Game On: The All American Race to Make Champions of Our Children
By Tom Farrey
In my quest to read 50 books in 2009 I have come across some excellent ones; most of which just reinforce stuff I have read before. Looking back, I have come across a few books that were real eye openers; ones that caused an infamous “Ah hah!” moment. Game On: The All American Race to Make Champions of Our Children was one of those books. One of my friends in Nike Basketball recommended it to me and I am so thankful he did. Before going deeper, let me say I wholeheartedly recommend this book to any parent, trainer, or coach who has or works with youth athletes. This book is an absolute must read for anyone who cares about the youth of today.
Given my line of work; I have been around elite level athletics my entire life and have a finger on the pulse of youth grassroots basketball. I work with players as young as 9 years old and have both seen and experienced the positives and negatives of competitive youth sports; so this book most certainly hit close to home. In addition, I hope to have children of my own in the very near future and the insights from this book will most certainly dictate some of my own parenting and coaching decisions.
This book should change the way the American culture looks at youth sports. From nationally ranking basketball players while they are in elementary school to holding golf events with a 5 year old division; we have taken the competitiveness of youth sports to the extreme. We have created a win at all costs mentality for kids who should be playing for fun. We have deteriorated the proven processes for developing fundamental skills and we are rewarding the kids who mature early (in all of the years of the Little League World Series, in which we have seen thousands of kids play, only 30 have made it to MLB!). As a culture we are rewarding performance over participation with kids who still drink Juice Boxes and watch SpongeBob SquarePants! And what have we gotten from this approach? A majority of kids who quit playing sports by age 13, testy sidelines with lunatic parents and coaches, steadily rising obesity rates, and US national teams that rarely win world titles.
The best part about this book is the variety of solutions we can implement to help fix this; realistic ways to change our current model. By studying the methods of countries like Australia, as well as reorganizing the governing bodies we have in the US, we can take powerful steps to getting back on course. We need to launch a movement to protect our children!
Along the lines of correcting our youth development model and teaching and coaching our children in a systematic, age appropriate manner, I fully endorse an e-book by Brian McCormick (who was quoted a few times in Game On) entitled Cross Over: A New Model Of Youth Basketball Development. I have a tremendous respect for Coach McCormick’s work. In addition to his book, he has an excellent “Hard2Guard Player Development Newsletter” I recommend you subscribe to. Coach McCormick has several sites; but visit www.TrainForHoops.com.
I will post a similar book review each week; so make sure you check back often. Next week I plan to review an insightful book I read two weeks ago at the beach; Know Yourself As A Coach by Denny Kuiper. I got an opportunity to meet (and work with) Coach Kuiper at the NBPA Top 100 Camp earlier this summer. His book is an absolute must read for any level basketball coach.
I am not going to post an NBA player interview this week; but have my fingers crossed I will be able to sit down with Chris Paul in two weeks when I work his CP3 Elite Back Court Camp in Winston Salem, NC.
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Train hard. Train smart.
Alan Stein
www.StrongerTeam.com