Kids Sports Turned Pro- What's Our Role?

If you work with youth athletes in any capacity, you should check out this article. For me it really forced me to sit back and consider: am I adding to this shit show or am I doing my best to serve a better cause.

Here's a link to check out the article.

I think a lot of us who work with young hockey players (and get paid to do it) can get lumped into this madness. Instead of writing about Joey Baseball, the author could have just as easily been talking about a Billy Hockey who spends $100/hr on private lessons, then another $100 on a strength coach later in the day.  

But there is one thing that separates the great strength coaches from the douches. If you are a great strength coach, you are able to do double duty by getting improvements in performance, and also ensuring proper development, confidence, and life skills. Unfortunately, I think there are still a lot of people in our business that worry about training only, and want to work with only the top players so they can strap a saddle on them and ride them to Instagram fame. 

The coaches who are not a part of the "professionalizing" problem in youth sports are the ones who help kids get stronger, but also give them confidence, teach them the value of consistency, and help them understand the value of activity and health throughout life (because there's a strong chance they won't be competing at the highest levels after high school). That's how I prefer to think of my role with young athletes, so I don't feel like I'm contributing to the professionalization of youth sports. 

Anyone care to discuss? I'd love to chat on the forum. 

Keep being passionate about what you do!