Articles
Written by Linda Flanagan
MindShift on KQED
How knowing teen brains a little better can help coaches be effective mentors
Every coach has seen it. The gangly teenager lunging for a basketball, coming at it too fast and fumbling it out of bounds. The tentative hitter flailing at a pitch seconds after it has landed in the catcher’s glove—strike 3!—and then slumping off to the bench. The volatile first singles player smacking his serves into the net, again and again, growing more furious with every fault.
Read the full article in KQED. . .
Project Play
How five states got in the game of youth sports
Outside of school sports, most states historically have taken a hands-off posture with youth sports organizations and protecting the health and safety of the athletes they serve. Except for the widely adopted Lystedt Law which established rules about concussion management, government oversight has been spotty. That’s starting to change. In response to persistent problems with the youth sports ecosystem — lack of access in low-income communities, an epidemic of life-altering injuries, and a lack of systematic training or oversight of coaches — some states have begun allocating substantial public resources and creating guardrails for engaging children in organized athletics.
Read the full article in Project Play . . .
New York Times
Why in the World Are We Sending 11-Year-Olds to the Olympics?
When the Olympics arrive and I hear the familiar kettle drums of the Games’ fanfare music I’m always catapulted back to 1972, when the Soviet gymnast Olga Korbut dazzled the world on the uneven parallel bars. As a kid, I watched transfixed. For the rest of the summer and to the great irritation of my parents and older siblings, I usurped the living room to practice my handstands, cartwheels and round-offs, all while fantasizing about the feel of a gold medal hanging from my neck. Demonstrations of astonishing athleticism will have that effect on children.
Read the full article in The New York Times . . .
Project Play
Three models for organizing local sports
A handful of cities and counties have begun to pay closer attention to how sports in their areas are organized and made available to youth. Some local governments are working to coordinate and rationalize the way sports are offered to children and adolescents in their areas. Others are providing funds to neighborhood youth sports groups. Governments in three communities stand out for their leadership in improving youth sports: Fairfax County, Virginia; Montgomery County, Maryland; and the city of Philadelphia.
Read the full article on Project Play . . .
New York Times
Why So Many Kids Are Priced Out of Youth Sports (Written by Jessica Grose)
Feb. 14, 2024: “Ever since my 2022 interview with Linda Flanagan, the author of Take Back the Game, about how money is ruining youth sports, lots of parents have come to me with their complaints on the topic. I hear most frequently from readers and friends about the expense and time-suck of travel sports. I can’t open a social media app without seeing posts joking that you might need a mortgage broker to pay for a tech suit for swim meets, or about how ‘having kids involved in sports is fun, if you like coming home & eating dinner at 10 p.m.’”
Read the full article on NY Times (subscribers only) . . .
MindShift on KQED
How parents can help their kids feel seen
In his new book, How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen, author and New York Times columnist David Brooks writes about a period of singular connection between him and his young son. The boy was just over a year old and would wake every morning at 4 a.m. Rather than shush the boy back to bed, Brooks would join him on the floor for several hours and play. “I’m naturally immature,” Brooks told me, “And I loved to play.” He recalls those extended, wordless sessions with his son as a time of profound tenderness and understanding, when each knew the other more completely than they did any other person. It was made possible by the natural bonding that comes with simple play.
MindShift on KQED
How to help your kids navigate social media without getting lost
Six years ago, Harvard withdrew admissions offers from 10 high school seniors it had previously accepted. School officials had gotten wind of jokes circulating on the students’ private Facebook group — memes that made light of school shootings and found hilarity in the Holocaust, among other repellant takes — and reversed course. After the George Floyd murder in 2020, more young people who had posted racist or apparently bigoted posts in their youth faced similar punishment when sleuths unearthed and shared their online offenses. A prominent New York Times story spread the word to ambitious kids and anxious parents: be careful what you say online, because it never goes away.
MindShift on KQED
Teens are overwhelmed by pressure to achieve. How can parents restore balance?
When journalist Jennifer Wallace learned about the 2019 Varsity Blues scandal, in which fancy, well-to-do parents paid a sketchy consultant to cheat their children into elite colleges, she didn’t buy the conventional wisdom about the story. Were they all just shallow snobs desperate to preserve their flimsy status? A mother herself, living in a community where nearly everyone, parent and child alike, fretted about college admissions — and flogged themselves to secure a spot at a top school — she believed something deeper was at work. Somehow, families had absorbed the message that a kid’s only hope for a decent life was to grind it out as a child and pray that the gods of higher education would bless their applications.
Inside Higher Ed
End Admissions Preferences for Athletes
Admissions preferences for athletes favor wealthy, white families and corrupt youth sport, Rick Eckstein and Linda Flanagan write.
In the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision overturning affirmative action, editorial boards, policy makers and pundits have presented their own ideas on how to preserve college student diversity. Abolish early decision. End the advantages for the kin of big donors. Further de-emphasize standardized tests. Within days of the ruling, a civil rights organization sued Harvard to force it to stop favoring the children of alumni.
The Atlantic
The Downsides of Having an Athlete in the Family
Many parents sacrifice money and time to support a child's athletic dreams, to the detriment of the household.
Why Are So Many Teen Athletes Struggling with Depression?
When high-school sports replicate the training methods and intensity seen at the college level, players feel the toll.
The Downsides of America’s Hyper-Competitive Youth-Soccer Industry
The sport’s top tier is organized around the goal of producing a tiny group of elite players, at the expense of kids’—and parents’—well-being.
Finding New Meaning After An Olympic Career
Once they retire, athletes are often left clueless about education, employment, and real life. A new national initiative seeks to change that—will it work?
What’s Lost When Only Rich Kids Play Sports
The income disparity in youth athletics has effects on health and success that stretch far into adulthood.
How Students’ Brains Are In Danger on the Field
Recent research makes clear the drastic effects of head injuries on young athletes, and advocates are asking states and schools to do more.
The Field Where Men Still Call the Shots
The lack of female coaches in youth sports can make lasting impressions on boys and girls.
The Real Bullies at School
Teachers are vilified for being too hard on students, so why aren't coaches held to the same standard?
When College Athletes Face Depression
“It was very hard, as a man playing D1 football, to go to somebody and say ‘I’m having a hard time’.”
How Title IX Hurts Female Athletes (with Susan H. Greenberg)
The groundbreaking legislation, which was supposed to help women thrive in sports, has had several unintended, negative consequences.
MindShift
Do Youth Sports Really Build Character? What Kids Gain From Sports Depends on Adults
There’s no ironclad proof that sports build character. The results of a meta-analysis on the connection between athletics and character development make that clear: “Forty years of research, conducted by more than 20 researchers studying tens of thousands of athletes and non- athletes from youth, high schools, collegiate and Olympic levels, simply does not support the notion of sport as a character-building activity, particularly as it applies to sportsmanship behaviors and moral reasoning ability.”
Six Ways Schools Improved P.E. to Prioritize Student Interests and Motivation
Gym class can’t get a break. A highly unscientific sampling of the conventional wisdom on physical education reveals a lot about what kids think of regular, enforced school exercise. “My least favorite thing about elementary school gym class was the boys being absolutely psycho,” one young woman told me. “Locker rooms were definitely fraught,” said another, about her middle school PE. “It’s not so much the body, as it is performing,” offered another—that pressure to throw and run well for an impromptu team, “so if you screw up a catch or whatever in dodgeball you let them down.”
How Can High School Sports Better Serve Students?
Despite the growing body of evidence that shows how physical activity is essential for health, well-being and student engagement, high schools offer fewer opportunities for competition and play today than they did just a few years ago.
What Teachers and Sports Coaches Can Learn from Each Other
When Vicky Tong started coaching seventh- and eighth-grade cross-country in 2012, she took the job because the school where she teaches needed somebody to do it. Tong figured that this additional work would follow naturally from her duties as a middle school science and Chinese teacher and complement her interest in running. She was training for a half-marathon when the offer arrived, and the timing seemed right.
How Effective Sports Coaches Can Help Students Feel Understood at School
Aly Carter graduated from high school 13 years ago, and what she remembers most distinctly about those years were her experiences on the playing fields. She ran cross-country and track, played soccer and threw herself into lacrosse, helping her school team make it to the state final in 2005. She barely remembers her high school teachers, as her classes and teachers rotated, preventing her from passing much time with any particular one. But she spent four years with several coaches and remains connected to some of them.
Runner’s World
Failure to Launch
Strategies for coping with the hardest moment in running: getting out the door.
We love to run. But sometimes getting started feels insurmountable. We put it off in the morning, resolve to do it at noon and put it off again. What gives?
Decoding the Signals
Getting beyond platitudes on when, and when not, to listen to your body.