Surviving Youth Sports

About the Book

Surviving Youth Sports strips away the thick layer of myth and nonsense surrounding organized sports for young people. This clearly written, easy-to-follow guide shows parents how to avoid the frustrations and pitfalls of adult-dominated games and how to help their children actually enjoy playing. Most importantly, Surviving Youth Sports explains how to make sports fun and inviting and how to lay a firm foundation for a healthy lifestyle that will last for a lifetime.

This book will make enemies. Adults who are focused on their own selfish agenda--winning games and championships no matter the cost to the kids--will see Surviving Youth sports as a blueprint for giving games back to kids and the adults who care about them.

With the myriad of sports now available for young people, which should a kid select? What level of competition is right? How do you deal with a coach who obviously cares nothing for your child? When is it time to go elsewhere? And what should your objective really be throughout the whole stressful process of finding a sport, a team, a league and a coach? Surviving Youth Sports will answer these questions and dozens more that you may not even be have encountered yet. The book will give you clear directions in plain language and will show you how to make sense of the emotional turmoil that surrounds kids and athletics.

As Surviving Youth Sports points out again and again, kids want to play and kids need to play. This book will show you how to make that happen.

About the Author

A scientist by education and training, C. John McCoglin has worked for more than fifteen years as a writer, covering mostly science and medicine. He has two teenaged sons who are avid athletes, competing in multiple sports at multiple levels. He has been an active volunteer in public schools and in the operation of young athletic clubs. He has coached, but only, he says, "in desperation." Surviving Youth Sports grew out of McCoglin's troubling observation that young people were becoming visibly less fit and healthy. The more he examined this unsettling trend, the more he realized that the way kids play--or don't play--was one of the root causes of a progression that can lead to obesity, diabetes, heart disease, stroke and a galaxy of infirmities that threaten to make us a nation of sick people. Reversing that trend, he realized, requires that we re-think our approach to youth sports and return it to its rightful owners--the kids who want to play. Surviving Youth Sports is a blueprint for that action.