⚾️ 🏈 🏀 When Youth Sports Return, we will either have superior leadership from coaches and parents, or things will be worse.
But it will not be the same. There is no staying the same after a pandemic...
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I wrote The Youth Truth because youth sports had 3 drastically underserved populations: parents, coaches, and athletes.
The massive problems were being brushed under the rug. They were ignored and unaddressed because no one had solutions that were simple and practical.
❎Parents were not being educated in a loving manner about how their words and actions from the stands, before the games, or after the games were negatively impacting their kids psyche and performance.
❎Despite knowing that sport success is 80% mental and emotional, and just 20% physical, there was still little to no emphasis placed on mental and emotional fitness for student-athletes.
I was a coach in 2016 who was aware and honest enough to admit I knew nothing about how to transform an athlete’s mindset. The mental and emotion side of athlete development was foreign to me. As a result, the kids that I coached suffered silently with performance that was less than what they were capable of, anxiety, inability to get out of their head, fear of disappointing others, and a crippling fear of failing.
I didn’t know how to help them overcome self-doubts, escape the comparison trap, and smash through fears consistently. How to build up courage to take risks, step up, and be a leader amongst their peers.
It’s not that I didn’t want to help them in other areas aside from just athleticism…the problem was that I just didn’t know. I was too focused on what everyone was focused on—> improving physical performance.
So, I wrote The Youth Truth.
✅I wanted parents to have a playbook for how to perform their role in such a way that they encourage maximally without interfering.
✅I wanted coaches to have a mental game playbook because I knew that most do not have the time or energy to invest dozens of hours per week into building mindset training curriculum.
✅I wanted to equip athletes with the necessary tools to build an Unshakeable Confidence— a confidence that would not be shaken by negative coaches, negative circumstances, social media bullies, judgmental peers, or anything or anyone else that tried to tear them down.
The Youth Truth is a book that will inspire, encourage, and equip you to be the coach, parent, or athlete you are meant to be. The sports world is just as crazy as it was before sports were cancelled. I wish that this was like starting a brand new movie, but the reality is we have only hit the pause button on the same movie. I’m an idealist, but that is the truth.
The Youth Truth will give you new tools, new insights, new ways of thinking in order to see more student-athletes THRIVE and become confident, courageous, successful leaders in sports and for the rest of their lives.
