Question for all of you to think on. What sort of environment has been created when athletes are constantly apologizing as come off the field for a substitution? In the past few years I have been noticing more and more that when I work with players for the first time and I sub them off the field, they are always apologizing to me, even though I am meeting them with a high five and a "great work out there!" type of comment. This has me thinking that fundamentally, as a system, something is wrong. My main job these days is not so much soccer coach, it is more hype man. I am wondering what all of you think about where this starts and why it seems to be permeating the entire space of youth sports. I would like to suggest that we need to strongly reconsider what we are saying to our athletes, students, kids, etc., if they are always feeling like they need to apologize for playing a game. What do we think about this one...?

What are your priorities right now…? There are lots of opinions on priorities…what I believe is that you can only really ever have 3. And, realistically they aren’t supposed to change. My three for a while have been Family, Coaching and Health…but every Saturday I like to swap out health in the diet sense for Ice Cream, because it just brings me so much enjoyment with almost no effort and adds to my overall mental health. you know, life is meant for living and what is living without a little coffee chip or mint Oreo ice cream. Let us know below what your three priorities are and how you feel about this rule of 3.

As we head into the weekends let’s all share a rose and a thorn from the busy week.

As I work to finish the first stage of our classroom I am trying to collect some info from all the parents here about your biggest pain points over the years in developing your child/athlete. Drop a note below with the one thing causing you the most stress or creating the biggest wedge between you and your child.

Can you easily identify what is guiding your daily thoughts, words and actions? I’m curious what is actually shaping the identities of the people in our community right now.