Will your team have reason to celebrate this season?
Temporary Insanity aka T.I.
Parents of N.J. athletes prepare for 'temporary insanity' of winter sports
Posted by Mark Di Ionno/The Star-Ledger February 21, 2009 6:00AM
Rob Gilbert, a professor of sports psychology and culture at Montclair State, loves this joke.
"Someone told me they were writing a book about parents and youth sports. I said, 'What's the title, 'Temporary Insanity?'" It's a big weekend for high school winter sports. District wrestling tournament, state and county basketball games, hockey, swimming, fencing playoffs, the indoor track Meet of Champions. Same goes for youth sports. It's tournament time, from indoor lacrosse to competitive cheerleading, and thousands of parents will caddy their kids' equipment bags to gyms, pools and rinks round New Jersey.
So here comes the Temporary Insanity. Not just by parents. By coaches. By fans. That all the sports are indoors magnifies the problem. Vitriol doesn't get carried away by breezes from bleachers to field; it bounces, and rebounds and echoes off tile walls and hardwood floors.
This is nothing new. No one knows exactly when the first sports parent berated a referee or called a coach an idiot, but it was probably during the first Greek Youth Olympiad. Since then, rules have been made. Schools and leagues ask for pledges to be signed. The T.I. can be removed from gyms, banned from leagues. Police can be called, games forfeited. Still, when the moment is right -- eruption. For the less-crazy among us, T.I. is bottled and capped, but watching kids participate in organized sports can still be tough. Here's a startling fact. Seventy-five percent of kids quit sports by age 14, from either burnout, boredom or pressure.
"It's just not fun anymore," Gilbert said. T.I. has a lot to do with it. "Parents are so emotionally and even financially tied to their children's experiences," said John McCarthy, a lifetime teacher and former basketball coach. "They want to see their kids do well, and expect it because they've paid for camps, and private coaching, and travel teams, and on and on. They want a return on their investment, and if they think a coach or referee is impeding on that, look out!"
McCarthy and Gilbert, along with Dave Kaplan of the Yogi Berra Museum & Learning Center have launched a series of panels and seminars to help parents and coaches navigate the treacherous waters of youth sports. "We see this as part of Yogi's legacy of a simpler, more normal approach to sports," Kaplan said. The Berra museum is a pantheon honoring baseball the way it used to be, beginning with pictures from Yogi's sandlot days, captioned by Yogisms like "Playing baseball as a kid in St. Louis was pure joy," and "Playing sports gave me a happy childhood." On the program agenda are such topics as "Measuring Your Child's Athletic Ceiling" and "The Benefits and Drawback of Travel and Club Teams." "Parents find themselves pulled into this vortex of youth sports, and they don't really know a lot about it," McCarthy said. "We want to give them information to help them make good decisions for their kids, and themselves. "One example is the explosion of club and travel teams, and private coaching. Kids "'try out" for teams with names like "'futures" and "'nationals" and "'all-star." Lo and behold, they all make it. Next thing you know, parents are spending thousands of dollars all with the hope of getting athletic stardom and scholarships for their kids "Some kids will get scholarships, but most do not. And when people hear 'scholarship' they think full ride. What they don't understand is the huge majority of athletic scholarships are partial, and they are all year-to-year," McCarthy said. And here's another startling fact: There is $22 billion available for academic scholarships, with only $1 billion available for athletic scholarships, according to the NCAA. You have to be crazy not to see that.
Don't Miss The Bus
O.K. I'm old school and I have to be honest it's sometimes hard for me to give it up to the new generation of basketball players. I don't know if it's the lack of fundamentals, the excess tattoos, not playing hard...I could be all day. Well I have to give it up to LeBron James when he was coming out of High School I was skeptical because I thought he was too skinny and couldn't shoot. LeBron I'm getting on the bandwagon bus. I know it's full but I will stand if I have to because you are that good and you have to give credit when credit is due. Not to mention dude's got personality and a whole lotta game!!
Here's why I really like LeBron
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