So I think you just, you just, we can come at it with, I

Greg Olson (14:42)

think proper balance is all absolutely like, like anything. But I do want to transition to a little bit because as. As we were getting ready for this conversation, you know, one of the things that jumped out at me, obviously people talk about, you know, youth sports is a big business and these academ. But I think it's really cool. A new initiative that you guys are working on, Add more athletes. I know it's a campaign that you are super passionate about and just getting more kids playing, you know, college level sports, whether it's at, you know, lower levels or breaking down to, you know, quote unquote JV and whatnot. I love to give you the opportunity to talk about that because when you talk about participation, continuing to keep kids more involved in the game at all levels, I think that's. That that's just good for everybody.

Brent Richards (15:24)

Yeah, well, I agree with that. So add more athletes primarily right now is focused on all the changes in college sports. And so it may mean something bigger over time, but right now it really means how do we get more college roster opportunities. Serious competitive sports in college. When I say that, I mean proper coaching, recruited to play in college. You've got a dynamic where we've already had this huge supply demand imbalance. You have 8 million high school kids and 500,000 college roster spots. So you've already had. This has been decades of the squeeze. As you know, Greg, because you cover this sector, the intensity, the number of intense youth athletes has grown right, wrong or indifferent. It just has number of club sports. You could look at it a hundred different ways. The roster spots have been pretty stagnant so this is going into 2020. 2020. Covid happens. What happens to the high school seniors when extended eligibility you get next year. It's not wrong for the college kids. We have more of these college kids that I'm happy for their college kids. At the same time, you've got a dynamic where there weren't roster openings coming available. You now have a transfer portal. Coaches love to complain about the transfer portal. And then coaches use the transfer portal in college. When a kid comes from the transfer portal, where are they not coming from? High school, there's extended eligibility. And by the way, this isn't like all the NCAA's fault. It's not. It's just they can't enforce rules because of the way it's been set up at this point. So now you have extended eligibility. Right. So kids are older in college, they're sticking around longer. And so that all adds up to, from a youth sports perspective, looking at college sports, which, by the way, all of those kids on the fields out here are tomorrow's college athletes, of course. And so what it really means is that the value of the thing. No, by the way, for some of these kids, there's more money, there's more scholarships. So the value of the thing they want has gone up and the supply of the thing they're trying to get has gone down. And this is just like basic, sort of like basic economic stuff. Right. Supply. And it was already tight, and now it's gotten really, really, really tight. And I think that that's having real ripple negative effects down in youth sports. We did study recently that said one in four families that are serious youth athletes are considering basically getting older, either through reclassification, you know, in eighth grade or postgraduate years, if you're playing serious football, it's more like one in three. And there's sort of just this question, is that the right. You know, when people ask why? I just. My immediate react, My immediate reaction is, well, because I can't get the spots, you know, and the system's been set up, so we're really focused on this supply and demand imbalance and. And really trying to focus people on either demand has to go down or supply has to go up. And I want supply to go up. And to me, that really means we need more of these competitive roster spots in college. Yeah.

Greg Olson (18:20)

And then my first instinct, there was a lot to unpack there, which I find fascinating. But my initial reaction, obviously, the funnel is continuing to grow, but the hole at the top is getting smaller. But the investment that Families and kids are making, both financially and from a time standpoint, is increasing tenfold. The way kids train and practice and have to go, whether it's their team or their individual skill development. Now, compared to just when I grew up, is night and day. Kids are spending significantly more time on the fields, in the weight room, with trainers, with coaches, and whatever he or she's given sport is than kids ever have in the past. So when you factor in I'm spending more and more of my life doing this, which obviously comes at the expense of doing some other things that kids would normally be doing socially or academically or whatever the case may be, and my opportunities of getting where I want to go continue to go down and there's more kids doing it. It just even compounds the issue even further because I gave my. It's. It. It never stops.

Brent Richards (19:26)

It's cause and effect. And which, which is it? Like, which one comes first here?

Greg Olson (19:30)

Right.

Brent Richards (19:32)

But we did some research and because it's also the narrative around it, you know, there's this assumption that it's all new money in college and nil and it's all become professionalized. But again, like 80 plus percent of families are interested in the roster opportunity in college, more so than money, more so than employment. Other issues that are being talked about as, as mattering. And so what is a natural and it's in its. So is this irrational behavior from parents and kids in youth sports or is it actually a very rational reaction to a changed setup? Especially in the last half decade in the ncaa, the thing that these families want is getting harder to get. And so what do people. What, what do, what do people do in that case? Will they compete harder for it? You know, that's not an irrational, that is not an irrational reality.

Greg Olson (20:20)

No, it makes sense if, if the spots are more limited, I need to do either what someone's unable or unwilling to do. Right. The difference is that sacrifice and tipping point is happening earlier in the pipeline.

Brent Richards (20:33)

And so then what happened? You know, then you could go, we could go down this rabbit hole. So you talk about early specialization, you talk about injury, you talk about lots of other things. And you know, adding supply, to me, that's. The demand goes down. We could just debate like what that looks like over time, but what if we could. The whole point is, isn't the right answer here, there's all this demand from youth athletes. Why isn't there more supply, more spots? Right. Yeah. So that clearly is the better answer if you're coming at it from a youth sports perspective. Right. The question is, what are the challenges structural, otherwise in college that's preventing it from happening. Because I know for sure there is a demand for twice as many roster spots in college than are currently supplied. Many of those from families willing to pay full tuition.

Greg Olson (21:24)

Okay, well that was gonna be my next question too. Of course, we all know at the end of the day the economics drive decision making at the college level, right? They're only gonna, they're only gonna equip teams that somehow could balance the budget. Is your football and basketball and all that. Can you offset some of the non revenue generating sports and could, you know, and operate in a surplus we see every year with the public schools in college, one or two programs, if they're lucky at their school, make any money and then it's just a matter of how in the red does everything else run and how does it balance out. So I ask you, in theory, it makes a lot of sense, right? We're equipping more and more young kids with the tools and the skills to be college athletes. But then I ask you, how do, how do we grow seats, how do we grow roster sizes? How does it work?

Brent Richards (22:10)

Two structural challenges that I see. So youth sports, if you look at youth sports and how it works, you have multiple teams in any sport. Go walk on any field in America and ask them if it's a single team and a single club. And they would, the whole thing would go bankrupt. Like the fields would be bankrupt, they wouldn't be utilized. If it was one team, one field, one sport was the model financially that worked. Youth sports wouldn't exist. And yet we have a system in college sports that is one team, one sport, typically one field. So you've got underutilized infrastructure. Development teams are basically gone because of a variety of different changes. There's no more JV squads, there's no more freshman squads. And so you have, you have NCAA dynamics. You also have other NCAA rules that completely separate club sports from NCAA varsity infrastructure. Obviously the other path is to link recreational. Think about baseball. You know, there's single A, double A, triple A majors. Varsity was the majors. You've got like single a double A majors. There's no connection between these things, including infrastructure, talent, team. We're seeing some schools that are creating a AAA club actually that is really recruited student athletes, school sponsored coaches. That's really all you need. So I think, you know, whether it is opening up opportunities for developmental squads or second teams in the varsity infrastructure, or bringing club closer to varsity, I think that there's opportunities There schools are already doing some of that, but there's a big opportunity in fishing where the fish are ncaa. They add sports, which is great, but there are so many more women's soccer players than there are women's fencers out there. And so adding fencing or adding bowling or adding some of these sports is great. But the truth is the demand is all in the big sports. So we did a study also that asked families, would you rather go to your top choice university and play on their. The second squad or developmental squad or go to a lower choice school and play on the first team? And 60, 65% of the families said they'd rather go. What if you're a Florida kid? We're in Florida. And you really want to go to fsu, but you end up going to some other school because you could have played JV at fsu. Girls soccer, forget football. So the demand is there for proper coaching, recruited student athletes. It can come under the varsity structure. It could come under the club structure if done right. And so I think that that is there as it relates to the, I think dangerous headlines about the profitability of Olympic women's and men's Olympic sports. Specifically put football and basketball to the side. If the numbers didn't work, D3 wouldn't exist, D2 probably wouldn't exist. And lower level D1 wouldn't exist. It's really, you get caught in an echo chamber. Really related to like 50 to 100 schools that cast a pretty big shadow that suggests that the only way those sports can work is if football subsidizes them. And the truth is if. And this is a longer maybe follow up where you guys could do your own.

Greg Olson (25:23)

Yeah. No, I'm fascinated by this.

Brent Richards (25:24)

It's an interesting conversation. If you go look.

Greg Olson (25:27)

Yeah.

Brent Richards (25:27)

At the P Ls of those D1 schools we're talking about, they do two things that no school and no other department do for those Olympic sports. They take tuition revenue out like a men's soccer program, 30 kids on the team, 10 scholarships. Yeah.

Greg Olson (25:44)

So 20 of them are paying full scholarship.

Brent Richards (25:47)

Better than the. It's called the discount rate in the school. That's probably better than the overall school average. But you take tuition out for these sports and then you charge scholarships against the sports. P and LS for those sports. That's not how it even works in the university. The scholarships are just netted off of tuition. And so you've got this dynamic. Not to go too into the weeds. No, it's fascinating where you, you know, IMG like we Run. We do all of it, right. We do the school part, the education. If you did that to the chemistry department at a school or any, the music department at a school, if you took tuition away from any educational, none of them would make sure it's going to lose money. If you then charge it scholarships, of course it's going to lose money. So I think that there's been a history, there's a lot of reasons for it where because sports made money that wasn't tuition, we kind of put it all in a bucket and said self sustain. But Olympic sports absolutely can be profitable across all divisions. If you look at it the way you look at the rest of the university, schools are certainly choosing to compete with each other and you know, maybe investing more in sports or investing more in scholarships in some of these Olympic sports. I think that's amazing and I want them to do that. So different than. That's different than saying that fundamentally a men's and women's Olympic sport isn't a profitable tuition enrollment driver for a university. They absolutely can be.

Greg Olson (27:18)

So why is it reported this way? Why would schools allow their budgets to be reported publicly the way they are? Right. We, we see those reports every single year and it's a, you know, I don't, we don't have to go through it again.

Brent Richards (27:30)

But like it's, but again, why my, I don't. Listen, you're, my, my theories on it.

Greg Olson (27:35)

Yeah, no, I'm genuinely curious for me,

Brent Richards (27:39)

like if, if you're a university, would you rather have a hole in the sports department or in the chemistry department, the arts and sciences department. Right. Because at the end of the day it all goes to the same place. And the answer is like it's much easier to fundraise against a sports issue deficit, a broader, I mean, it's just like having it, you know, having it, you know, there. I also think just historically they were able to do it. Right. One of the challenges you have is now that at these big D1 schools there's a revenue sharing component with the student athletes. It's creating a 20, $22 million, you know, gap. Well now, now all of a sudden you've, you've got to fit, you've got to figure this out. But the truth is football and basketball could fund all of this historically. And so you could take all of the tuition revenue and other things and keep it over on the school P and L. And the issue you've got now is like that, that game changed. And so now you've already, you've Already had it. You've already put it over here. It's a real problem. I'm not saying it's not a problem for a university.

Greg Olson (28:45)

It's a shell game on where you want.

Brent Richards (28:49)

Yeah. And when in any of the conversations about these things, I just think, I think there's a lot of reason. I don't think people were trying to do it or, you know, ill intentioned. But I, I certainly know running a, you know, we don't have img, doesn't have media, we don't have big sponsorships, we don't have ticket sales. And so. And d, neither does d3, neither does lower level d1 for the most part. And, and neither does all of you sports, you know, so tuition fee driven with scholarships models absolutely work in education settings, but it can only work if you start to think about the P and L in the full context. And so I do think that a lot of D3, D2, you see where the expansion has been, it's been there because they understand it and it comes from the president level, not just the athletic department. They got to be aligned on how they're thinking about it. And, and it's, it's all there. I just, but I do think that when I see these headlines, it's, it really, you know, it creates this knee jerk reaction that we need to cut programs or we need to cut. That's so fascinating when there's clearly another option. And by the way, the best option, Greg, is we'll back it up with a second team, back it up with a third team, you know, and, but that's not how people think. Because if your first instinct is that Olympic sports lose money, you're never going to get to the next step, which is. But why would I add more of that?

Greg Olson (30:13)

That's so fascinating.

Brent Richards (30:15)

Very tied together. Yeah. Yeah.

Greg Olson (30:17)

It's counterintuitive, right? If that's the preconceived idea, well, that makes me happy to hear because I have a daughter that runs track and again, I don't know how good she's going to be. She's in seventh grade. But I don't like the idea of women's sports being cut. Sports my daughter plays being cut. I don't like sports anywhere being cut for anybody, even if my kids don't play him. So that is a really fascinating conversation that feels like a standalone episode on its own. But you know, Brent, I, I can't thank enough your perspective, your understanding of not only the landscape at the youth level, how it ties up and all the different elements that affect now at the collegiate and beyond the business, the economics behind it. We're going to have to have a, a deeper, a deeper dive back and forth and unpack some of this because I'm fascinated by a lot of the things that you brought up and all the work that you guys do at img I find, I find really fascinating and super cool.

Brent Richards (31:08)

Appreciate the time, Greg.

Podcast Host (31:09)

All right, Greg, we are back this week with a couple more listener questions. As a reminder to the listeners and viewers, you can submit all your questions for Greg to answer@amauth.inc send us an email there or DM us over on Instagram. Our first question this week comes from Terry in Omaha. My kids getting to the age where travel ball's on the radar and honestly the number of options out there is overwhelming. Every organization promises elite coaching, top level competition and exposure, but I know that's not always what you actually get. What are the biggest red flags in your opinion that parents should watch out for when evaluating travel teams? What should they be looking for and looking out for to make sure that they're putting their kid in the right situation and not just writing a check for a subpar experience?

Greg Olson (31:56)

Yeah, it's a great question. And I think for, for families that are first entering into the, the travel experience, whether it's baseball or volleyball, girls basketball, whatever it is, obviously there's a lot of unknown. So I think so often a lot of these families, you kind of learn as you go through the process and you're going to make mistakes, you're going to join the wrong team, you're going to take the wrong advice. But the, you know, the, the key is to, to fix it. To be honest with you, after every season do a really good assessment. Is my son or daughter improving? Is the team being coached in the right manner? Are we getting what in essence we are paying for? And I think that's a season by season family analysis with your son or daughter unit and make sure that this is the right fit, not just the right jersey, not just the right team name and not just because you're playing with all of your friends. So I think it's a combination of all of that. As far as red flags, the biggest red flag I have in all travel sports is is there an expectation that on top of what you are paying to be a part of the team, is there an expectation that you are then going to have to shell out additional dollars for private lessons for pitching, for batting, for fielding with the coach that's coaching you so that's always something that I always find a little bit tricky. I feel like when you pay to be on one of these teams, or in some cases you don't pay, a lot of the development should be handled at practice by the coach of said team. If it's. You have to, then go see your actual coach away from team practice sessions and pay additional funding. I think that's where things get a little bit tricky. So everyone kind of handles that in their own way. I think there's a lot of great coaches out there that are making a living being paid as coaches, and I have no problem with that. It just gets a little fuzzy when they're being paid outside of the team and some of the kids on the team are not. I always feel like that's a little bit of a red flag.

Podcast Host (33:47)

100%. Our other question. Hi, Greg. My son Declan is seven and he's in first grade. He's a solid athlete with real arm talent, especially in football. He's played three seasons of flag and loves being QB1. They've actually gone 1 and 2 against Tony Romo's son in championship games, which has been a fun rivalry. Here's his question. He's at a private school in the Dallas area that they love. But what he keeps hearing from longtime families that go there is that kids who've been at the school since the beginning end up sitting the bench in high school because the school recruits over them, bringing in new players from all over the place. What should this parent be doing now for his son while he's still young, to make sure that he's undeniable by the time he gets to high school so that leaving a school that they love doesn't have to be the answer? Is it networking with area coaches to get him exposure, private coaching and skill development? Playing in different leagues outside of what the school offers his parents, looking for any advice and resources that you might have.

Greg Olson (34:47)

All right, so I think the key takeaway from that question and, and I appreciate it and I, I get it. It's a question that a lot of people are having. But my main takeaway from all that is that your son is in first grade and he's seven. And I think to worry about what high school looks like, to worry about what middle school looks like, to worry about other schools and putting it in your head that you have to transfer potentially, I think you are so, so early in this process that none of that should even continue to be in your mind. I think. Continue to let your kid enjoy playing. Continue to play flag at the appropriate time. Maybe come middle school they go out for tackle or whatever that transition looks like. But I think right now, to get wrapped up in private training because you're trying not to get beat out in, you know, seven, eight, nine years from now, I, I just think you can enjoy it. Take a step back, let your kid play with his buddies, let your kid continue to develop, be a great member of the community and try different sports, try all sorts of different things and kids that are good are going to play. And certainly the recruiting at the high school level, especially at schools that track all the way from the young age through, is always going to be a problem. It happens around here in Charlotte. Kids that we play against in middle school, from certain teams. When you look at the high school, none of those kids ever step foot on the field. So I'm not, I'm not suggesting that it's not a real scenario. I'm just suggesting that in first grade, to even have all that in your head, I just think is a little early. So enjoy the ride, let your kid be a 7 year old, let him have fun, let him play with his friends, let him run around and just enjoy it. And you can make high school decisions when high school comes. I think to worry about it this far in advance is, is just not necessary. Appreciate everyone listening. Catch you again next week here on YouTube.