At some point, many young basketball players say some version of “I don’t want to play anymore,” and it puts parents in a genuinely difficult spot. Push too hard to keep them in, and you risk deepening resentment toward a sport that is supposed to...
Every youth basketball coach has a story about a parent conversation that went sideways, and every parent has a concern they were not quite sure how to raise. Most of these conversations do not go wrong because of the actual issue. They go wrong because of timing,...
Few things test a parent’s composure like watching your child sit on the bench while other players get the minutes. It is one of the most common sources of frustration in youth sports, and also one of the areas where parents most often handle the situation in...
Ask any youth basketball coach what makes their job hardest, and a meaningful number will mention parents in the stands before they mention anything about coaching the players themselves. This is not a criticism of parents as people. It reflects how easy it is for...
AAU basketball rankings appear everywhere in youth basketball conversations — in parent group chats, on recruiting forums, in coach evaluations. Yet most parents who talk about them do not fully understand how they are calculated, what they actually represent, or how...
My child is the worst player on the team is a thought that sits quietly in the back of a lot of basketball parents’ minds and that almost nobody says out loud. You watch practice. You watch the games. You can see the gap between your child and the other players....
