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Justin Rodriguez, Times Herald-Record
The recruiting job starts innocently enough. A coach asks a star player to play for his travel team.
Only for the weekend.
The kid with the killer swing, smooth jumper or cannon for an arm agrees to play in the tournament at some cool venue or city.
That's when the coach puts on the full-court press — salesman style. This team is a lot better with you running the point. We can get you a lot more exposure than that other club. Check out these new Nike uniforms we just got.
Some players say no thanks and walk. Others can't resist the promises and offers — and the deal is done.
Switching teams has gone on as long as there have been travel programs, but competition for players seems to have reached a new level in recent years as more and more travel team programs are launched.
While all these teams say they only have the best intentions for young athletes and want to provide the best chance to succeed or highest quality playing experiences, player movement — for whatever reason — has led to a lot of hard feelings in the travel sports community.
"It happens all the time and there is a lot of hatred out there about this happening," says Les LaFrance, president of the BC Eagles, a boys' AAU basketball team in Orange County. "Everyone does it, and if they say they don't, they're lying. It happens up here more than the city because there aren't as many good players."
August 15, 2008
(Media-Newswire.com) - CINCINNATI—“It’s that time of year again,” says Keith Kenter, MD, and he’s not talking about back-to-school shopping.
What he’s referring to is the increased number of children and young adults he sees in the clinic due to injuries as a result of overtraining for fall sports programs.
Millions of children and young adults are now training for fall athletics programs, some as early as kindergarten. With school sports, club sports, select and recreational teams, Kenter says “it’s become easier to identify injury patterns” inherent to overtraining. Shin splints, stress fractures and muscle swelling in the lower extremities are historically associated with preparation for football, soccer, cross country and volleyball season.
That line is starting to blur, however, as the seasonal aspect of youth athletics is changing. While it was once popular to participate in a variety of sports, most young athletes now stick with the same sport year round, which can lead to overtraining and repetitive use injuries.
The Epoch Times Copyright © 2000–2008
Aug 13, 2008
Gary Feuerber
Epoch Times Washington D.C. Staff
WASHINGTON, D.C.—Over 50 million children under the age of 18 participated in some organized sports programs each year. If a child playing in a sport is lucky, his or her coach has had some quality coaching education prior to assuming coaching responsibilities.
Information on the qualifications of the million or so coaches in the country is lacking, but thanks to the 2008 National Coaching Report, we know something about the tremendous diversity of coaching requirements and standards across the nation.
“American sport programs are dominated by volunteer, well-intended but largely unprepared amateur coaches,” says the report.
The 160-page National Coaching Report was released August 6—two days before the beginning of the Beijing Olympics—at a news conference at the National Press Club. The National Association for Sport and Physical Education (NASPE) published the annual report and sponsored the news conference.
By CRAIG HARVEY on observertoday.com
CHAUTAUQUA - Every March, thousands tune into CBS to watch the college basketball March Madness Tournament and usually see Clark Kellogg sitting in front of the camera back at the studio wearing his usual blue suit coat.
On Tuesday, the 6-foot-8 Kellogg stood at the podium of the Amphitheater at Chautauqua Institution not to talk about college basketball or who will be picked in tonight's National Basketball Association draft.
He was there to advocate for the younger generation and the young athletes as well as discuss the troubles they face today.
While Kellogg's name is synonymous with college basketball, some may not be aware he was a first-round draft pick (eighth overall) in the NBA draft in 1982. He spent five seasons in the NBA where he was a unanimous pick for the All-Rookie team. At the age of 26, Kellogg was forced to retire due to a knee injury. He finished his career averaging 18.9 points per game and 9.5 rebounds a game.
As Kellogg got ready to give his lecture, "The Young Athlete: A Different Perspective For Students and Parents," he pointed out he does not want to be considered a lecturer.
"I think of an expert as someone that is accomplished in a very important and significant field," he continued. "I would much rather consider myself as a guest speaker if that's ok with you all."
Though being a speaker isn't what he had hoped for in life, everything has worked out well for Kellogg and his wife and their three children.
"My wife would be amused if she knew folks here thought of me as a lecturer," he said. "My wife is always amazed when I get asked to speak somewhere. She finds it hard to believe that simply earning a living through playing basketball or talking about basketball, I have had these unique opportunities. She says, 'Clark, you have been unbelievably blessed. We've done really quite well together considering you've never really had a real job.' "
By Craig Smith
Seattle Times staff reporter
Tom Farrey, investigative reporter and father of three, spent years examining kids' sports in America and has a two-word description: "runaway train."
"Youth sport is the most important institution of all our sports, because it is where the magic begins," he writes. "It is where we learn to love sports, picking up fitness habits and rooting interests that can last a lifetime. But it's an institution at a historic crossroads, one in which performance often matters more than participation does.
"It's less and less accessible to the late bloomer, the genetically ordinary, the economically disadvantaged, the child of a one-parent household, and the kid who needs exercise more than any other — the clinically obese."
Farrey, a former Seattle Times sports reporter, is now a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine, and an on-air journalist on ESPN's E:60 newsmagazine. His work has won two Emmys for outstanding sports journalism. This, his first book, is an important work in that it touches almost every American home with kids.
Some of the information in the book is startling: college athletes being paid for their sperm by women or couples who want athletic children; a "world championship" golf tournament for 6-year-olds; fourth-graders getting letters of interest from college basketball coaches; a national ranking for fourth-grade basketball players; 6-year-olds with personal trainers; and a New England couple that spends an estimated $100,000 a year on sports for its five kids who aren't yet in high school.
But this isn't a book that is out to bash people.
"I must say, I came to like nearly everyone I met," he writes. "The stereotype of the abusive parent pushing the reluctant kid usually doesn't apply. Most want their kids to be champions in life, not just sports. And when parents go to extremes in prepping their kid for athletic stardom, it never springs from a lack of love."
As a father — his infant son Kellen is on the cover — he knows parental impulses and dilemmas firsthand. He deftly weaves his kids, all under 12 years old, and their situations into his story.
He writes that he and his wife, Christine, reluctantly let their son Cole play "travel" (select team) soccer at age 8 because they were concerned that "if he doesn't catch the bullet train now, he might lose the chance to play soccer in high school. The other kids would be too tactically advanced."
The Scholarship Game: An examination of how universities divvy up scholarship money and the impact on student athletes.
After years of playing baseball with the elite Dallas Mustangs youth travel team, Tyler Sibley is weighing scholarship offers to play shortstop at a Division I school next fall.
The financial aid Sibley receives in college won't come close to covering the money his father, Tim, has spent getting him to this point.
The same can be said for countless other athletes across North Texas whose parents often spend well in excess of $25,000 so their kids can compete at the highest levels in youth sports such as baseball, swimming, soccer, tennis and golf.
Scholarships in those sports are a numbers game.
And the numbers don't favor the checkbooks of parents.
In Division I, baseball teams are allowed to have 35 players – but there are only 11.7 scholarships to divide among the roster. Track and field and cross country teams sometimes have in excess of 50 athletes on their rosters but only 12.6 scholarships.
MONDAY, July 7 (HealthDay News) -- People who are prone to road rage are also more likely to rant and rave while watching their children play sports, says a U.S. study.
Ego defensiveness, one of the triggers of road rage, also causes "sideline rage," said researcher Jay Goldstein, a kinesiology doctoral student at the University of Maryland School of Public Health.
He observed parents at youth soccer games in suburban Washington, D.C., and concluded that parents become angry when there's an apparent challenge to their ego.
"When they perceived something that happened during the game to be personally directed at them or their child, they got angry. That's consistent with findings on road rage," Goldstein said in a prepared statement.
He also found that control-oriented parents were far more likely to take something personally and explode than autonomy-oriented parents, who take greater responsibility for their own behavior.
"In general, control-oriented people are the kind who try to 'keep up with the Joneses.' They have a harder time controlling their reactions. They more quickly become one of 'those' parents than the parents who are able to separate their ego from their kids and events on the field," Goldstein said.
But even autonomy-controlled parents can get angry due to ego-defensiveness.
"While they're more able to control it, once they react to the psychological trigger, the train has already left the station," Goldstein said.
The study was published in the June issue of Applied Social Psychology.
Title: ESPN Little League: Stands Agency: DCode, New York |
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| ESPN Little League: Stands |
Baseball is here, and what does that mean?
It means renewal. It means optimism. It means spitting. It means San Francisco is going to have a very bad six months. Title: ESPN Little League: Stands
That's because the Giants stink, substantially because their best hitter is a Giant no more, but an unsigned free agent, languishing at home with his all-time career home-run record and tattered reputation.
Yeah, Barry Bonds, the most prolific slugger ever, can't get a job because he's been denounced as a cheater. Very good power to all fields. Very bad role model.
Baseball's steroid scandal has robbed a generation of children of so many heroes. Bonds, Jose Canseco, Mark Maguire, Roger Clemens, Miguel Tejada -- tainted by drug allegations all -- have left a trail of disillusionment. Baseball may have long since ceased being the true national pastime, but it is still uniquely situated for role modeling. Every player's approach -- swing, delivery, batting stance -- is distinct, and therefore prime for imitation by the kids who see it again and again over 162 games.
And kids imitate what they observe. (That, by the way, explains the spitting. Long ago, players chewed tobacco and spit out the juice. This led to generations of Little Leaguers spitting, too. When they got to the big leagues, they kept on spitting. The actual tobacco chaws are long gone, but the spitting goes on, a vestigial habit in a never-ending cycle of expectoration.)
But we digress. So if a kid can't believe in Barry Bonds, then who? Why, Dad, of course. He's the instructor, the mentor, the No. 1 fan and the voice of encouragement in the stands.
Or (sigh) not. Because with spring comes another annual rite: the obnoxious Little League parent at a kids' game, behaving like a jackass. He screams at the umpire. He hectors the other team. He second-guesses the coach. He berates his own child. And he can't claim he was doped covertly.
He's a dope all by himself.
PRESS RELEASE Contact: Tim Donovan, Director
April 29, 2008
Players from Six SUNY Baseball Teams, Competitors; Volunteer to Help Little League Coaching Standards and with Free Hudson Valley Baseball Clinic
Cortland NY- A clinic, free for Little League players, is being conducted on field, while a new coaching certification is being offered inside, for the introductory price of $20.00 per coach. Program is offered at Dutchess Stadium in Fishkill, NY through a joint effort by the State University of New York Youth Sports Institute, the Hudson Valley Renegades and players and coaches from the SUNY baseball teams at Dutchess, Orange, Rockland, Sullivan, Ulster and Westchester Community Colleges. Attendees may join one of the two sessions on Sunday May 18 from 9 AM-12 PM and 1PM-3PM. There is a maximum of 10 registered Little Leaguers for every registered coach.
In the first step toward the ultimate goal of playing in the National Junior College World Series, players from six SUNY Community College baseball teams compete each spring for the championship of the Mid-Hudson Athletic Conference. These outstanding players and coaches will put their standings aside and join together to hold this unique Little League players’ clinic. The event is part of a SUNY youth coaching certification program, Youth Sports NY, designed to improve the culture of local youth sports; for players, for parents and for communities.
Our college players wore Little League uniforms a few short years ago. They know the effect that coaches and parents have on youth sports and they’re jointly taking a unique stand to encourage our youngest players while the men and women who coach our children become trained in a comprehensive coaching program.
According to Timothy Donovan, Director of the SUNY Youth Sports Institute, "Organized youth sports have become an important part of the fabric of family life for millions of New Yorkers." "Youth sports programs rely almost exclusively on volunteer coaches and lowly paid or volunteer officials, 90% of whom have little or no formal training. These youth programs are responsible for formative experiences in sportsmanship, physical education and relationship building through organized sports".
For many players who do not progress on to interscholastic or intercollegiate sports, youth sports are their singular organized sports experience. Sadly however, for a growing number of kids, the experience is a poor one replete with hostility and unsportsmanlike conduct from coaches, parents, players and fans. On May 18, while the Little League players enjoy a clinic on the field run by college coaches and players, Little League coaches will be upstairs in the stadium attending the SUNY Youth Sports Institute’s youth coaching certification course.
About the SUNY Youth Sports Institute
In 2008 youth sports have become a professionalized environment while proving to be a robust challenge for civility in many communities. The SUNY Youth Sports Institute was established in 2007 as a response to community and youth development issues arising within the current organized youth sports model. For the past year its training program, Youth Sports NY, has created a statewide network of training centers with 47 trainers at 29 community colleges. After drafting its comprehensive non-sports specific coaching curriculum at SUNY Cortland, in March 2008 the Institute began training coaches through the Continuing Education programs at SUNY Community Colleges across New York State .
In the Youth Sports NY program coaches in diverse sports are all trained to a common set of coaching standards. Following the three-hour certification course and online test, coaches are provided with sport specific skills and drills training to improve their competency in their specific sport. Youth Sports NY is eager to come to your community. Please call the number below for more information. Training centers for coaches are being established in urban, rural and suburban centers across New York State.
Advanced registration for the clinic is required and can be done at www.youthsportsny.org, at Dutchess Stadium, or by calling toll free 877-828-8811. The maximum is 10 Little League players per coach. The first 150 Little League players who sign up at Dutchess Stadium will receive a shirt with emblems from the participating teams.
By Clem Richardson
April 14th, 2008
Daily News
When Frank Reali 3rd was found dead in his Staten Island real estate office a year ago this month, his parents pledged to do something in his honor to benefit the community.
What Francine (Fran) and Frank Reali came up with could transform high school sports in this town, maybe nationally.
The couple, owners of Safari Realty on Staten Island, wants to provide free magnetic resonance imaging scans for all students about to begin high school sports.
MRI scans provide noninvasive but remarkably accurate pictures of a patient's body.
Produced by passing the patient through a powerful, often circular magnet, these photos can show even the tiniest injury or abnormality.
By Christina Dunmyer
April 5th, 2008
JOHNSTOWN — Veteran coaches know that the most frequent youth athletic injuries occur in football, gymnastics and hockey. Many even know that 52.4 percent of all skin infections occur in wrestlers. But that didn’t stop them, and younger coaches, from attending the Regional Resource Trauma Center at Memorial Medical Center’s Health and the Youth Athlete clinic Saturday.
“The reason I have my whole football staff involved is education,” said Windber head coach Phil DeMarco, who enters his 24th season in the fall. “We have heard several of these topics in the past, but we are always trying to protect the kids. That is the No. 1 priority. I made a few notes that I would like to address with the great training staff we have at Windber.”
Tom Causer, Trauma Coordinator for the event said, between 160-170 youth and junior and senior high coaches and officials, from several counties, attended the five hour clinic.
Dr. Lee Miller, Trauma and Critical Care Surgeon, and speaker on brain and nervous system injuries said, “We’re very happy with the turnout. We didn’t expect quite this many people.”
Extra money for Arkansas high school football coaches — and, in many cases, lighter teaching duties, perhaps requiring no time in a classroom at all — is drawing criticism from a legislative leader and some state educators.
The additional pay for the head football coaches is as much as $30,000 a year in some cases, according to an article Sunday in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, reporting on an investigation carried out by the newspaper.
"I feel like the districts are gaming the system to steer exorbitant dollars to athletic purposes," said state Sen. Jim Argue, D-Little Rock, chairman of the Senate Education Committee.
"I think that the mothers and fathers of Arkansas need to be thinking about the kind of educational preparation its going to take ... for their children to reach their greatest potential," he continued. "I'm absolutely convinced that proficiency in football will not produce good results."
Russellville High School teacher Paul T. Gray Jr., this year's Arkansas Teacher of the Year, said there are teachers at most Arkansas high schools who resent the additional money going to football coaches who make more money, may work less and may not even have to deal with students off the football field.
"The primary function of anyone who is getting paid a teacher salary is to teach," Gray said. "The first thing on any contract is that they are a teacher. Coaching responsibilities are added in on the bottom of the contract."
The state's 194 head football coaches draw more than $11 million altogether in tax dollars each year. More than $1.6 million of that goes to coaches who don't teach any classes. Some coaches are athletic directors or perform other nonacademic functions, but all are paid out of teacher salary funds.
Glen Rose High School Coach Billy Elmore doesn't teach classes but works as the school's athletic director and maintenance director. His contract, however, lists him as a teacher.
"My duties are basically outside a classroom," he said.
Elmore is certified to teach and has worked in schools for 13 years. Elmore will move to Arkadelphia High School this fall to coach that school's team and will likely teach classes at his new school. He said it's not fair to slam coaches who don't teach because most of them have other work duties.
Ben Mays of Clinton, who was on the Clinton School Board for 20 years and now serves as a member of the state Education Board, questions whether state education dollars should finance athletics.
"The training and the fielding of a football team is a strictly local option thing," Mays said. "It's not part of the constitutional mandate (to provide all students with an adequate education). If an area chooses to do that and they take money out of state funds to do that with, I think that's kind of questionable whether that's an acceptable expenditure."
February 17, 2008
On a drizzly Tuesday night in late January, 200 people came out to hear a psychiatrist talk rhapsodically about play — not just the intense, joyous play of children, but play for all people, at all ages, at all times. (All species too; the lecture featured touching photos of a polar bear and a husky engaging playfully at a snowy outpost in northern Canada.) Stuart Brown, president of the National Institute for Play, was speaking at the New York Public Library’s main branch on 42nd Street. He created the institute in 1996, after more than 20 years of psychiatric practice and research persuaded him of the dangerous long-term consequences of play deprivation. In a sold-out talk at the library, he and Krista Tippett, host of the public-radio program ‘‘Speaking of Faith,’’ discussed the biological and spiritual underpinnings of play. Brown called play part of the ‘‘developmental sequencing of becoming a human primate. If you look at what produces learning and memory and well-being, play is as fundamental as any other aspect of life, including sleep and dreams.’’
Denver Youth Football Coach Recognized
For Exceptional Work in Mentoring Today's Youth
Jose Cardenas Receives Responsible Coaching Award and $500 Grant from Liberty Mutual
February 20th, 2008
DENVER - Liberty Mutual, one of the nation's leading auto and home insurers, has selected youth football coach Jose Cardenas of the Johnson Boys & Girls Club in Denver as a 2007 Responsible Coaching Award winner. The award honors nearly 100 football and soccer coaches countywide who best reflect character building and sportsmanship in their approach to mentoring young athletes. Liberty Mutual will provide the Johnson Boys & Girls Club with a $500 grant in honor Jose Cardenas' award.
"The Responsible Coaching Award celebrates tangible examples of the dedication and selflessness of youth coaches across America who give of themselves to teach our children the rules of sport and fair play, and, in many cases, the rules of life," said Greg Gordon, vice president of Consumer Marketing at Liberty Mutual. "Youth coaches like Jose Cardenas create positive environments for children that we can all emulate."
Jose Cardenas was among thousands of coaches countrywide nominated online by parents, peers and organizations at www.responsiblesports.com between September 17 and December 7, 2007. Winning coaches were selected by a committee of representatives from Positive Coaching Alliance, USA Football, US Youth Soccer and Liberty Mutual.
February 22nd, 2008
I worry about burnout, and I'm not even an athlete.
I have been in this job so long that there must come a time when I will hit the wall.
Actually, I have been very close to that wall in the past year. The entire newspaper business is in a burnout stage right now, but that's another story.
How will I personally know that it's officially time to visit Human Resources and consider my options?
Will there be physical symptoms?
I haven't had a headache in years, so that obviously would be a warning sign.
Burnout.
By Alix Spiegel
February 21st, 2008
February 21, 2008 · On October 3, 1955, the Mickey Mouse Club debuted on television. As we all now know, the show quickly became a cultural icon, one of those phenomena that helped define an era.
What is less remembered but equally, if not more, important, is that another transformative cultural event happened that day: The Mattel toy company began advertising a gun called the "Thunder Burp."
I know — who's ever heard of the Thunder Burp?
Well, no one.
The reason the advertisement is significant is because it marked the first time that any toy company had attempted to peddle merchandise on television outside of the Christmas season. Until 1955, ad budgets at toy companies were minuscule, so the only time they could afford to hawk their wares on TV was during Christmas. But then came Mattel and the Thunder Burp, which, according to Howard Chudacoff, a cultural historian at Brown University, was a kind of historical watershed. Almost overnight, children's play became focused, as never before, on things — the toys themselves.
By Mark McGuire
February 19th, 2008
A recent Siena Research Institute study reports three of four New Yorkers believe youth sports have an over-emphasis on winning. That said, more than nine of 10 believe that kids can learn something by competing.
True on both. Youth sports parents and even some athletes can run amok, forgetting that a game is just a game. Here's a hint: If you think your child is going pro, you're wrong. Let's cede the one-in-a-million exceptions and move on.
But with the proper adult guidance and perspective, sports can teach kids valuable lessons about winning and losing that carry beyond any field, court or rink.
"Life is competitive, so you have to learn that sooner or later," said Tom Wilson of New Scotland. "You have to push yourself."
Wilson's twin 13-year-old sons are both hockey fans. Ben plays Bethlehem Youth Hockey. Luke, who ambles around in leg braces due to cerebral palsy, watches.
By The Associated Press
February 10th, 2008
BOSTON - The stories have become all too familiar — young athletes, and sometimes their parents and coaches, turning a school playing field into the set of a Jerry Springer episode.
Now a bill set to be heard by Massachusetts lawmakers on Monday seeks to reduce the number and intensity of school sports scuffles by drafting new curriculum to teach sportsmanship.
Lawmakers and supporters hope the new pilot program could help young athletes learn how to conduct themselves both on and off the field.
The bill would create lessons to help children develop "the mental skills associated with self-control in an effort to reduce violence, drug and alcohol abuse, eating disorders, bullying and other destructive choices."
The teaching materials would be offered free of charge to youth and school sports leagues and teams.
Grandieri's efforts to honor fallen friend stymied by University officials
By David Bernstein
February 7th, 2008
A captain in his senior season, Penn's Brian Grandieri has hit his share of big shots in his career. But even he'll tell you that the most meaningful points he ever scored weren't for Quakers coaches Fran Dunphy or Glen Miller.
They were for Evan Brady.
A neighbor, schoolmate and childhood friend of Grandieri, Brady was a standout lacrosse player for Rose Tree Media Optimist Youth Club, and seemed set to continue playing at Malvern Prep, a Catholic school outside of Philadelphia.
But on Sept. 11, 2001, at 15 years old, he was diagnosed with osteogenic sarcoma - bone cancer.
Staff Report
November 7th, 2007
SNOW HILL — The Worcester County Recreation & Parks Department has established an official chapter of the National Youth Sports Coaches Association to train volunteer coaches on the appropriate methods of working with children in sports.
The department joins more than 2,200 organizations across the country that are conducting the NYSCA certification program to help ensure that volunteer coaches in their community have a clear understanding of their roles and responsibilities.
More than 1.8 million volunteer coaches have been trained by NYSCA, which is a program of the National Alliance For Youth Sports, a nonprofit organization that works to provide safe and fun sports for America’s youth.
Steve Miller will serve as the NYSCA chapter director for the Worcester County department.
| Adirondack CC | 4/1 & 4/8 |
| Broome CC | August 21, 2008 |
| Cayuga CC | Fall 2008 |
| Clinton CC | May 27, 2008 |
| Corning CC | |
| Columbia-Greene CC | July 19, 2008 |
| Dutchess CC | May 18, 2008 |
| Erie CC | TBA |
| F.I.T. | TBA |
| Finger Lakes CC | June 11th, 2008 |
| Fulton-Montgomery CC | August 5, 2008 |
| Herkimer CC | June 17th 2008 |
| Hudson Valley CC | May 6, 2008 |
| Jamestown CC | March 2008 |
| Jefferson CC | May 21, 2008 |
| Mohawk Valley CC | March 29, 2008 |
| Monroe CC | August 6, 2008 |
| Nassau CC | 3/1 & 3/11 |
| Niagara CC | 8/7, 9/13, 10/25 |
| Onondaga CC | April 26, 2008 |
| SUNY Orange CC | TBA |
| SUNY Rockland CC | May 6, 2008 |
| Schenectady CC | Summer 2008 |
| Suffolk CC | June 6, 2008 |
| Sullivan CC | TBA |
| Tompkins Cortland CC | May 5, 2008 |
| Ulster CC | October 7, 2008 |
| Westchester CC | 6/9, 7/16, and 8/14, 2008 |
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