Game On
I’m scared that my son is going to choose hockey as his sport of choice. Not only because it runs many Canadian parents upwards of $5000-10 000/season but because the obsession and competition appears very unhealthy to me. Not on the part of the kids – they just want to play the game – but on the part of the adults involved. Game On: How the Pressure to Win at All Costs Endangers Youth Sports and What Parents Can Do About It (now available in paperback for just ten bucks) is an educational book that aims to protect children in the world of sport. The author, award-winning ESPN reporter Tom Farrey, explores both the causes and the consequences of this unhealthy and un-sportsmanlike attitude. It’s a must-read for coaches and parents of athletes everywhere.
January 31st, 2010 at 7:41 am
If it were up to my husband I think we’d move to Canada just for the hockey! Our boys both started playing at 3 and our blog gets a lot of traffic to my husband’s homemade ice rink posts. At 5 & 7 years the boys are still loving it and so far there is none of the bad parent competitiveness. As a kid who was not encouraged to do any sports and felt left out, I LOVE my kids in sports and when they are little it really is all about fun. We will deal with the negative stuff when it comes but hopefully our kids will have a few more years before that happens. Also our hockey league makes parents sit through a mandatory talk on being a good sport and we have strict rules to keep the idiots from acting up!
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February 1st, 2010 at 1:23 pm
I’ll have to add this book to my book list.