I’m with Nicolas - no teeth at all and I don’t do super well with vomit either. I can if I have to but I get close to being sick myself.
I really appreciate the conversation about pushing your kids into discomfort. I struggle with this - I’ve got highly sensitive kids whose ick factor is super strong (the feeling of glass is like nails on a chalkboard so emptying the dishwasher requires gloves or the smell of strong food odors causes gagging). It’s rough and it’s hard to know when to push (put on the gloves and empty the dang dishwasher) and when to let go. ADHD is also a factor in our house with executive function being a huge struggle - so I gotta pick and choose my battles because every chore, every routine is a battle.
I’m an engineer who did undergrad research at a big university before spending 16 years in industry R&D, and I have a brother who is a biology professor mainly focused on research (his position is almost exclusively research because of his type of work)… I can’t imagine how decoupling research from education would be a positive for any science related field. Maybe that’s different for liberal arts programs/schools, I don’t know.
Growing up in a college town (Go Gators), I’ve heard some heartbreaking tales of student athletes struggling financially & not being able to work or get help b/c it would violate rules & regulations. So, I was relieved to hear they’re able to be compensated now. I’m also all-in on college sports, so this was really interesting to explore.
About bodily fluid aversions… I can’t do vomit cleanup w/o adding to the mess. Cannot control it. We were expected to handle that & also… feces messes… when I worked as a barista at an unnamed coffee corporation. Don’t get me started…
But yeah, I can & have handled broken bones, head lacs, you name it w/o batting an eye first as an older sibling & later a parent… but vomit has always sent me over the cliff.
I don't know if we would get consensus to end the travel ball thing but I would like to try. In our community, unless my child participates in travel ball or travel sports, there is no way they are going to play in high school. The way we are looking at it now, my children will not play beyond 8th grade because they won't be at the level to compete against students who have been in travel ball. Rec sports on the low-cost local level doesn't cut it anymore. High school sports only is available to students who have been playing at the travel ball level which means it's pretty much only available to families that are fairly wealthy. Also, sometimes I worry that the travel ball thing is more about the parents needing community than the kids really benefiting from the increased level of playing.
As a former college and travel ball coach, I would encourage you to not give up. What actually matters most of all is practice and love of the sport. If your child spends all the hours others are riding in a car practicing their skills, inventing challenges, and doing pick up games with the "travel ball" kids in their spare time (such as it is). I bet the gap won't be nearly as large as you think. I can also tell you that a lot of kids who spend the ages of 7-10 in highly structured sports drop out by high school. Playing multiple sports at a rec level as long as possible will help prevent injuries as well as develop hand-eye coordination that helps them in multiple areas. Let your kid guide their interest in how intensively to pursue the game.
I feel I was made to respond to this episode. I am not going to be able to keep it short. I am a former D3 women’s bball player, at a major research university where athletes receive no athletic scholarships. Our team won 81 games in a row at one point and won 4 consecutive national titles. I know it was “only” D3, but it was still hard, we were still lucky many times, and despite being a degreed chemical engineering executive now, I can say with 100% confidence that sports were a vital part of my education and “the mission.” I could not be more “team Beth” on this. I’ll try to only hit things that maybe have not already been said. 1. I sort of cant wrap my head around the irony of Sarah lamenting things that “should be” instead of what is given her recent commentary on the state of the Democratic Party. 2. I think sports is a safe and successful space for people right now because there is no where to hide. I am not mad at calling anyone a celebrity who has worked as hard as these NIL athletes have. Not only can you not “fake” a made free throw, the results of these events are undisputed. It’s appointment TV (or IRL). It’s community. It’s a shared emotional experience. I find that level of integrity, persistence, desire for coaching and critique, follows athletes to their jobs in higher percentages than people who never have to perform “in the arena”. These are the anti-trolls. (Applies to live performers of all kinds). They put themselves out there. 3. We do not get to decide value. The people paying for things determine it. Whether it’s attention economy or revenues. It’s not what “should be” it’s what is. Eat or be eaten. 4. The NIL is benefitting athletes, and benefitting females more proportionately. I did not get paid to play ball, but I put in so much time and sacrificed my body. (The extent to which I did was not appreciated at the time). The university (even the D3 one) has used my image and gotten marketing and increased visibility and recognition due the efforts of myself and my teammates and our success. I didn’t have time to have a job. I had debt when I left school. I was of a lucky time to get a good job out of college that allowed me to pay things off in a reasonable timeframe. I’m sure my situation is not common. The athletes deserve this compensation. 5. The introduction of the transfer portal, in my opinion, holds abusive coaches to account. A player now does not have to sacrifice sitting out a year or opt for expensive additional years of schooling or grad school to make a change. It rewards amazing coaches (like Mark Pope) who attract and retain talent in the right ways, now that the field has been evened up monetarily. 6. Why are we trying to separate sports from universities? These are entire businesses that benefit student bodies (not even athletes) by allowing for work study programs and other jobs in all manner of fields, marketing, administration, facility and equipment management. At my school the biomedical students designed the some of the cutting edge technologies used in the physical therapy department! Seems like an ecosystem that is indeed beneficial for all? I really don’t get the lines Sarah is trying to draw. 7. I did not even touch the physical aspects of more moving bodies, exercise equipment, intramural, club sports, rec sports and other non revenue generating varsity programs that benefit from the revenue generating sports. 8. Did I mention also (way back in 1997), that I signed autographs for little girls? In a tiny gym, with bleachers. No scholarships. That representation, I’d like to believe it mattered. 9. Community. There is undeniable pride of belonging to something. It exists in many rings of the tree. The university, the alumni, the team the coaching staff, the parents. It makes people at many levels feel less alone at the end of the day. I was not a big fan of sororities and fraternities at first, but I think it’s the same idea. 10. I was a country girl who went to a big city. I met people very different from me for the first time and so did my parents. My parents, perhaps even more than me, were able to change their views and influence others in our hometown about the beauty of different backgrounds. If that isn’t the mission…I don’t know what it is. As my kids would say…Let em Cook!!
Thank you so much for your comment!!! As someone who would never have been able to afford my undergrad degree without a partial athletic scholarship, I am on Team Collegate Sports. It's like Sarah doesn't believe that being a professional athlete is a viable career option. It's bananas. University sports is THE training ground for aspiring professional athletes. The working years for professional athletes is so short, usually by their mid-30s, they are done, so University is the place where they train for their first career and also train for their second career. And if those college athletes don't go to the pro-leagues, then that training benefits them in other ways that cannot all be accounted for in one sitting.
College athletes are some of the most disciplined students in universities. They have to carry a full time roster of classes, and most universities now require a B average to be able to play and stay on the team. I would get up at 4:30 in the morning 5 days a week to go train; go to classes, study in between, go to my late afternoon training, then go home and study until 10-11:00pm and do iit all over the next day, and the day after that, M-F. Then I had competition meets every Saturday for the season. It takes real commitment and persistence to be a college athlete. And my athletic years juggling university taught me how to do hard things and succeed in doing them.
Professional athletics is a viable career option, and athletes train for pro-careers through their formative years. There is nothing wrong with this if the whole family is aligned with it. There's no reason to burst the dreams of a kid who has a strong goal of playing pro-hocky or baseball or going to the Olympics. There is such a short amount of time in life that the human body can endure the work necessary to be a pro athlete. Whether you want to acknowledge it or not, pro sports teams are part of the national identies of most countries.
On the sports front: Colorado is FINALLY getting a Women's pro-league soccer team, with a brand new stadium!! And I will be here 24/7 for all of it. 😁
I finally got around to finishing the episode and wanted to pop in to say this was one of my favorite episodes of the year! I like the niche topics like this right now because I think I feel like I can relate to it right now. Considering my top 5 podcasts last year were this and 4 sports pods, this topic made me feel like I was watching a crossover episode! lol
I’m not sure if any episode has made me want to grab my family and move to a small European town more than this one. My two early elementary school boys are starting their sports journey. They love it! We love it! But I’m looking at the families a year or two ahead and in our small midwestern town, participation in rec sports dwindles in favor of traveling teams starting at third grade. I agree with Sarah here, these aggressively competitive attitudes starting earlier and earlier and modeling for our kids that winning and making the most money are our most important values is horrific. Does anyone else see the correlation in our culture at large?? Competition instead of cooperation, greed over all else, it’s why our society is in such a sorry state right now. American “values” come down to competition and greed and most of us feed into the entertainment of it because it’s a diversion from the harder work of coming together to make something better. I would, personally, like to opt out…
I think this is where attending a mildly rural school was protective against the early professionalization of sports/arts. We had opportunities for activities through school, but travel ball was not popular. I also noticed that most kids were involved in more than one activity/sport. I can’t remember anyone who just played one sport year round. I remember a lot of classmates who were in multiple sports, music, and maybe speech, FFA, 4-H, or something else! It was probably helpful that our school was well-funded. We did not have to fundraise for school activities, or for our school in general. If kids were in need, someone would make sure they had the equipment/clothes to participate. We would actually be given money to buy lunch/snacks when on a school sanctioned outing.
Growing up in ND also meant that we did not have any school sanctioned events (games, concerts, etc) on Wednesday evening or Sunday. We had to be done with practice by a certain time on Wednesday, to allow for church, (or if non-religious, family time). While I don’t love the idea of centering time off around just Christianity, I do think the forced time off was a good thing! And most of us did attend confirmation and Advent/Lent church services.
My best friend (40yo education journalist) posted this yesterday “After much prayer and reflection I have decided to enter the transfer portal. I’m open to all offers” 🤣
Interesting thought. Your comment makes me wonder too if a lot of schools would become more “even” if you took out the sports. Many kids pick schools for the energy/excitement and the culture of sports. Would that allow HS kids to pick colleges simply based on academics and cost instead?
1. bodily fluids in the therapy room is a whole thing. I've been working really hard on holding my own personal boundaries around this.
2. I had a big reaction to the discussion about discomfort at the dentist, because I have such dental anxiety informed by some past negative experience and a lot of family values around sucking it up and getting through it. As a middle aged adult, I recently switched dentists and advocated for what I needed and it's sooooo much better now.
3. On the parenting front, I think holding expectation is important and also working collaboratively with kids around their individual needs.
There are a lot of people who just won't go to the dentist without some kind of relaxant or pain killer. I say it is better from them to use the medication than not go at all. I also just had a 3 hour dental surgery this week with only Novocaine, but was offered a sedative. It was fine with just the novocaine because I don't have dental anxiety, but I think it would have been really difficult for the two people working on me if I did have dental anxiety and was not offered the option of a sedative.
Have you thought at all about the situation at schools that are simultaneously losing Federal funding for science and seeing avenues open up for revenue from sports? I can’t make sense of it, but it’s an interesting convergence of facts.
On the college basketball front, I feel like in some ways, it has increased parity in the men’s game. The smaller teams have had more of an opportunity to build chemistry. While the big teams have the superstars.
Not to mention that I think NIL is a huge reason for the advancement in women’s basketball. Women are still staying in school for 4 years so that game has the consistency that many, including me, crave. We are getting old and more mature players, which is leading to an improved product on the women’s college basketball front.
I ironically listened to this episode on the way home from a travel basketball tournament for my 9th grader. I woke up at 5 am on a Saturday, drove 2 hours, paid $20 to watch my kid play 2 basketball games and then drove home 12 hours later. I have mixed feelings about it though. My daughter is a good basketball player but she’s not major D1 good. I wish there was an alternative but the way things are, if she doesn’t do this, she’ll fall behind. But on the other hand, I got 4 hours in the car one on one with my 15 year old. Those moments are special and increasingly fleeting.
Hi I left the state today for my kids climbing. And we had the best day. And it was super expensive to do. And a huge amount of time and effort for the whole family. It’s all so complicated.
As an adult, I’ve realized that one of the most important lessons I learned from team sports is to honor your commitments. I can’t tell you how many times my parents told me or my younger brothers “you don’t have to sign up next season, but you made a commitment to this team and your coach and teammates are counting on you, so you’re going to practice.”
So now it’s a big button for me when I see society encouraging people to cancel plans in the name of “self care” or just not signing up for stuff in the first place because “you need to stop being a people-pleaser.”
I just signed my daughter up for her first soccer “league” (using that term loosely as I think she’ll to the park once a week and spend half the time running drills and half scrimmaging. There are no set teams or scheduled games). I’ve been wondering, as we try different sports and leagues with her over the years, how many times we’ll get halfway through a season and the team will be struggling because kids lose interest and their parents let them drop out. I never played on travel teams growing up, but I wonder if that financial investment is part of what we need to get people to follow through?
I almost had to stop my walk and comment at 3 different times during the episode because of things that resonated with me!
On the point of how the non-athletes feel at these schools.... I went to a military academy (Coast Guard, so we're not talking about the big ones!) where I was on the men's crew team. Over the years, the team's success had ebbed and flowed, sending teams to England to compete at the highest level, and then also just being decent in the D3 regattas. But regardless of success or failure, the team got treated like crap by the administration. Excusals for traveling were a fight, funding was a fight, our support mostly came from alum. And then there was our football team. Remember, this is a D3 school where people come because they want to be in the Coast Guard, but also play football. But they got treated like God's gift to the school because, even though they sucked almost all the time, people showed up for games and bought tickets. And people care about football. So excusals were easy for them. Getting to sleep in late on game day was easy for them (yes, it was a thing to get special permission to not have to get up at reveille like everyone else). Team meals, travel funds, etc. etc.... none of it was a fight. And it pissed off pretty much everyone else at the school. So, while I don't think my tiny little military academy scales completely to a huge state school, I would imagine that, other athletes outside the big sports, at least, have issue with how those teams are treated.
On the point about the professionalization of sports at an early age... I have two girls who are dancers. Both are very talented. My oldest (who is only 15) considered wanting to be a professional dancer for about 2 years. The pressure almost broke her and she quit dance last year (then tried cheerleading and then came back). She was singled out as someone who has a gift for dance and she felt like, if she didn't pursue it, she would be wasting it. I want to make it clear that no one - most especially her father and I - ever said that to her at all. We absolutely LOVE our studio and the fact that it provides opportunities for those who are interested in pursuing it further, but also is just a studio for those who are enjoying what they're doing, but the culture of pretty much every kid activity, it seems, is that, if you're good at it, you must be the BEST. It was devastating to watch that pressure crush my kid and nothing I could say to her would make her believe differently. Time off and therapy have helped her through it and she's thrilled to be back at the studio, but it was a very long, very hard year.
The other point I was thinking about when it comes to that same topic is that the path to "excellence" starts too early. Misty Copeland is one of the most amazing dancers who has ever been a principal at ABT. She didn't start dancing until she was 13 and it was at a boys and girls club on a gym floor. Her teacher saw her stunning gift and helped her along. But she is a one in a billion story. For most professional dancers, if you don't start down the road of being seen at major ballet competitions by the age of 7-9 years old, you're behind the power curve and you'll never see a principal position, though you could probably still work professionally. It was this realization that really soured my daughter - she saw the politics at play and saw that she'd have to sacrifice even more than she already was, and it was too much.
Finally, on the pushing and pulling of kids... I am Beth in this situation. I think what I've landed on is that I need to push harder when it's something that they will absolutely have to know how to do in order to be a productive and successful member of society - so ordering their own food, dealing with their teachers, knowing how to wash the dishes, etc. And then I don't push too hard when it's something that they can navigate the world without doing - like going to a party where they don't know anyone but the person who invited them. I give a gentle nudge in those situations because social anxiety is my own giant issue and I don't want them to suffer from it like I do, but I don't push so hard that it becomes worse in the end than just not going. I keep in mind the mantra "parent the kids you have, not the ones you wish you had," to guide that.
I’m with Nicolas - no teeth at all and I don’t do super well with vomit either. I can if I have to but I get close to being sick myself.
I really appreciate the conversation about pushing your kids into discomfort. I struggle with this - I’ve got highly sensitive kids whose ick factor is super strong (the feeling of glass is like nails on a chalkboard so emptying the dishwasher requires gloves or the smell of strong food odors causes gagging). It’s rough and it’s hard to know when to push (put on the gloves and empty the dang dishwasher) and when to let go. ADHD is also a factor in our house with executive function being a huge struggle - so I gotta pick and choose my battles because every chore, every routine is a battle.
I’m an engineer who did undergrad research at a big university before spending 16 years in industry R&D, and I have a brother who is a biology professor mainly focused on research (his position is almost exclusively research because of his type of work)… I can’t imagine how decoupling research from education would be a positive for any science related field. Maybe that’s different for liberal arts programs/schools, I don’t know.
Growing up in a college town (Go Gators), I’ve heard some heartbreaking tales of student athletes struggling financially & not being able to work or get help b/c it would violate rules & regulations. So, I was relieved to hear they’re able to be compensated now. I’m also all-in on college sports, so this was really interesting to explore.
About bodily fluid aversions… I can’t do vomit cleanup w/o adding to the mess. Cannot control it. We were expected to handle that & also… feces messes… when I worked as a barista at an unnamed coffee corporation. Don’t get me started…
But yeah, I can & have handled broken bones, head lacs, you name it w/o batting an eye first as an older sibling & later a parent… but vomit has always sent me over the cliff.
I don't know if we would get consensus to end the travel ball thing but I would like to try. In our community, unless my child participates in travel ball or travel sports, there is no way they are going to play in high school. The way we are looking at it now, my children will not play beyond 8th grade because they won't be at the level to compete against students who have been in travel ball. Rec sports on the low-cost local level doesn't cut it anymore. High school sports only is available to students who have been playing at the travel ball level which means it's pretty much only available to families that are fairly wealthy. Also, sometimes I worry that the travel ball thing is more about the parents needing community than the kids really benefiting from the increased level of playing.
+1 to community benefits for parents.
As a former college and travel ball coach, I would encourage you to not give up. What actually matters most of all is practice and love of the sport. If your child spends all the hours others are riding in a car practicing their skills, inventing challenges, and doing pick up games with the "travel ball" kids in their spare time (such as it is). I bet the gap won't be nearly as large as you think. I can also tell you that a lot of kids who spend the ages of 7-10 in highly structured sports drop out by high school. Playing multiple sports at a rec level as long as possible will help prevent injuries as well as develop hand-eye coordination that helps them in multiple areas. Let your kid guide their interest in how intensively to pursue the game.
I feel I was made to respond to this episode. I am not going to be able to keep it short. I am a former D3 women’s bball player, at a major research university where athletes receive no athletic scholarships. Our team won 81 games in a row at one point and won 4 consecutive national titles. I know it was “only” D3, but it was still hard, we were still lucky many times, and despite being a degreed chemical engineering executive now, I can say with 100% confidence that sports were a vital part of my education and “the mission.” I could not be more “team Beth” on this. I’ll try to only hit things that maybe have not already been said. 1. I sort of cant wrap my head around the irony of Sarah lamenting things that “should be” instead of what is given her recent commentary on the state of the Democratic Party. 2. I think sports is a safe and successful space for people right now because there is no where to hide. I am not mad at calling anyone a celebrity who has worked as hard as these NIL athletes have. Not only can you not “fake” a made free throw, the results of these events are undisputed. It’s appointment TV (or IRL). It’s community. It’s a shared emotional experience. I find that level of integrity, persistence, desire for coaching and critique, follows athletes to their jobs in higher percentages than people who never have to perform “in the arena”. These are the anti-trolls. (Applies to live performers of all kinds). They put themselves out there. 3. We do not get to decide value. The people paying for things determine it. Whether it’s attention economy or revenues. It’s not what “should be” it’s what is. Eat or be eaten. 4. The NIL is benefitting athletes, and benefitting females more proportionately. I did not get paid to play ball, but I put in so much time and sacrificed my body. (The extent to which I did was not appreciated at the time). The university (even the D3 one) has used my image and gotten marketing and increased visibility and recognition due the efforts of myself and my teammates and our success. I didn’t have time to have a job. I had debt when I left school. I was of a lucky time to get a good job out of college that allowed me to pay things off in a reasonable timeframe. I’m sure my situation is not common. The athletes deserve this compensation. 5. The introduction of the transfer portal, in my opinion, holds abusive coaches to account. A player now does not have to sacrifice sitting out a year or opt for expensive additional years of schooling or grad school to make a change. It rewards amazing coaches (like Mark Pope) who attract and retain talent in the right ways, now that the field has been evened up monetarily. 6. Why are we trying to separate sports from universities? These are entire businesses that benefit student bodies (not even athletes) by allowing for work study programs and other jobs in all manner of fields, marketing, administration, facility and equipment management. At my school the biomedical students designed the some of the cutting edge technologies used in the physical therapy department! Seems like an ecosystem that is indeed beneficial for all? I really don’t get the lines Sarah is trying to draw. 7. I did not even touch the physical aspects of more moving bodies, exercise equipment, intramural, club sports, rec sports and other non revenue generating varsity programs that benefit from the revenue generating sports. 8. Did I mention also (way back in 1997), that I signed autographs for little girls? In a tiny gym, with bleachers. No scholarships. That representation, I’d like to believe it mattered. 9. Community. There is undeniable pride of belonging to something. It exists in many rings of the tree. The university, the alumni, the team the coaching staff, the parents. It makes people at many levels feel less alone at the end of the day. I was not a big fan of sororities and fraternities at first, but I think it’s the same idea. 10. I was a country girl who went to a big city. I met people very different from me for the first time and so did my parents. My parents, perhaps even more than me, were able to change their views and influence others in our hometown about the beauty of different backgrounds. If that isn’t the mission…I don’t know what it is. As my kids would say…Let em Cook!!
Thank you so much for your comment!!! As someone who would never have been able to afford my undergrad degree without a partial athletic scholarship, I am on Team Collegate Sports. It's like Sarah doesn't believe that being a professional athlete is a viable career option. It's bananas. University sports is THE training ground for aspiring professional athletes. The working years for professional athletes is so short, usually by their mid-30s, they are done, so University is the place where they train for their first career and also train for their second career. And if those college athletes don't go to the pro-leagues, then that training benefits them in other ways that cannot all be accounted for in one sitting.
College athletes are some of the most disciplined students in universities. They have to carry a full time roster of classes, and most universities now require a B average to be able to play and stay on the team. I would get up at 4:30 in the morning 5 days a week to go train; go to classes, study in between, go to my late afternoon training, then go home and study until 10-11:00pm and do iit all over the next day, and the day after that, M-F. Then I had competition meets every Saturday for the season. It takes real commitment and persistence to be a college athlete. And my athletic years juggling university taught me how to do hard things and succeed in doing them.
Professional athletics is a viable career option, and athletes train for pro-careers through their formative years. There is nothing wrong with this if the whole family is aligned with it. There's no reason to burst the dreams of a kid who has a strong goal of playing pro-hocky or baseball or going to the Olympics. There is such a short amount of time in life that the human body can endure the work necessary to be a pro athlete. Whether you want to acknowledge it or not, pro sports teams are part of the national identies of most countries.
On the sports front: Colorado is FINALLY getting a Women's pro-league soccer team, with a brand new stadium!! And I will be here 24/7 for all of it. 😁
Yes! I was thinking about #1 too!
I finally got around to finishing the episode and wanted to pop in to say this was one of my favorite episodes of the year! I like the niche topics like this right now because I think I feel like I can relate to it right now. Considering my top 5 podcasts last year were this and 4 sports pods, this topic made me feel like I was watching a crossover episode! lol
Thank you!!!!!!
I’m not sure if any episode has made me want to grab my family and move to a small European town more than this one. My two early elementary school boys are starting their sports journey. They love it! We love it! But I’m looking at the families a year or two ahead and in our small midwestern town, participation in rec sports dwindles in favor of traveling teams starting at third grade. I agree with Sarah here, these aggressively competitive attitudes starting earlier and earlier and modeling for our kids that winning and making the most money are our most important values is horrific. Does anyone else see the correlation in our culture at large?? Competition instead of cooperation, greed over all else, it’s why our society is in such a sorry state right now. American “values” come down to competition and greed and most of us feed into the entertainment of it because it’s a diversion from the harder work of coming together to make something better. I would, personally, like to opt out…
scroll up for my comment on travel ball culture (as a former college and travel ball coach)
I think this is where attending a mildly rural school was protective against the early professionalization of sports/arts. We had opportunities for activities through school, but travel ball was not popular. I also noticed that most kids were involved in more than one activity/sport. I can’t remember anyone who just played one sport year round. I remember a lot of classmates who were in multiple sports, music, and maybe speech, FFA, 4-H, or something else! It was probably helpful that our school was well-funded. We did not have to fundraise for school activities, or for our school in general. If kids were in need, someone would make sure they had the equipment/clothes to participate. We would actually be given money to buy lunch/snacks when on a school sanctioned outing.
Growing up in ND also meant that we did not have any school sanctioned events (games, concerts, etc) on Wednesday evening or Sunday. We had to be done with practice by a certain time on Wednesday, to allow for church, (or if non-religious, family time). While I don’t love the idea of centering time off around just Christianity, I do think the forced time off was a good thing! And most of us did attend confirmation and Advent/Lent church services.
My best friend (40yo education journalist) posted this yesterday “After much prayer and reflection I have decided to enter the transfer portal. I’m open to all offers” 🤣
I wonder what the effect of de-coupling sports from college would have on male enrollment rates, which are already struggling?
Interesting thought. Your comment makes me wonder too if a lot of schools would become more “even” if you took out the sports. Many kids pick schools for the energy/excitement and the culture of sports. Would that allow HS kids to pick colleges simply based on academics and cost instead?
It’s such an interesting thought experiment- gaming out the consequences!
Some thoughts on outside of politics:
1. bodily fluids in the therapy room is a whole thing. I've been working really hard on holding my own personal boundaries around this.
2. I had a big reaction to the discussion about discomfort at the dentist, because I have such dental anxiety informed by some past negative experience and a lot of family values around sucking it up and getting through it. As a middle aged adult, I recently switched dentists and advocated for what I needed and it's sooooo much better now.
3. On the parenting front, I think holding expectation is important and also working collaboratively with kids around their individual needs.
There are a lot of people who just won't go to the dentist without some kind of relaxant or pain killer. I say it is better from them to use the medication than not go at all. I also just had a 3 hour dental surgery this week with only Novocaine, but was offered a sedative. It was fine with just the novocaine because I don't have dental anxiety, but I think it would have been really difficult for the two people working on me if I did have dental anxiety and was not offered the option of a sedative.
Have you thought at all about the situation at schools that are simultaneously losing Federal funding for science and seeing avenues open up for revenue from sports? I can’t make sense of it, but it’s an interesting convergence of facts.
On the college basketball front, I feel like in some ways, it has increased parity in the men’s game. The smaller teams have had more of an opportunity to build chemistry. While the big teams have the superstars.
Not to mention that I think NIL is a huge reason for the advancement in women’s basketball. Women are still staying in school for 4 years so that game has the consistency that many, including me, crave. We are getting old and more mature players, which is leading to an improved product on the women’s college basketball front.
I ironically listened to this episode on the way home from a travel basketball tournament for my 9th grader. I woke up at 5 am on a Saturday, drove 2 hours, paid $20 to watch my kid play 2 basketball games and then drove home 12 hours later. I have mixed feelings about it though. My daughter is a good basketball player but she’s not major D1 good. I wish there was an alternative but the way things are, if she doesn’t do this, she’ll fall behind. But on the other hand, I got 4 hours in the car one on one with my 15 year old. Those moments are special and increasingly fleeting.
Hi I left the state today for my kids climbing. And we had the best day. And it was super expensive to do. And a huge amount of time and effort for the whole family. It’s all so complicated.
As an adult, I’ve realized that one of the most important lessons I learned from team sports is to honor your commitments. I can’t tell you how many times my parents told me or my younger brothers “you don’t have to sign up next season, but you made a commitment to this team and your coach and teammates are counting on you, so you’re going to practice.”
So now it’s a big button for me when I see society encouraging people to cancel plans in the name of “self care” or just not signing up for stuff in the first place because “you need to stop being a people-pleaser.”
I just signed my daughter up for her first soccer “league” (using that term loosely as I think she’ll to the park once a week and spend half the time running drills and half scrimmaging. There are no set teams or scheduled games). I’ve been wondering, as we try different sports and leagues with her over the years, how many times we’ll get halfway through a season and the team will be struggling because kids lose interest and their parents let them drop out. I never played on travel teams growing up, but I wonder if that financial investment is part of what we need to get people to follow through?
We also had that rule with my kids. But we had to break it when my 6-year-old cut his uniform into tiny pieces rather than complete the season.
I almost had to stop my walk and comment at 3 different times during the episode because of things that resonated with me!
On the point of how the non-athletes feel at these schools.... I went to a military academy (Coast Guard, so we're not talking about the big ones!) where I was on the men's crew team. Over the years, the team's success had ebbed and flowed, sending teams to England to compete at the highest level, and then also just being decent in the D3 regattas. But regardless of success or failure, the team got treated like crap by the administration. Excusals for traveling were a fight, funding was a fight, our support mostly came from alum. And then there was our football team. Remember, this is a D3 school where people come because they want to be in the Coast Guard, but also play football. But they got treated like God's gift to the school because, even though they sucked almost all the time, people showed up for games and bought tickets. And people care about football. So excusals were easy for them. Getting to sleep in late on game day was easy for them (yes, it was a thing to get special permission to not have to get up at reveille like everyone else). Team meals, travel funds, etc. etc.... none of it was a fight. And it pissed off pretty much everyone else at the school. So, while I don't think my tiny little military academy scales completely to a huge state school, I would imagine that, other athletes outside the big sports, at least, have issue with how those teams are treated.
On the point about the professionalization of sports at an early age... I have two girls who are dancers. Both are very talented. My oldest (who is only 15) considered wanting to be a professional dancer for about 2 years. The pressure almost broke her and she quit dance last year (then tried cheerleading and then came back). She was singled out as someone who has a gift for dance and she felt like, if she didn't pursue it, she would be wasting it. I want to make it clear that no one - most especially her father and I - ever said that to her at all. We absolutely LOVE our studio and the fact that it provides opportunities for those who are interested in pursuing it further, but also is just a studio for those who are enjoying what they're doing, but the culture of pretty much every kid activity, it seems, is that, if you're good at it, you must be the BEST. It was devastating to watch that pressure crush my kid and nothing I could say to her would make her believe differently. Time off and therapy have helped her through it and she's thrilled to be back at the studio, but it was a very long, very hard year.
The other point I was thinking about when it comes to that same topic is that the path to "excellence" starts too early. Misty Copeland is one of the most amazing dancers who has ever been a principal at ABT. She didn't start dancing until she was 13 and it was at a boys and girls club on a gym floor. Her teacher saw her stunning gift and helped her along. But she is a one in a billion story. For most professional dancers, if you don't start down the road of being seen at major ballet competitions by the age of 7-9 years old, you're behind the power curve and you'll never see a principal position, though you could probably still work professionally. It was this realization that really soured my daughter - she saw the politics at play and saw that she'd have to sacrifice even more than she already was, and it was too much.
Finally, on the pushing and pulling of kids... I am Beth in this situation. I think what I've landed on is that I need to push harder when it's something that they will absolutely have to know how to do in order to be a productive and successful member of society - so ordering their own food, dealing with their teachers, knowing how to wash the dishes, etc. And then I don't push too hard when it's something that they can navigate the world without doing - like going to a party where they don't know anyone but the person who invited them. I give a gentle nudge in those situations because social anxiety is my own giant issue and I don't want them to suffer from it like I do, but I don't push so hard that it becomes worse in the end than just not going. I keep in mind the mantra "parent the kids you have, not the ones you wish you had," to guide that.
Thank you for these thoughtful reflections.