William P. Meehan, III, M.D. (Sports Concussion Doctor): I Owe My Career Choice To A Single Patient

Submitted by National Youth Sports Safety Month on Fri, 03/30/2012 - 21:31. | comments

Two years ago, in recognition of April as Youth Sports Safety Month, MomsTeam asked 30 experts to write a blog answering two questions: first, how or why did they get into their field, and second, how have they made a difference in the life of a youth athlete in the past year.

Today, we reprise the blog submitted by William P. Meehan, III, M.D., Director of the Micheli Center for Sports Injury Prevention, Sports Concussion Clinic, and Research for the Brain Injury Center at Boston Children's Hospital.

By William P. Meehan, III, M.D.

Why did I get into my field?

I owe my career choice to a single patient.

Sports concussion doctor William P. Meehan, III, M.D. talks about how he owes his career choice to a single patient he treated in the emergency room.

Brooke de Lench

Awarding Athletic Scholarship For Private School: Is It Wrong?

Submitted by Brooke de Lench on Thu, 03/29/2012 - 13:26. | comments

Every spring around this time, MomsTeam receives e-mails from parents asking for advice on how they can help their athletically gifted child get into and afford to pay for a private or parochial school with a top-flight athletic program. The one I recently received was a bit different: a dad who was wondering whether I knew any schools who awarded financial aid based, not on need, but on athletic talent.

Every spring around this time, MomsTeam receives e-mails from parents asking for advice on how they can help their athletically gifted child get into and afford to pay for a private or parochial school with a top-flight athletic program. The one I recently received was a bit different: it was from a dad who was wondering whether I knew any schools who awarded financial aid based, not on need, but on athletic talent.

Barbara Bleiweis

A Warning to Sideline "Coaches": Just Let The Players Play

Submitted by Barbara Bleiweis on Wed, 03/28/2012 - 19:57. | comments

Australian tennis pro Bernard Tomic made an unusual request last weekend to the chair umpire during his quarter-final match at the Sony Ericsson Tennis Open in Miami.

During a changeover he asked to have his dad "banished from the stands." Seems his dad was, according to an article in USA Today, "noticeably upset with his son's performance", which the reader and fans might conclude, would impact Tomic's ability to focus. "He's annoying me. I know he's my father, but he's annoying me. I want him to leave as soon as possible," Tomic reportedly told the umpire.

As a sports parent and an official, I have witnessed first hand the effects of inappropriate sideline coaching from parents. Players rarely perform better when adults other than their coaches bark commands, make faces, gestures or statements intended to motivate. While some would argue that such behavior is well meaning or overzealous, I respectfully disagree. Such behavior is disrespectful and detrimental to the game, coaches, team, parents, and most of all, the players.

Brooke de Lench

Sports Parents Asking Tough Questions: Are They Troublemakers?

Submitted by Brooke de Lench on Mon, 03/19/2012 - 15:08. | comments

This past weekend, the Hey Coach Tony show on a local Connecticut radio station devoted an entire hour to discussing one of MomsTeam's most popular articles: the one listing questions to ask youth sports coaches at the pre-season meeting with parents.

In case you don't know about Coach Tony, he is what I would call a "guy's guy": a tough-talking "shock jock"-type of radio host who tends to shoot from the hip, and with a reputation for disdaining political correctness and for using outdated terms for people he doesn't like (I cringed while listening to an earlier show when he used the word "retarded" and "retard' more than a dozen times to describe a person he did not care for).

This past weekend, the Hey Coach Tony show on ESPN Radio devoted an entire hour to discussing one of MomsTeam's most popular articles: the one listing questions for parents to ask at a pre-season meeting. Particularly instructive was the way he chose to end his show: with an email from a listener saying that parents who ask questions will be labeled as troublemakers.

Melanie Johnson , M.A.

Controlling Your Inner Coach

Submitted by Melanie Johnson , M.A. on Wed, 03/14/2012 - 20:36. | comments

So now that baseball is in "full swing" I have mixed emotions as a parent. My younger two sons decided after a family meeting not to play as we agreed that football and basketball were enough for the year. We would do some one-on-one instruction to help the 11-year- old pitch better, and for my 8-year-old, just playing catch in the backyard would have to do.

A single mom realizes the need to control her inner coach when she finds herself caught in the age-old battle of the sexes with her son's baseball coach, feeling a need to compete with the coaches for no other reason than they are men and because she had a hard time resisting the thought that, in the back of their minds, they think she is clueless about how to teach her boys how to do the hard stuff like pitching and quarterbacking,

Emily Cohen

Development Academies: Elite or Elitist?

Submitted by Emily Cohen on Mon, 03/12/2012 - 13:17. | comments

The United States Soccer Federation's (USSF) recent mandate that ‘elite' soccer players who play for Development Academy teams will not be allowed to play for their high school soccer teams after this season simply frosts me. I've read volumes in the last few weeks, from Soccer America's initial news article and the seemingly unending comments from readers and the soccer experati to The New York Times piece this past Sunday by Sam Borden, that really brought "Soccer's New Way" into the collective consciousness across America.

The United States Soccer Federation's (USSF) recent mandate that elite soccer players who play for Development Academy teams will not be allowed to play for their high school soccer teams after this season is wrong and misleading.

Hal Tearse

Player Safety Summit Offers Ideas

Submitted by Hal Tearse on Fri, 03/09/2012 - 05:52. | comments

This morning at the St. Paul RiverCenter, the Herb Brooks Foundation assembled a panel of the leaders in the hockey community to discuss issues and solutions surrounding player safety in ice hockey at all levels. The purpose of the event was to raise awareness in the hockey community about the issues facing the game and to discuss possible solutions. Each of the 13 panelists introduced themselves and provided a brief history of their invovlement in the game.

Minnesota Governor, Mark Dayton, made the opening remarks and told about his experiences playing hockey as a youth, high school and Division 1 player at Yale College.

Player safety takes the spotlight at the Herb Brooks Foundation Safety Summit as part of the boys sate high school hockey tournament in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Melanie Johnson , M.A.

Can The Adrenaline Rush From Sports Become An Addiction?

Submitted by Melanie Johnson , M.A. on Wed, 03/07/2012 - 02:24. | comments

We have all met people with so-called “Type A” personalities: driven, competitive people who believe they can do a better job at work, coaches who believes that their way is the only way, and live to prove it on the field, the court, or the stadium, and, yes, sports parents who are determined to prove that their child is the next sports superstar. What motivates such people is a need which can become addictive, so much so that there are those who suggest that adrenaline/epinephrine addiction should be considered in the DSM (the manual classifying mental disorders) as an addiction, alongside addiction to illegal drugs.

Having pushed our children's need to compete and win -and the surge of adrenaline it creates - parents create a craving which makes it hard, when the season is over, for young athletes to slow down and relax. Worse, we may be raising children for an unhappy future, when the wins they achieved in sports are not an everyday occurrence, for a life in which they end up always searching to re-live their “glory days”, and kids who haven't developed an appreciation for small victories and the simple pleasure of relaxation.

Brooke de Lench

Soccer Development Academies: Elite or Elitist?

Submitted by Brooke de Lench on Tue, 03/06/2012 - 16:13. | comments

Over the weekend I posted a link in the @MomsTeam Twitter account to an article in the New York Times titled "High School Players Forced to Choose in Soccer's New Way." My tweet generated a lot of buzz, and, as I had commented in the past on the way sports talent is developed in this country, I thought it would be a great topic for a blog.

The United States Soccer Federation's (USSF) recent mandate that elite soccer players who play for Development Academy teams will not be allowed to play for their high school soccer teams after this season is wrong and misleading, says MomsTeam guest blogger, Emily Cohen.

Hal Tearse

Parenting for the Game of Life

Submitted by Hal Tearse on Tue, 03/06/2012 - 05:01. | comments

March is a busy time of year as winter sports wind down and spring/summer sports wind up. This is a time of year where the demands on parents to get kids to their in-season activities and the early sessions of the next season is daunting. Being a parent is hard with all of the pressures that your kids place on you and the pressure to participate non-stop all year-round in almost every sport.

A longtime youth hockey coach advises sports parents to just say no, to place limits on excessive sports, and have their kids spend more time on things that matter more in life in the long run.