For the Team: How to Improve the Youth Sports Experience for Everyone

(Hardback)

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A unique exploration of the emotionally charged adult youth sports experience.

Fewer than 2% of athletes ever play Division I sports, and for those who do, its not always a positive experience. The pressures begin in youth sports and rarely let up. Team Adultthe parents, coaches, and administrators facilitating youth, high school, and college sportsneed to turn inward and explore their own motivations and intentions in order to effect real change for the benefit of young athletes everywhere.

In For the Team: How to Improve the Youth Sports Experience for Everyone, sports mom, former Division I athlete, and coach Meagan Frank provides an invaluable guide for the adults in the youth sports landscape. She urges them to take personal responsibility in creating an emotionally healthy place for kids to learn, play, and grow, no matter the level of competition and no matter the stakes. Frank takes a deep-dive into highly-charged topics surrounding youth sports and shares key strategies Team Adult can adopt, including actively listening to the young athletes, respecting their choices, encouraging sports activities outside of the competitive environment, and carving out time for the family and other interests.

Full of personal insights, interviews with experts, discussions with coaches, and surveys from hundreds of parents and children, For the Team features emotional discoveries and practical advice that will improve family and team dynamics and bring youth sports back to where it should beas one small yet important part of a childs development into a healthy, confident, and happy individual.

Reviews

What happened to playing catch for fun Today, the average parent invests $883 on one childs primary sport per season, and in just one year, some families spend up to $20,000 per kid on athletics. Frank, a former soccer and basketball player and coach whose children played sports through high school, uses research, data, and personal experience to push for a healthier, more joyful approach. Parents should play with their young kids, throwing balls with them and loving them unconditionally. Then, when their offspring are older, instead of saying theyre proud of them, which puts pressure on them, parents should say they admire their kids effort. Most offspring will not head to the Olympics, and some parents will grieve and experience a mourning of expectations. Frank promotes grace and empathy as she shares helpful-to everyone tips, including the elements of well-being (positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment) and the secrets of inner peace (the ability to accept losses, to avoid undue fixation on transitory pleasures, and to foster a calm and balanced mind). This guide is a winner. * Booklist *
As a psychotherapist and parent, I greatly appreciated Franks attention to honoring and holding our child athletes experiences and feelings as their own. Franks call to lovingly attend to our childrens dreams, rather than project our own onto them, instills hope for the development of athletes who feel free, whole, and brave. -- Connie North, PhD, MS LMFT, therapist for adolescents, individual adults, couples/partners, and support groups
In For The Team, Meagan Frank takes the reader through a journey of how to productively develop young athletes, using life enhancing examples and research based techniques that will make a difference for adults and their athletic kids. A must read for parents and young athletes! -- John E. Anderson, PhD, founder and chairman, Center for Sports Psychology
Coach Frank offers her personal stories as a young, ambitious athlete, an anguished parent of sports-driven children, and a compassionate coach. She bravely untangles the emotional and cutthroat aspects of navigating competitive sports and offers gentle reflections and suggestions to raise balanced, healthy, and active kids. -- Jeanne W. Rothaupt, PhD, LMFT, retired director of the University of Wisconsin-Stout Counseling Center

Author Bio

Meagan Frank has been a part of nearly 200 sports communities since her time as an athlete at Colorado College where she played NCAA Division-I soccer and Division-III basketball. She has coached boys and girls teams at the college, high school, and youth levels, parented three active athletes, and has held board member positions for four separate sports associations. Meagan regularly gives presentations across the country on the subjects of sports parents and women in sports. She lives in Wisconsin.