Me first

We like to name everything these days. We give names to hurricanes, snowstorms, social and political movements and apparently to trends in youth sports as well.
I recently read an article from the Times Herald written by Brandon Day, a veteran wrestling coach, in which he declares the youth sports culture to be broken because it’s dominated by the “me-first mentality.”
In the article, he speaks about “athletics and competition
in its finest form,” and it’s not what one might think …
He describes the pick-up games on the concrete court at the park where being tough and owning your mistakes was part of the game. Where kids “learned how to deal with failure, settle differences and admit when they were wrong for the betterment of the group”.
Those are the games where kids truly learn what it is to not only be competitive, but to embody sportsmanship because if they didn’t, they wouldn’t be invited back to play the next time the group got together.
Of course, the potential for bad habits to develop was there, such as one-handed passes, improper shooting form, streetball techniques, etc., because there were no adults around to coach those out of them. However the lessons learned in those games was far more valuable, because they “had no one to make excuses for them, and there was no one to blame for their failures”.
While it’s true that we still see those kids playing in the park, unfortunately that pure arena has been tainted by a me-first mentality where both parents and kids expect and demand to be put ahead of all other players, regardless of skill or work ethic.
Day hits the nail directly on the head when he states that “we have developed a culture that will not serve our student-athletes well as they grow into adults … We have organizations and private coaches [who] are filling parents’ heads full of false information and dreams of scholarships rather than focusing on the development of the athletes.”
When these ideas become the focus of participation, suddenly the attitude changes. If the athlete doesn’t continue to be among the top players on the team as they age up, the blame for the demise tends to be placed outwardly.
The problem is that the kid who is a star athlete when he or she is in fourth grade may peak there and never reach the level of a varsity player, while the awkward kid who appears to lack promise as a fourth grader may grow into him or herself and become an All-State player. 
Unfortunately, the parents and players from the first group often don’t see the reality that other players have surpassed them. Sadly, they often become bitter and end up losing the love they previously had for the sport. 
Let’s face it. There aren’t many kids who become Division 1 players, let alone professionals. However, there are a whole lot of kids who go out into the world with the potential to make a difference in their chosen profession.
If they learn the skills necessary to do so.
Learning to overcome adversity, acquiring the tools to learn from failure to achieve success, understanding your role and becoming the best you can be within that role, contributing to the success of a team and learning resiliency are all valuable lessons that can be learned from participating in sports and are all lessons that will serve you well in life.
But only if you let them.
Now, I’m not saying we need to get rid of club sports for the young people here in Newcastle, nor that our club programs are in any way detrimental to the kids who participate. In fact, I love that we have so many people who go above and beyond to provide these wonderful opportunities to the youth of our community.
However, I do recognize the validity of Day’s claim that the me-first mentality has the potential to derail all the good that youth sports’ programs actually do for our kids if we allow it to do so.