"Hey Coach!...Let My Kid Play!"

This book is for you.  You, the parents of sports kids, youth athletes, jocks. 

Since World War II, American youth have become more and more involved in organized athletics.  From the Boys Club and Police Athletic teams that I played on in the 1950s, to the Elks and Moose and Omega Psi Phi Fraternity teams of today, organized sports teams have dotted the fields and courts of America life.  The 1970s wisely brought girls into organized sports yielding today’s sports heroines such as Mia Hamm, Laila Ali and the immortal Florence Griffith Joyner. This does not include Delores  ( I think that was her name) who used to beat the boys in every game we played while I was growing up in Brooklyn, New York.  Delores kicked butt in stick ball, punch ball, baseball, running, red rover and every other game. And when we boys tried to leave her out she waited for one of us and beat him up. Thank goodness for organized sports.  It only through organized sports, which at that time were mainly for boys only, did we get a chance to win and get away from Delores.  I wonder what ever happened to her.

High school and College athletics have long been in our educational systems.  Many of you reading this book were high school and college athletes.  Some of you may have distinguished yourselves and performed at a high level.  Many of you also played in the local recreation league, where you learned to love (or hate) baseball, football, basketball, soccer or hockey.  It was there that you learned that you liked team sports over individual sports.  Or individual sports over team sports. It was there that you learned what it meant to be a part of a team; where you learned to win and lose; where you created memories that you would take with you always.  The big goal, the last inning home run or the day you scored four touchdowns; the stories you tell over and over to whoever will listen.   Little league, Pony League, Pop Warner, AAU and CYO, this is where we learned so much about ourselves.  And so it is today.   There were also some of you who did not play sports.  You never owned a baseball glove.  Nor were you ever a part of any team.  This could be for reasons from non-interest to economics.  Whatever the reason, youth sports were not a part of your growing up years.  Yet today, your little Katie and Billy are knee deep in the local athletic programs.  This book is for you, too.

Life, unlike the games we learned to play, has no rule book.  Life plays by its own rules.  That said, many times the memories that some youngsters took from so called recreational sports were not always good.  Oh yes, they have stayed with them forever, but they are not pleasant.  Some of us discovered during our youth sports time things that did not make us feel good about ourselves.  Things like:

We were too slow

Not strong

Too skinny

Too fat

Not competitive

Threw like a girl (which no one says anymore). Of course if you threw like a girl and you were a girl, I guess that was okay.  Unless you were Delores.

Most of some of us were faced with insensitive, yet mostly well meaning, coaches.  Men and /or women whose kindness ended at the point were they found that the youngsters on their team could not deliver to their satisfaction.  From experience I can tell you that coaching is PARAMOUNT at this stage of any child’s development.  I can tell you that from experience and I will share that story with you in this book.   Most youngsters will play organized sports only at the recreational level.  They will say goodbye to the sport as it moves into the more serious high school level, where the emphasis on winning is not hidden or denied.  Only a handful of those will play at the college level and a mini percentage will ever earn a dollar as a professional.  If this is so, then why are sports so important in our culture and many other Western cultures? 

We will talk about that and how we can be good supportive and non-intrusive parents to our young athletes.  There are many books written on this subject, they are written by scholars and are hundreds of pages long.  I come at this in a simple distilled fashion.  I have done all the research for you.  Why read all those books?  I got it for you right now.  Using common sense and life experience the book will explore the highs and lows, the fun and anguish, and give you the dos and don’t of being a sport parent.  After all, we all have wanted to say “Hey Coach--Let My Kid Play.”