Keith Delucia's Blog

Tagliabue Concerned About Funding for Youth Sports

By Kristin Byrne

The Green Bay Packers and St. Norbert College are co-hosting a national sports conference through Friday in a first-of-its-kind collaboration between the two entities.

Seminars are being held at the college campus and Lambeau Field, covering topics including economic issues in sports, sports psychology, and college sports and careers.

The keynote speaker at the conference Wednesday was former NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue, who said one of the biggest challenges facing our country when it comes to sports is funding cuts for youth sports.

“Budget cuts to school sports programs in the past several years alone since the financial crisis hit have exceeded two billion dollars in public schools around the country,” Tagliabue said.

During his speech about sports and society, he referenced an alarming report on the topic pointing out the problem is significant.

“American youth sports are in serious decline and that opportunities to play are decreasing and becoming more costly, particularly with the rapid growth of participation fees to play sports so-called ‘pay to play.’”

Tagliabue told a crowd attending his speech on sports and society that budget cuts to school sports programs in our country are a concern that can’t be ignored.

He says resources are simply more available to schools in communities that are well off.

“Probably the biggest challenge has to do with the gap between the have and the have nots,” Tagliabue said.

“The people in our society that are getting short-changed are at the lower end of the economic scale where they depend on public education, and in a lot of areas those programs are being gutted.”

Tagliabue pointed out research that’s been done on the subject listing long-term effects to society when funding for youth sports is slashed:”The associated costs of health care for obesity related illnesses and others, criminal law enforcement costs, and the economic consequences of high school drop out rates.”

He says a solution lies in leadership.

A community that cares, he says is critical.

“It’s not just something the public sector can deal with,” Tagliabue said. “We need to keep putting the pressure on for participation sports in the right ways.”

Youth sports is an enterprise worthy of a bailout

By JIM LITKE (AP) – Oct 21, 2009

If the high school and youth sports programs in your town aren’t already having trouble paying their bills, they will soon.

And if that doesn’t sound like headline-worthy news in this battered economy, just wait. You’ll have your pick of headlines from the ripples it creates soon enough: fatter kids, more dropouts and less safe streets. You also won’t have to wonder why the college and pro teams you follow from the couch don’t seem quite as good as they used to be.

The public-private partnership that helped make youth sports part of the fabric of every neighborhood in America for decades is going broke.

“Sports are something everybody takes for granted, but already for some kids in some places, those programs are a lifeline,” said Paul Caccamo, executive director of Up2Us, a coalition of school and community-based sports programs from around the country.

“It’s already an endangered species in some inner cities, some rural areas and now, even middle-class suburban kids are getting hit with pay-to-play fees. We know as that cost goes up, participation goes down. … And while we don’t know for certain how many it’s affected in all those places already,” he added, “it’s got to be in the hundreds of thousands.”

Beginning Wednesday, Caccamo and an army of do-gooders will descend on Washington, D.C., bearing that message, some provocative research and high hopes of drawing attention to the problem and bending a few influential ears in Congress and even the White House.

During two days of conferences, co-hosted by Up2Us and the Laureus Sport For Good Foundation, the people struggling to keep those programs running want to make policy-makers and the public understand how close they are to the tipping point. It’s not about learning to make do with less money; in many neighborhoods, any less will mean having to do without.

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Managing your children’s schedule – sports, school, activities and more, is often more challenging than managing the schedule of busy business people. The complexity is increased with the addition of rescheduled games, unplanned events from school, and of course, cold and flu season.

One of the most important things to acknowledge in advance is that the schedule needs to be flexible enough to accommodate change, and that a lot of the changes are beyond your control. Most importantly, recognize that it’s critical that you only encourage your children to sign up for activities which they can reasonably attend: It’s better to give 100% to 2 activities, than 30% in an attempt to cover 6 activities.

When a child misses practices, games and events, the “catch-up” is often more difficult than the originally scheduled event, and moreover, is discouraging to children as they see others included in activities which they have missed, often beyond their control.

Make decisions early on in the process, and commit to a few activities which are attainable, and then add as you find your stride.

Take a moment for my quick poll:

Welcome to my new blog covering the topic of youth sports.

As a strong supporter of youth sports, I have a great respect for those parents who find the time to dedicate to improving the lives of our children by contributing to team play.

In the coming months, I will be providing news, information and resources for the youth sports parents, players, coaches and fans.

Your child’s first tournament is exciting for sure, but can be challenging as well.

For the younger players, tournaments are a wonderful experience, in that the children get the chance to play against a broad range of players and teams, enjoy a day of sports, and receive some recognition for effort and achievement.

Tournaments can sometimes be a challenge as well. Longer, multi-game tournaments take their toll on players, coaches and parents as well. Often, smaller teams have a difficult time later in the tournament with player endurance, and potentially, motivation and attention.

As coaches and parents, it’s important to be aware that young athletes are easily influenced by these experiences, and the proper attention to these details can make a lifetime of difference.

By Joel Thomas      A philosophy that has always blown my mind that is taught from youth baseball all the way up to higher levels of baseball is when coaches teach their hitters not to guess what pitch is coming.

As coaches, don’t we all dream of the players who are true students of the game? Is being able to educate our hitters on what pitch may be coming in what count not one of our jobs as coaches? Therefore I am going to state my philosophy as being one that doesn’t just involve guessing what pitch is coming, but instead making and educated guess on what pitch may be coming.  So if all the great hitters in the game don’t guess at the plate like many coaches preach, and always look to get a fastball and adjust from there, how it is possible to think a hitter in the big leagues could hit .300 and 45-50 homeruns? If they’re facing a pitcher who throws a fastball 90-100 MPH, and a change up or breaking pitch that may be 68-80 MPH, do you really think they have the amount of success they do because they’re always looking for one pitch. No, they are great hitters because they pick up patterns in certain pitchers or because they’ve educated themselves on the pitch to look for in a certain situation. If a great hitter hits a curveball out of the park on a 2-0 count, which is a fastball count, and it seems as if he was looking for that curveball, he most likely was. He may have seen the pitcher throw this pitch in the same count to a teammate earlier in the game, and he knew what to look for if he gets into the same situation.

The last point I will make about hitting is not really about hitting as much as it is about the way we coach. If we as coaches are teaching hitters not to guess, then doesn’t that technically make us hypocrites? What I mean is that if we teach our hitters not to guess then why does everyone teach to be aggressive in what are known as hitter’s counts (1-0, 2-0, 2-1, 2-1). Maybe it’s because we as coaches are guessing these are fastball counts… Just something to think about.

I was recently at a youth soccer game, for 7 year olds. The opposing team was a little too physical. It was clear to most of the parents on our sideline, that the opposing coach had focused his team to “playing the players” and not as much, “playing the ball”.

At the end of the game, one of the parents erupted at the referee, as he had barely called any penalties on the opposing team despite many high elbows, pushes and trips. In the middle of the argument, the opposing coach stepped onto the field, to join the screaming match.

The whole incident lasted less than two minutes, but left a lasting impression on our players, and my son. The following week, all the parents who were not at that game, were asking questions; clearly their children had come home with stories about “the fight”. My son asked again and again if that parent was going to scream at the referee again.

Besides being an ineffective way of handling a situation, the lesson learned by our children is difficult to undo, and unfortunate.

Volatile parents should stay on the sidelines, and often, should stay home.

What do you think?