My Youth Sports

48 billion children are involved in youth sports globally, as a result, mothers are quickly becoming sport spectators and fans! The “Sports Mom” subculture is exploding! These moms proudly boasts, ” I AM MY CHILD’S BIGGEST FAN”!

Top 5 ways to identify a “SPORTS MOM”

1. Her friends are all parents of children on her child’s sports team and her friends, just like her child’s team, change with the season!

3. She cannot believe that anyone can put under 25,000 miles a year on their vehicle.

3. She pulls her child out of school for his or her activity and says he or she is “SICK”.

4. The deciding factor on her new car purchase is how many kids can it accommodate and how much equipment!

5. She owns a cow bell, a bull horn or pom poms and is not afraid to use them!

If you want to make a difference in the lives of young people, you should try coaching youth basketball. I did, and boy am I happy about the whole thing. There are many many places that will show you how to coach youth basketball, from charities to workshops to who knows what else.

Now that it’s been a few months and we’ve worked out the kinks, we are loving it. Our ‘kids’ as we call them have become our second family. We both look forward to the weeknights when we coach, and can’t wait for the next game to come. Win or lose, we are all having a great time.

Many of the kids we coach would have nothing to do after school without us. Driven by boredom or peer pressure they could start doing drugs or committing crimes. This may seem a bit of a stretch but it’s a fact that kids who are not involved in organized activities are more likely to start doing illicit activities. Since many communities do not have the funding for such programs it is often up to local volunteers like us to fill in the gaps.

I do not know why my work in youth basketball coaching has done so much for kids, but they have told me all about it themselves. It is really true. I have one kid - Mikey - who joined about when I started youth basketball coaching. Before he joined the team, Mikey was bad news. He had a mother with a drug problem and was getting in to drugs himself. He had friends who were very bad influences. It was kids like Mikey who made me decide to volunteer for youth basketball coaching in the first place.

Even if you know nothing about basketball there is still no reason for you to not become a youth basketball coach. Simply buy or rent some self-teaching videos and books, and see if your local community centre offers any training programs. In no time you will be out there helping make a positive influence on some kid’s lives. Believe me, it’s well worth giving up a few nights in front of the TV.

The Youth Athlete has many responsibilities and duties as they participate in their sport. They have responsibilities to themselves and their parents, their teammates, their coaches, their opponents, and the referees.

In order for an athlete to enjoy the positive benefits of participating in youth sports, their responsibilities must first be clearly defined and understood. These responsibilities should be communicated from the coach to the athletes and their parents before the season gets under way. When their responsibilities are clearly defined, the youth athlete is much more willing to accept and carry these out throughout the season.

An enjoyable experience in youth sports is one that places many demands on the youth athlete while at the same time providing them with many positive benefits. These demands can only be met and these benefits can only be realized when the athlete is taught to be a responsible part of their team.

As they participate in sports, the youth athlete should put a tremendous amount of effort into following the ten responsibilities listed below. By doing this, they are putting themselves, their teammates and their coaches in a much better position to enjoy their youth sports experience.

1. The youth athlete should always treat their teammates and opponents with respect and dignity.

2. The youth athlete should obey all team and league rules at all times.

3. The youth athlete should give their full attention when they are being instructed on skills, drills and techniques.

4. The youth athlete should always participate in practices and games with a clear mind.

5. The youth athlete should immediately report any injury to their coach for further medical evaluation.

6. The youth athlete should always discourage their teammates and opponents from breaking the rules.

7. The youth athlete should play under emotional control during practices and games.

8. The youth athlete should avoid acting aggressively or in a self-destructing manner.

9. The youth athlete should compliment their teammates and opponents on their good performances.

10. The youth athlete should return to playing after an injury is completely treated and healed.

For a free course to help you Dominate The Hardwood and take your basketball skills to the next level, visit http://www.ultimate-youth-basketball-guide.com/improve-basketball-skills.html

About The Author

Joe runs http://www.ultimate-youth-basketball-guide.com, a site dedicated to offering players, parents and coaches the best information, reviews and advice about the game of basketball.

To stay current with the latest youth basketball tips and advice, drills, product reviews, and other new basketball resources - sign up for the FREE Youth Hoops newsletter at http://www.ultimate-youth-basketball-guide.com/basketball-newsletter.html

I give full permission for you to use this article in your newsletter or on your site as long as you include my resource box with my website links included.

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If you really want to make a difference in the lives of youngsters, one must try coaching youth basketball. Well I gave it a shot, and boy am I excited about the whole thing. There are several places that will teach you how to coach youth basketball, from charities to workshops to who knows what else. My experience with youth basketball coaching begins for over a year now, and there has never been a more fulfilling experience in my life thus far. However don’t take my word alone for it, cause you should give youth basketball coaching a try to believe it.

The wonderful thing about youth basketball coaching is you can with minimal experience or background in sports, be the one to keep children away from harmful and dangerous influences in their lives. It is a creepy world out there with crime, drugs, and all manner of other temptations which plague our youth nowadays. Why, when I was a kid, we did not even know what drugs were. But nonetheless, using youth basketball coaching especially when working with a good, well organized community center, you can help out kids to say no to crime, drugs, and any other bad or destructive influences in their lives. You have to see it to believe it. The difference it makes is amazing.

At times I do not understand why my work with youth basketball coaching has helped so much for kids, but they have recounted all about it themselves. It is a fact. I have a kid – Mikey who signed up about when I started youth basketball coaching. Prior to joining the team, Mikey was bad news. His mother had a drug problem and he was getting drugs himself. Besides his friends was a very bad influence on him. I first decided to sign up for youth basketball coaching especially because of kids like Mikey.

I really didn’t understand much about youth basketball coaching when I first got into it. Neither did I have any training. I just watched a couple of youth basketball coaching videos, and hustle to prepare for my first day as a coach. But boy was it worth it. I packed in all of those coaching aids, and soon I was directing the team like a pro. Now that I am an expert at youth basketball coaching, I’ll tell you a secret. With youth basketball coaching, it does not matter where you begin, as long as you persist.

Mike F. Prince provides readers with up-to-date commentaries, articles, and reviews on sports, games as well as other related information.

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Sports apparel for the youth has become a very attractive market. It seems that such sports apparel sets, especially those being worn by a number of famous sports personalities, are becoming ever more popular for more and more teenagers. Every teenager nowadays must have that popular sports jersey or jacket to wear with him when he goes to school. A teenager feels he would look cool wearing that baseball cap that features his favorite team.

With this surge of popularity, there are even a number of sports apparel designers who are trying to make sports wear even more fashionable and not just as a functional garment aim to provide comfort and sometimes enhance performance. More and more sports apparel are being designed without the dull and boring designs.

When choosing the right type of sports apparel for the youth, one should not merely focus on comfort or feel of the fabric. Teenagers are now more selective in what they wear so it is also important to be able to know the designs as well as the more popular brands and styles that appeal to them.

Only once you have an idea on what sports apparel appeals to the youth can you then concentrating on focusing on what types would be more comfortable. As a general rule of looking for comfortable sports wear, try choosing sports apparel that are made out of cotton. Cotton has proven to be an excellent fabric for sports wear because of its many wonderful properties. For one, they absorb moisture well. But today there are also more advanced technology applied to the manufacture of newer fabrics that can perform better than ordinary cotton apparel.

There are now several sports apparel choices for the youth available that are made from fabrics that are also used on professional sports apparel. These garments are made to achieve better performance through better fit and comfort as well as attractive enough to be more popular with the stylish youth.

Fashion and function are seamlessly combined in order to provide excellent apparel for the youth to use in sports as well as for fashion. For function, such garments are made with fabrics that allow sweat and bodily moisture to stay on the outer layer of the garment to maintain the feeling of dryness. Such sports apparel are made of fabrics with better breathability that helps make perspiration to evaporate faster, making the wearer feel all the more comfortable.

Low Jeremy maintains http://sports-apparel.articlesforreprint.com This content is provided by Low Jeremy. It may be used only in its entirety with all links included.

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Please, coaches, encourage your young players to shoot, don’t shut them down! A parent/coach who just ordered my Swish videos told me of his son’s coach and how he restricts his boys from shooting:

“His 5th grade coach has restrictions and only certain areas of the court that they are allowed to shoot from (inside 15 feet all around). They get benched or even threats of game suspensions if they violate the rule. Not FUN!”

As the man further wrote: “It’s important for youth coaches to encourage shooting for everyone from all around the basket (up to reasonable range), encourage taking the risk of shooting, encourage failure as a learning tool, to understand that taking ill-advised shots is a learning experience as well.”

THREATENING 10 YEAR OLDS!

Wow, a 10 year old being threatened with being benched or even suspended for shooting from the “wrong” spots. This is another example of the very damaging and destructive coaching that is happening to youth around the country. To learn a skill, you have to be allowed to fail. In fact, you can often learn more from a failed shot than you can from a made shot. You can learn about distance, height, direction, etc., and how to do achieve, and how NOT to achieve them. Failure becomes a friend, then, rather than an enemy. If you are afraid to fail, then learning is severly stunted.

I mentioned a couple Newsletters ago the boy who was told never to shoot during the Playoffs or he’d get pulled. What do you think that did for his self-image? Did it make him “tougher” to be so treated? I doubt it. Another season of such treatment will probably lead to him quitting the game.

YOUTH SPORTS

On a recent trip to New England for clinics, I met an amazing resource on the subject of Youth Sports by the name of Bob Bigelow. Bob lives in Winchester, Mass, and has been spending a lot of time the last 15-20 years speaking and writing about the subject of Youth Sports. He gives talks and clinics, stressing the need to, as his latest books states it, “Just Let the Kids Play!” He has studied and researched the subject upside down and backwards, and is doing his best to change the way sports are taught to our younger kids.

I recommend the book to all coaches and parents. He has strong opinions, and the research to back them up, as to when select teams are best introduced, about the height of baskets for different age groups, and many other aspects of Youth Sports. The book will illuminate you as to what’s happening … and to possible solutions. Bob may be available to come to your area to speak to coaches and parents, as well as do clinics for kids. He’s spoken to companies like Nike about this and is offering specific proposals to help change the direction of youth sports.

POSITIVE COACHING ALLIANCE

I’ve been mentioning the Positive Coaching Alliance out of Stanford, a group that’s focused on the same subject and has a network of coaches all over the country. Bob mentions them in his book with great admiration. Bob seems to know just about everyone in basketball on the East Coast and much of the country (he played in the NBA for four years), and I hope some powerful sports organization sees to appoint him the “Czar” of Youth Sports and gives him the support and funding he needs to truly lead and inspire change. Far too many kids are having their sports futures crushed by coaches who feel winning is the most important (or only) thing.

Getting cut from an “elite” or “select” team at a young age can be a devastating experience, and Bob quotes the statistics of kids quitting teams and sports because of such abuse. At a time when sports can take them on a powerful journey of self-discovery, challenge, opportunity, self image, teamwork, the value of hard work, etc., way way too many are quitting sports. That can be very tragic for those kids’ self esteem and future. God speed, Bob!

Tom Nordland is a shooting expert and coach from California via Minnesota. His videos, coaching and writings are inspiring a Renaissance (a rebirth, a revival) in shooting around the world as players and coaches are taught the things that really matter in shooting. A great shooter as a youth, Tom was given a gift of seeing shooting like few have ever seen it. He sees the “essence” of great shooting and how to get there. The good news is that it’s very simple. The few great shooters of today and yesterday mastered simple things, not complicated motions. Improved shooting is now possible for everybody in the game, and mastery is available to those who sincerely dedicate themselves to it. Visit Tom’s website (http://www.swish22.com/) to read of his background and his articles and newsletters, and to view the remarkable endorsements and amazing testimonials for this approach to shooting.

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I was a guest on Fox Sports Radio the other night and the topic was youth sports, and whether parents should coach their own kids.

Having authored the book, 101 THINGS PARENTS SHOULD KNOW BEFORE VOLUNTEERING TO COACH THEIR KIDS’ SPORTS TEAMS (Contemporary/McGraw-Hill), I said coaches should delegate the guidance of their kids to their assistants and to other capable team parents.

As the Manager of Little League’s Wildcats, a title I once bore with distinction, or depending on your vantage point, perhaps just “stink-shun,” I had my second in command help my child while I helped his.

It worked out very well, and I avoided the extremes of playing favorites or ignoring a close family member.

Today’s parents tend to over-think kid-sports, complicating nearly every aspect of them. Most good parenting, and by extension, good coaching springs from common sense.

I think we would be well-advised to simply hark back to the days when we played. The parents who ran the leagues, as I recall, were nice folks who knew a reasonable amount about the sports they coached, but they weren’t professionals, by any means.

Yes, there was the occasional “ringer,” a childless, just-beyond-college coach who did play big-time ball somewhere, who would run workouts like boot camp. The kids liked him, anyway, or possibly because of his style.

Most of the “civilians” who managed teams in my childhood never exceeded their authority or violated the trust parents automatically invested them with. And parents wouldn’t think of storming the field in the middle of a tense game to threaten a coach, as one nut did to me, when I was leading those Mild-Cats.

(I gave the “take” sign to his child with a 3-0 count, bases loaded, and our team was down by a run. After his intrusion, the player swung away, struck out, and we missed the post-season by a single game.)

Youth leagues provide an opportunity for kids to play together under structured, circumstances. The exercise is great, and if they learn a thing or two about their sports and about friendly competition, that’s to the good, as well.

As a general rule in kid sports, parents are better seen, than heard.

Best-selling author of 12 books and more than 900 articles, Dr. Gary S. Goodman is considered “The Gold Standard”–the foremost expert in sales development, customer service, and telephone effectiveness. Top-rated as a speaker, seminar leader, and consultant, his clients extend across the globe and the organizational spectrum, from the Fortune 1000 to small businesses. He can be reached at: gary@customersatisfaction.com.

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If you want to start promoting health and wellness to a young person, a youth weight loss camp can help you with that. A youth weight loss camp is similar to boot camp except that it is more fun, less harsh, and gives importance to discipline when it comes to health and proper nutrition.

The goal of losing weight
A youth weight loss camp is usually designed based on the concept of losing weight while having fun. If a youth needs a boost in their self-esteem and self-image, the camp instructors can guide them in doing so while teaching them how to change their eating habits to something more healthy and their inactive lifestyle to something more active.

Duration
A youth can stay in this camp for at least a week. Some are overnight camps while others last for 4 to 6 weeks. If there is an opportunity for a youth to go to a youth weight loss camp, urge them to do so. There are special packages with discounts that they can surely benefit from because it is guaranteed that they can learn a lot about health and wellness from weight loss camp.

Facilities, programs and activities
Weight loss camps are located in beautiful locations and are equipped with modern facilities and manned by expert instructors and staff. The youth will be fed a variety of healthy and nutritious meals arranged and designed for them by nutritionists. The programs and activities can inspire the youth to gain better self-worth and to change their current lifestyle to a healthier and more active one while they are having fun participating in them.

Before enrolling…
Book an appointment with the doctor to check if the youth is fit for weight loss camp. An obese youth may already have some health problems regarding his heart or lungs so they should be monitored closely before sending them to camp, otherwise, it can lead to more complications.

Phillip England is a weight loss expert and Author of the popular report “The Ultimate Weight Loss Secret”. To receive your free information on the secret that doctors, and health companies either don’t know, or don’t want you to know, please see http://www.theultimateweightlosssecret.com/secret

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Sports are a dominant element of American culture. From grade school participation to the pros, sports are more visible and a part of our society than at any other time in our countries history.

Participation is youth sports open the door for many lessons that make up the classroom of life. Individual and team values are positive products of youth sports. Youth that use sports for this purpose will develop a foundation and perspective that will serve them well in years to come.

Here are 25 benefits and values of youth sports:

1. Sports are a great way to learn life lessons.

2. Gain self-esteem and confidence.

3. Develop physical and motor skills.

4. Promote a healthy and physically fit lifestyle.

5. Builds a foundation for future learning, growing, and success.

6. Teaches balance for life on and off the field.

7. Increases personal development such as focusing on a task, being on time, listening, responsibility, and trying your best.

8. Helps discover self-identity and visualize potential.

9. Experience being part of a team and its dynamics.

10. Develop good work habits.

11. Learn to win graciously.

12. Learn to lose respectfully.

13. Learn to keep winning and losing in perspective.

14. Discover the balance between self and emotions.

15. Learn perspective through competition.

16. Initiate and strengthen friendships and learn social skills.

17. Increase your ability to learn and focus on an activity.

18. Develop temperament.

19. Experience pain and injury and how to work through it.

20. Learn to take coaching and handle constructive criticism.

21. Serve as role model to other youth.

22. Enhance academic progress and commitment.

23. Learn to help the team by playing a role.

24. Encourages a positive attitude through hand work and praise.

25. Recognize that sports go far beyond the final score.

Randy Brown has passion for the game of basketball. He works as a basketball consultant and mentor for coaches. Visit him at http://www.coachrb.com for free resources, Q & A, newsletter, and coaching programs. A speaker and writer, he has authored 75 articles on coaching and is nationally published. His 18 years in college basketball highlights a successful 23-year career. Mentored by Basketball Hall of Fame coach Lute Olson at Arizona. Resume includes positions at Arizona, Iowa State, Marquette, Drake, and Miami of Ohio, 5 Conference Championships and 5 NCAA apprearances. His efforts have helped develop 12 NBA players including Steve Kerr, Sean Elliott, and Jaamal Tinsley. To contact Randy, email him at rb@coachrb.com.

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