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US
Edited Date/Time
12/29/2025 7:53pm
Very applicable to our sport as well.
The explosion of "training facilities", struggles that face local races, and way too much focus on LL's and other "amateur nationals" align very closely with issues mentioned.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/29/business/youth-sports-stress.html?un…
This is all on the “adults” in the room. I was guilty of this a few years ago with daughter in swimming. She was 8 when she started and quickly became “good”. We went to a club team, traveled, became more competitive (well I did anyway) and it unraveled. She wanted to have fun, I wanted her to win. I got so caught up in the money and time being invested and wanting her to beat even her teammates I sucked the fun out of it. I couldn’t see it until one day she told me how she felt. I balled like a baby, apologized and we quit the club team and she swam for her own sake in high school where she excelled, won districts, and had fun. Thankfully I learned and my son has had it easier in moto. We always kept it fun and he has also excelled. Parents, do not get caught up in this nonsense! Yes demand your kids try their best, but keep it fun, and don’t let it become something it was never intended to be. Your kid will more than likely end up with a normal job and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that! I can’t get a lot of years back of pure enjoyment with my daughter. Don’t make my mistake.
Similar experience here, and couldn't agree more with what you wrote. 100% spot-on.
Article is a nothing burger.
Yes, there is a huge industry capitalizing on wealthy people who can afford their kid every advantage possible.
Kids show signs of promise, parents enroll them in elite level of training. Parents can make it unfun, child thrives or doesn’t.
The elites become champions almost never with nice parents and coaches. Success and happiness often don’t go hand in hand.
I've noticed it with my son playing baseball. He works out at a baseball gym 3x a week and the place is always packed with travel ball teams. Its like anything else ,you can get as deep in to it as you want and there will always be someone available to help ,for a small fee of course.
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Being accountable for your behavior to your daughter will mean so much to her man: and it sounds like it humbled you and you learned. Any time a parent can own up to their actions to their kids I respect it so much. Great job and thanks for sharing
Wife & I did the same thing with our daughter for soccer…..my wife was actually more brutal than me…Daughter played 2 years in college and she called us up & asked if she could stop playing to enjoy her last 2 years of college. She traveled for college ball and had practice 3 days a week, felt she was missing out on socializing and just being a regular kid….she wasn’t going pro ….I felt bad and told her to do whatever she wanted…but she was playing for us not herself….it’s tough to balance being supportive vs pushing too hard…I see many kids who were pushed too hard, be done at an early age in all sports…
Why does it matter if the kid is “successful”, this is such a terrible take
Awesome self reflection, thanks for sharing and for being supportive of your daughters goals!
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Loretta’s has ruined local racing series. Everyone wants to go to the “Big Show” and no longer cares about racing local races. I have qualified and been to Loretta’s many times, but it’s different now. When I raced there, I wasn’t racing everyone that was living at training camps and only racing the qualifiers and big events. It’s hard to find a local race during qualifying time (April to June) because they know they are at qualifiers and the turnout would be low. That used to be prime time for racing around here. I’m old and don’t race as much anymore, but I’m glad my best racing days were in a better time!
Similar experience with my daughter. She was a good swimmer on the local team and tried out for the local universities jr swim team and made it, she was in Junior high school, btw. Initially we were excited but it quickly became way more intense than she wanted, not one bit of fun and the parents were absolutely ridiculous. I hate quitting but when she asked too not participate any longer, I agreed. Had she been into it we would have kept at it but it was miserable for everyone involved. There were plenty of other activities that weren’t near as extreme and she enjoyed way more than swimming.
Some of my favorite memories were racing local races. The stress of bigger events really take the fun out of it.
This is so true. Local races with all the folks you know are the best.
No matter how fast or experienced you are at qualifiers or narionals, the vibes are not particularly “fun”.
A kid doesn't even have to show promise in moto to get parents to enroll them in camps and training facilities. How many time have you seen guys here buying PW50's while their wives/girlfriends are pregnant? I had a garage full of bikes when my three boys were 5-7 years old. Turns out they lost interested in just a few years. That was hard to take but I wasn't going to push them.
I know parents that stayed away from private trainers and coaches in stick and ball sports for their kids and their kids lost interest because they couldn't compete. At 10 years old. Forget high school sports it you don't train year round in that sport. Grown ups ruin everything.
The article should be titled “the commodification of fun”
Transforming joy and fun into an exchange-value pursuit.
Where leisure is optimized for productivity or profit rather than pure enjoyment, making everything from hobbies and even social relationships into transactional activities.
Sometimes they go together, but you're correct. Often they don't, and that happens even when the athlete isn't a child. IDK who around here recalls Shaun Palmer. He was the king of snowboardcross. There was a long time where it was almost impossible to beat the guy. People called him "the miserable champion", because he was
Oh, you mean death cross? -NYT
Ricky seemed pretty miserable at times, McGrath was probably just good at hiding it, RV didnt even try to hide it lol!
That’s cuz RC hated losing way more than he loved winning. Winning for him was just a relief that he didn’t lose.
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I was fortunate growing up to have relatives who coached stick and ball sports at college level and being around that all my life made one thing very clear... it's all bullshit. You have X amount of God given talent and you have X amount of intrinsic drive and the combination of those two things determine how far you go. Beyond a certain point, any amount of additional practice, parental pressure, etc very quickly runs up against law of diminishing returns and is not worth what you have to give up for it. Even if all the extra crap gets you to point B, C, D a little sooner than you otherwise would have, the end point does not change, and after puberty those gains often disappear in the blink of an eye.
This is also what's so mind blowing about training facilities in this sport..... elementary age kids not just home schooling but living in a camper in the middle of nowhere to try to defy the reality of the situation, which is that nearly everyone who's making the main at A1 was already clearly better than their peers from a very young age. If you're in that deep and you haven't already separated yourself, you're not going to. The coaches running these places know it too but admitting it isn't good for business. Slimy.
How long till a1? It’s gunna be a mudder right?
Yups, sort of agree with you. After say 15-16yo it's either almost over or you/others know that you have what it takes. It's the same in most sports, I'm sure there are some anomalies but not too many.
Sometimes I think it's sad, seeing 13-14yo practicing really really hard (in any sport) but you can see that they will not make it and in some cases stop all tighter at 17yo because at least then they understood themselves that they didn't make it.
Now.. .if a sport is a hobby, then the 'sport hobby' you can do for 50years more
"nearly everyone who's making the main at A1 was already clearly better than their peers from a very young age. If you're in that deep and you haven't already separated yourself, you're not going to."
That doesn't account for Ryan Dungey....he was ending up top 10 in the B class before DeCoster signed him to Suzuki. Look what he went on to do.
See also: Weston Peick. He didn't have the success of a Dungey, but he worked himself into a consistent top 10 contender in SX. He wasn't setting the world on fire as a youth either....
Dungey got 4th on an 85 and won 125 12-15
Peick didn't race LL until big bikes, got 5th his first year there and won in his second.
My point is that of kids who go year after year, it's almost impossible to find someone who makes it in this sport that didn't have success in those early years going. It's not a requirement to do it and there's always outliers, but there's a lot of kids at training facilities not having the success that would point to this being a viable career path for them. Training facilities are happy to keep taking their money. It's all just kinda cringe....
You've just proven the point I made. Peick didn't separate himself at a young age, and Dungey won 125 12-15, and got 4th on an 85. And then he went on to be mediocre in the B class which is where Suzuki hired him from. Top 10 in B is hardly separating yourself from the rest...
Edited above for clarification. Never having been there is not the same thing as going year after year and not having success, which is what a lot of training facility kids are doing now.
My niece and her husband flew from Spokane to Dallas so their 13 year old could participate with his club team in a water polo tournament. Apparently the kid is pretty good. I don't know where this is going as my niece doesn't have a lot of extra money. I think they are just happy their kid has found a sport he likes and is good at as he is a bit of an odd duck. He is somewhere on the spectrum between being annoying and not self aware.
Post a reply to: NYT article on youth sports.