I had a true exchange of views with Kirsten Jones, one of the most prominent podcasters in youth sports--and a former D1 athlete and a mother of D1 athletes.
At one point I lamented not introducing Scout to top-level travel soccer a year or two earlier than we did.
Me: "I admire parents who can figure out what's really going on [on the youth soccer scene], understand the score a little bit better, and also stand back and let their kids lead the way. I think that if I would have taken the job [of sports parenting] more seriously from the get-go, I would have done the job a little bit better."
Jones: "Yet, she's one of less than five percent of kids who go on to play in D1, so I think you won!"
But she and I agreed that there's an upside to having your kid spend minimum time in the all-business travel leagues that can burn kids out.
Jones played her youth sports in Montana, where those leagues didn't exist. "I got to San Diego State and I was like, woo-hoo, where do we practice!?! And all my teammates were already exhausted."
