Confessions of a Sports Parent: Sports Balance
We know there is no rule book for those of us who are parents. We learn on the fly, with many cultural influences affecting our decisions and values. Not to mention our personal history, both positive and negative. Furthermore, for those of us who have children playing sports, the same premise exists…there isn’t a rule book, yet the same influences exist.
Gone are the days of signing up at your local league, and you play a season for just that team alone. The rise of travel and specialization has changed the landscape of youth sports. As a result, most of us are trying to navigate an ever-changing world of youth sports to ensure our children are in the most healthy situation. We do all of this without ever living through it ourselves. There wasn’t such a thing as a travel ball when we played as kids; even if there was, it is much different today.
I have two boys in the thick of it. My older son is 14 yrs old, and my younger is 11 yrs old, respectively. Both love playing sports, so my wife and I spend our days like many other parents driving them all over creation to their practices and games. Our family schedules are dictated by their sports schedules. Sometimes it can become overbearing, but most of the time, it is extremely fun, especially knowing that this is such a small window in their lives.
So with all that being said, I thought it would be fun to start a series of writings on how being a “sports parent” can impact our individual journey of the soul. This will be less about what is “right or wrong” in youth sports and more about the lessons offered to uncover a larger truth as a parent.
I hope some of you can relate or have similar experiences. In the end, being a parent is one of life’s greatest gifts and life’s most significant challenges, even while we sit and cheer our children playing a sport they love.
Sports Balance
Over the years in my personal life, I have come to see the importance of naming things. For instance, naming an emotion, problem, anxiety, or struggle gives that named thing less power. When we can name something, we can see it, and wrestle with it, which allows for healing and hope. Regarding parenting in sports, it might be helpful to name some things right at the beginning, so there is context to everything else.
A great athlete is usually someone who has excellent balance. Yet, being a parent of a child playing sports might require a different balance.
They say that parents must be able to separate themselves from their children and allow their child to be their own person, especially on the playing fields. I 100% agree with that sentiment, and that said, it is impossible.
Our children are biologically a part of us. In other words, there are pieces of us in our children as they run around that field. There is no denying it. Therefore, maybe it isn’t about detaching ourselves from our children but rather finding where the balance resides.
Most Eastern Religions focus on this idea of balance. The belief in understanding ourselves enough to know when we sway too much to one side or the other in certain situations. My Christian faith talks about One God in Three distinct persons. Within that, comes balance and relationship. Somewhere in these truths, we can frame what happens when our child is running around the athletic fields.
On the one hand, the idea that there are distinct parts of us in our children is a beautiful reminder of the gift of life…of the beauty of creation. Maybe this is why most of us never want to miss a second of watching our children play. (Notice also that this desire has nothing to do with our child’s athletic ability, thank God.) The desire to watch and encourage our children is innate, a mystery that can’t be explained. We need to celebrate this. I love watching my children play, and I love seeing every other parent wanting to be present in their children’s lives as well. Sports provide that.
On the other hand, our child is distinctly their own person. A person who must find their own way, with their own dreams, and especially work through their own failures and struggles. No one is exempt from the struggles in life, and for parents, allowing that struggle to occur in our child is one of the most challenging aspects of parenting. To watch and not try and fix things right away. As for the sports field, this is the area where our balance can become off kilter.
Yes, we are part of them, but our fears, wounds, and anxieties don’t have to be. Fears of them failing or not being on the “right” team. Or our old unresolved sports wounds that show in the form of over-the-top intensity, yelling, and anger. We have all seen that, unfortunately. That said, we are good at detecting this misplaced intensity right away in fellow parents but never diagnose our own quiet dysfunctions.
Parenting, or in this case, being a sports parent, is a considerable aspect of our lives, our children, and our families. Therefore, this particular “season of life” can be an avenue to help us become whole with ourselves. We just have to be open to that premise. Being a sports parent can be the avenue to healing and human flourishing for our children and us.
So let us find balance. A balance between celebrating the life-giving result of watching a piece of us running around on the field and knowing that our children must be their own person, full of wins and losses. And when our fears, wounds, and anxieties show their faces, let us not feel discouraged, for we all have them. Instead, let us try and name them, so they begin to lose their power, and we may find that beautiful balance again. Resulting in enjoying the journey of being a sports parent and hopefully molding our little athletes into kind human beings who will make their mark in the world.
(I hope to expand on those fears, wounds, and anxieties in subsequent writings.)
Brett Illig
In search of the good, the true, and the beautiful. Here are some moments along the way.
6 Comments
Tony Ciaverelli
Surprised you had the time to write this? Did you draft it at a snack bar 🙂 Well said my friend
Chris Mitchell
Awesome Perspectives from a Great Man. It is your written words that are so eloquent and accurately articulate the external calming facades that parents try to express in their more social views than ever before with strangers’ dangerous lens trying to capture everything including “the thrill of victories and the agony of defeats”.
It is refreshing to read your perspective which is part of most parents that sign up their kids for extra curricular activities whether it be sports, art, collectors, chess, music or entertainment, etc. My wife and I just had a brief discussion last night about starting our now younger kids ages 5 and 2 in activities like swimming, tumbling, karate or team activities to help build organized instructors, team social dynamics, learn commitment, sacrifice, how to learn from falling and snapping back up, and more importantly burn off healthy energy to save us older parents.
I would love to read or hear more about your perspective as you are a few years younger than me however we were teammates. I played more informal pick up activities in our neighborhoods growing up with neighbors and backyards where the “older kids” mostly organized the games and activities of us suburban families whom were blessed with green grass with ample space to play football, stickball, basketball, flashlight tag, volleyball, street hockey, etc. Now a days those neighborhoods have less land as developments with huge houses are sandwiched up against one another with less green grass that is open to have kid led organized as well as disorganized activities. Now a days there are huge complexes with state of the art facilities that we growing up would have looked and reacted like the kids from the movie “The Sandlot” or “Richie Rich” in disbelief of the immaculate facilities which have insurance companies that now dictate what activities may be played and organized by adults only to ensure their liability coverage may handle underwriting acceptable and adult supervised activities.
Kids like you growing up in the suburbs had pockets of neighborhood friends that grew up playing, practicing and learning how to organize a “disorganized” aka limited coach or parent lead activities. Kids and now even adult professionals now lack fundamental leadership that is organically produced by kids creatively modified interpretations of sports or activities aforementioned.
We were blessed to grow up in neighborhoods that shared in growing up and support without the “perceived need today that alleges that travel sports equals money or scholarships” chasing the Jones in the Rat Race of Sports.
Please continue to write and share your perspective as You and I were also blessed to be drafted and play baseball professionally though we played both disorganized (kid organized pick up games) as well as organized (adult and community based sports). todays social norms and trends may include lots of cameras and huge facilities, but internally I am missing the backyard games which bring more creativity, grit and other dynamics which help kids learn leadership and communication while “staying out of trouble”. I am glad that most of the time growing up that I did not have cameras on every “rotary phone” to snap up tik tok and other click bait items as we were actually and organically focused on the activities we were doing versus the illusion that scholarships are only earned thru traveling. You and I were blessed to get drafted at “small schools” and I turned down a couple Division 1 opportunities because they (coaches/locations) did not feel right to me. It also amazes me that in an era without Social Cameras/Media that my brither Rib managed to play three plus years of professional baseball after getting cut from the team in High School he did not play HS baseball but pitched professionally…Mind blowing that today people with more distractions and images to portray think that driving 5 hours away to watch their kid play another team 5 hours away to chase their dreams instead if spending those 10 hours of travel time and money playing locally and supporting their own communities that they live in. As a former backyard activity kind of guy and fortunate few to play professional baseball, I wish sports parents today would realize their kids can be great playing locally and their passion for their sport and DNA will ultimately produce the fruits of their labor whether playing recreational ball, pick up ball or travel ball ultimately those whom are passionate (hardworking), have been blessed with health and Athletic Genes will get scholarships or drafted, so why not PLAY and STAY LOCAL and travel for FUN or Real Championship Trophies earned by beating local than state, regional and if fortunate Nationally/Internationally.
Brett Illig
Thank you, Chris, for your thoughts. The landscape of sports and our communities have certainly changed from when we grew up. Some things are for the better, others not so much. I think the key is to try and be yourself and teach our kids to do the same, and through that, we can experience a lot of joy through their journey of playing sports. I hope you and your family are well. All the best.
Brett Illig
Ha ha…I have been drafting this for 10 years. I could learn a lot from you and Gina.
Brad Hoffman
Brett, great read! We pushed our boys to try as many sports as possible to find what they wanted. Now, with both boys in HS, we encourage them to play more than one, even if it’s just signing up for a few 5Ks or rec league. We have the same approach with academics and non-sport activities. Our goal has always been to expose them to as much of the world as we can so they can make their own choices.
Brett Illig
Hey Brad, great to hear from you; I hope that you are well. Great insight. Exposing them to everything is important because it allows them to choose for themselves what they like. Their choice, not ours. All the best…