Youth sports and the art of war

"Shoot the ball or I’ll rip your f**king head off, son"

I’m a massive proponent of youth sports. I think we coddle kids too much these days. We need fewer Twitch streamers and more no holds barred, get punched in the mouth, rough n’ tumble, good ol’ fashioned, rock ‘em, sock ‘em, teeth-shaking, mother-effing street fighters.

Back in my day, every kid was a child soldier. 

As a youngster, I slept outside with the dogs. My dad didn’t look at me until I was 12.

My room growing up.

I’m not a father, but I believe there is no better feeling than seeing your son or daughter swish a 15-footer with time expiring, winning the Middletownville Unified School District Championship. Sports are just awesome. What other event allows you to sit on hard, wooden bleachers in a musty gymnasium and watch uncoordinated youths bungle basic athletic movements?

I will admit, however, that youth coaches are an odd bunch. You can literally say anything you want to a person’s child if you call yourself “Coach.” Once when my high school basketball team and I were losing at halftime, our coach told us that we “were making him froth out of his asshole.” We didn’t know what he meant by that, but boy, did it inspire us to get back out there and basket more baskets than the rival troupe of mid-puberty youths. To this day, I still use those words to push me and motivate me to be a better husband and a better man.

I do wonder, though, if my coach went home that evening, poured himself a healthy glass of cabernet and thought to himself, “Geezus, Tony, what were you thinking? Froth out of my asshole? Come on, man.”

The best youth coaches are the ones who lead by example. When I was 10 or 11, my YMCA coach punched the opposing team’s coach in the face after he shoved him from behind. What did I learn from that? I learned that if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. 

That quote about overcoming heat in a kitchen makes me think about gun laws.

I live in a state that has fairly lax gun laws. I’m not necessarily against all guns, but I am against guns at Starbucks. You’re not G.I. Joe, you’re just an idiot like the rest of us, buying an overpriced macchiato. If you’re so afraid of getting murdered at Starbucks, maybe don’t go to Starbucks. But—you do command my respect. There are very, very few things I am willing to die for, and an iced coffee with an additional 6 pumps hazelnut, 3 pumps classic is not one of them. Putting yourself in harm’s way for such a benign reason sends a signal to Starbucks, their investors, and the greater coffee community that we are the nation of freedom and the terrorists will not prevail.

Anyway. So youth sports. Growing up, basketball was a core piece of my identity. If I was one of those robots from Westworld, my cornerstone probably would have been “kid who dribbles a lot and knows the dietary restrictions of every mid-90’s NBA player.” I was THE Justin Trudeau of the local youth basketball circuit. During tryouts my freshman year of high school, I projectile-vomited next to the vending machine in the boys’ locker room—sending a signal to Starbucks, their investors, and the junior varsity coaches that I was a feisty little fellow who could make it rain both bile and buckets.

But the magic didn’t last. I hit a wall my junior year. Tough classes, issues with friends, problems at home, a break-up, the t-shirt company I started wasn’t connecting with consumers like I had hoped—so, I ended up walking away from the basketball team. It was a promising career cut short by A.P. Chemistry, a broken heart, and an apparel business that was unable to achieve enough market penetration to stay viable in such a low-margin and cutthroat industry.

The thing is though—it wasn’t just a t-shirt company. It was a lifestyle brand. We weren’t just selling overpriced, deep-plunging v-necks, we were elevating the collective social consciousness. We were a philosophical movement that just so happened to sell premium tri-blend t-shirts for 50 dollars a piece.

When looking back on this failure, I find solace in the quote by the acclaimed technologist¹, Elizabeth Holmes²:

“This is what happens when you work to change things. At first they think you’re crazy, then they fight you, and then all of a sudden you change the world.”

Ponder these words while listening to The Sporting Life by the Decemberists—because, if you can remember, this was at one point a post about youth sports. 🏀👕🌝

Missed last week’s post? 📚 Read it here.

1. I’m excited for what the next iteration of evil tech company will be. Microsoft stifled competition, Facebook interfered in the election, Theranos committed fraud, Peloton engineered a treadmill to drag kids underneath and kill them… I wonder if six months from now we’ll learn that Jeff Bezos is just quietly murdering anyone also named Jeff.

2. I think the Elizabeth Holmes story is a massive step forward in equal rights. Everyone is obsessing about the gender pay gap or college enrollment rates or wealth inequality. We should instead focus on the gap in scumbag crimes, fraudster crimes—you know, schemes once only afforded to the Bernie Madoffs of the world. #FraudForAll