There’s no such thing as an elite athlete at nine-years-old. But club coaches and other parents keep telling us if we don’t treat our njne-year-old like an elite athlete, they’ll fall behind and never be able to catch up. This week we talked to @Steve Magness about how we navigate that tension with our kids. #youthsports #sportsparents #travelball #travelballlife #parenting #baseballdad #baseballmom #hockeymom #hockeydad #soccerdad #soccermom #footballmom #footballdad #softballmom #softballdad #basketballdad #basketballmom #volleyballdad #volleyballmom #lacrossemom #lacrossedad #RaisingAthletes #LetThemPlay

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TikTok 2:32 Oct 01, 2025

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There’s no such thing as an elite athlete at nine-years-old. But club coaches and other parents keep telling us if we don’t treat our njne-year-old like an elite athlete, they’ll fall behind and never be able to catch up. This week we talked to @Steve Magness about how we navigate that tension with our kids. #youthsports #sportsparents #travelball #travelballlife #parenting #baseballdad #baseballmom #hockeymom #hockeydad #soccerdad #soccermom #footballmom #footballdad #softballmom #softballdad #basketballdad #basketballmom #volleyballdad #volleyballmom #lacrossemom #lacrossedad #RaisingAthletes #LetThemPlay

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There's no such thing as an elite nine-year-old athlete. Nothing really matters until after puberty. Let's stop the madness. Those are your words exactly. So it's not just you saying that. All the experts agree about it, but club coaches are telling parents that their kid will fall behind if they don't do all the things at eight years old. I recently had a commenter on social media tell me I was doing my kids a disservice by not doing travel ball until middle school, saying that they're gonna fall behind, there's no way they catch up. So how do you advise a parent to balance the tension between the truth that there are no elite athletes at nine years old and the pressure that club coaches are putting on them to start doing everything now? I mean, that's the central tension of it. It is, is we can intellectually know it. I can sit here and tell you, study after study shows the same thing. And even we don't even have to look at studies. We can look at, I don't know, the seven-year-old records for the 100-meter dash and Usain Bolt isn't on that list, right? So there's a reason for that, because again, puberty changes things and all that stuff and too early specialization, which you can get into. But intellectually knowing that and then facing it with your kid and some coach or authority figure saying like, hey, you want the best for your kids, don't you? Like, everybody else is doing this. Like, this is what it is. That pressure can kind of feel overwhelming. And what I tell parents is we've got to have the ability to kind of like zoom out and zoom back and say, okay, I get it in the moment. This feels overwhelming that I'm making the decision that determines my kid's future career. But the reason I put these things out there and say these things is for that perspective moment of like, it feels like a big deal right now, but it's not. It literally will not matter, right? It does not. And we have all this evidence, as I said, but like, you've got to be able to zoom out and see the big picture and say, okay, I get it. It feels like life or death right now if my kid makes it or not. But the reality is it's just like a fear. And it's just like this thing in my head is just ruminating and trying to push me that way. But like any other fear we have, it's driven by kind of insecurity.

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