Act Like You’ve Been There Before

Theodore Roosevelt had a saying that he learned from football:

“Don’t flinch, don’t foul, hit the line hard.”

That sounds like Roosevelt. But it also captures something we’ve forgotten about sports.

In 1905, football was in trouble. Eighteen players died and 159 suffered serious injuries. Some colleges were considering abandoning the game altogether. Roosevelt, who believed deeply in vigorous competition, called leaders from Harvard, Yale and Princeton to the White House.

He didn’t want to kill football. He wanted to save it.

The game was worth playing, he argued, but the men playing it had to respect both the rules and the spirit behind them.

More than a century later, our children face a very different problem in youth sports.

Why do we play sports, anyway?

My boys are four and six, and they’ve been playing sports for a few years now. Coaching them has been one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done. Watching them build passions for games I’ve grown to love is exciting.

But it’s not the best part.

Sports give children small doses of adulthood. Somebody will be better than you. The referee will be wrong. You’ll play well and lose anyway.

That isn’t unfortunate baggage attached to youth sports. That’s the point.

Compete. Adjust. Encourage your teammate. Try again.

Youth sports shine because they teach children to compete fiercely while discovering something every healthy adult eventually has to learn:

You are not the center of the universe.

Celebrate the Work. Not Yourself.

Which brings me to a growing pet peeve…the celebrations.

I’m not saying we should turn our children into joyless little accountants.

Your son scores a goal? Celebrate. Your daughter buries the winning shot? She should be elated. It’s supposed to be hard. That’s why succeeding is fun.

But there is a difference between “Look what we accomplished” and “Look at me.”

One builds a team. The other builds an ego.

There’s an old saying in sports: Act like you’ve been there before. 

Of course, our kids haven’t been there before. So they copy people who have. That’s why youth soccer fields suddenly have knee slides and youth football games stop while a six-year-old spikes the ball after stumbling across the goal line.

They saw somebody do it.

And underneath the humor is something worth taking seriously. Team sports once carried a simple lesson: your talent belongs to something bigger than you.

Now we increasingly celebrate the athlete who makes sure nobody misses the fact that he made the play. There is nothing wrong with confidence. I want my boys to be confident. But confidence says, I can do this. Ego needs an audience.

And, if we want children to understand the difference, we probably shouldn’t start by looking at them.

Parents, Act Like You’ve Been There Before

Your kid scored. Fantastic. You don’t need to react like an NFL scout just emerged from behind the concession stand.

Your kid sat longer than you wanted. He’ll survive. Welcome to life.

But this isn’t really about sports.

That bad call from the referee is practice for the boss who doesn’t recognize your work. Sitting on the bench is practice for not getting the promotion. Losing is practice for giving your best and discovering that sometimes your best still isn’t enough.

While our playing days might be behind us, our children are watching how we play the game of life everyday.

They watch what happens when prices go up and money gets tight. They hear us when an election doesn’t go the way we wanted. They see whether frightening headlines send us into panic.

They’re watching us wrestle with a world changing faster than most of us can comfortably absorb. From AI changing work to wars half a world away suddenly showing up in what we pay at home.

Those are adult versions of the blown call.

We don’t control most of them. We can only control what we do next. And our kids are learning that from us long before they understand the issues themselves.

We can tell them to show composure after a bad call. But if they watch us lose ours every time life makes a bad call against us, they’ve learned the real lesson.

Scripture says, “Train up a child in the way he should go.”

We are.

The question is which way we’re showing them.

The Bottom Line

Twenty years from now, nobody will care how many touchdowns my boys scored when they were ten.

I probably won’t remember most of them either.

But I will care whether they can compete without becoming arrogant. Lose without making excuses. And succeed without humiliating somebody else. 

I don’t coach my kids because I’m trying to raise professional athletes. I coach because sports provide one of the best classrooms I know for raising them.

Kids, celebrate the play. Parents, enjoy the moment.

Then act like you’ve been there before.

Invitation to Connect: Did this column spark a thought, question, or critique? I want to hear it! Send your inquiry to thekobatcorner@gmail.com