The biggest issues facing youth sports? Greg Olsen has strong opinions

Editor’s note: This story is part of Peak, The Athletic’s desk covering leadership, personal development and success through the lens of sports. Follow Peak here.

While growing up in New Jersey, Greg Olsen used to watch his father coach football at Wayne Hills High School before eventually joining the team himself. Years later, he wanted to transfer the lessons he gained from that experience to his kids. However, one day he asked himself a question:

What if the way that worked for me isn’t the way that will work for my kids? 

As Olsen began noting different ways other parents were coaching and raising their kids, he surveyed everyone from experts to professional coaches to famous athletes and medical experts.

Olsen, now 40, has always lived a life consumed by sports. A former first-round pick, Olsen played 14 seasons in the NFL, mostly with the Carolina Panthers. After retiring, he became a respected NFL broadcaster for Fox and launched Youth Inc., his company tailored to young athletes, their coaches and parents. He also coaches the middle school football teams for both of his sons.

I saw something you said in an interview you did with Cal Ripken Jr. You two were talking about when the right time is to specialize your kid in just one sport. You mentioned that you didn’t think parents wanted to do that at an earlier age. Now, you think they’re almost forced to do that, and it’s a big issue. Can you explain why?

It’s probably the single greatest issue facing the world of youth sports right now.

I think kids feel, and families feel, an extreme amount of pressure that if they don’t choose a sport early, it’s hard to keep up. What the kids feel is that it’s very hard to walk into every season to a new sport and compete against kids who have only been doing that sport for the last 12 months.

That’s causing people to go, “All right, forget it. I’m only going to worry about basketball because I’m so fearful of falling behind the other kids.” When I grew up playing, when it was basketball season, and when we transitioned to baseball season, pretty much all of my friends walked out of the gym together and walked onto the baseball field. So there was no fear of what the other kids were doing while you were gone.

Because they were right alongside you. In a lot of ways, those days are over at the high school level.

What do you think playing multiple sports does for kids?

Every sport offers such a different culture, physical skill set, mental skill set. There are so many different elements that each unique sport provides that I think these kids are missing by only being in one environment for 12 months a year.

I encourage our kids to play multiple sports and challenge themselves in multiple sports. Even if you’re not the best kid at one particular sport, our plan is long-term — come high school, come when you’re older, that long-term physical and mental development we think will pay off in the long run. Even if you’re not the best 12-year-old at the moment.

So you think different sports contain different lessons? 

For example, my older son goes right from football at school to basketball at school to baseball at school, and now we’re back into summer football/travel baseball. My younger son plays baseball, and now he’s going out for football. I have a daughter who does basketball, and then she runs track and field. Each one of those unique sports offers such a different environment for them to learn, for them to fail, for them to have success.

The skills you learn playing baseball: mental toughness, dealing with failure, it’s a little bit of a slower game so a little bit more focus. Versus basketball, which is very fast-paced, you’re up and down the court, you’re competing, guys are up in your face, challenging you. Can you compete in that fast environment?

And then football, it’s all summer long. It’s hot. You’re in pads, it’s training camp. You’re getting hit. You wake up sore, you don’t feel good. Can you still go to practice the next day?

I think it’s good to be exposed to different lessons, different coaching styles, different players, different teammates, as often as you can, especially at the middle school or younger level.

There’s also just more money, more time and more equipment than ever in youth sports. This can make the purpose of why everyone is there in the first place a little foggy. What do you think parents and coaches can do? 

I think there are two elements, two realities to all of this.

I think the first question parents have to ask themselves is: If your goal is only immediate, short-term results, sure, the best thing to get your kid good at one particular sport at this given moment right now is to just play one sport. It is the easiest path. If you commit all of your time and energy and resources to being good at one thing, you will be good at 12, 13, 14 years old. You will be good quicker.

I think what happens to everyone is they see their kid maybe not having the same amount of success as everybody else at a lower age, and they want to rush the process. And as a result, you say, “I’m going all-in on basketball or baseball.” And you feel good because in the moment, you see your kid’s standing amongst his peers is better because he’s just spending more time on it. But the question is, is his ceiling at 17 going to be as high as a singular-sport kid than it would have been if he exposed himself to other sports along the way?

Then the second element is for coaches. There is a selfish element to coaches, to pressure families to not play other sports. If I’m a basketball coach, it is in my best interest that all summer, those kids are not at football workouts. That is in my best interest as the coach. I would argue, it is not in the kids’ best interest, and I always tell parents, “The second you have a coach tell you, you can’t play another sport, you should really think twice about whether you play for that coach.”

You’ve mentioned that you’ve pulled things from your experiences. Were there any surprising takeaways you had when you started coaching?

When I was growing up, there were no conversations about who you played for. When it was basketball season, you played for your town’s basketball team. And then when the spring came, you tried out for the baseball team. They picked the best 12 kids.

There were no decisions. Now, everything’s a decision.

What team do I play for? Who’s my batting coach? What high school? Do I go public? Do I go private? 
These schools are paying; kids are transferring. Some kids are going to four high schools in four years. It’s just everything has turned into a decision around youth sports, and I think it’s unfortunate.

I don’t think we’re preparing kids who are prepared to go to college and fail and have to learn to be the backup. We don’t ever let anybody work through any processes anymore. And I think we’re seeing that now play out at the older level, and we’re dealing with the consequences of it.

When you talked to these experts and the people who specialize in it, what did they say? 

Yeah, I think the simplest advice from the people that I’ve talked to that parents can do is: “Expose your kids to as many different sports and activities as humanly possible for as long as possible.”

That would be general rule number one.

And then continue to keep the balance of learning how to compete and learning the value of winning and learning the value of failure. All of those values are really good.

Learning to win is a skill. Learning to lose is a skill. You need to be able to handle both of them and learn what comes good and bad from both of those elements, but you need to be exposed to that at a young age. I think there are some kids who have never experienced failure. They’ve never been on a bad team. They’ve never lost. They’ve never been anything but the three-hole hitter. They’ve never been anything but the quarterback. 
They’ve never experienced the other side of the coin, and I think it’s important for them to learn that.

What is the ultimate objective? Are we raising 12-year-olds to be professional baseball players? Or are we raising 12-year-olds to be professional people?

I liked what you said about failure.

Well, it’s all a balance, like anything. I don’t think we want to teach kids that losing is OK. I don’t think we want to create a loser mentality where I just show up and whatever I do, it doesn’t really matter. Wins or losses, I’m just happy. I don’t believe in that. 

Now, when they are 5 or 6 years old and learning T-ball, I’m not talking about those kids. I’m talking about middle school, 12-, 13-, 14-year-old kids. They are old enough, in my opinion, to start learning about what competing looks like, what wins and losses are and connecting the hard work to wins. Connecting the easy way out and missing practices to going 0-3 this week. You didn’t work hard, so what makes you expect success? 

I always say that I want my kids to start experiencing failure when they still come home to mom and dad. I don’t want failure to hit them in the face for the first time when they’re 20. I’m not even talking about sports, I’m just talking about life. Adversity in general. We want them to come home and be embarrassed and struggle and have their weakest moments at a younger age because we can develop skill sets for dealing with those emotions.

So you don’t want anyone to want to lose. And you don’t want someone to show up and not care to win. That’s not a winning approach. But I also don’t want people who never experience losing or failure or being the last kid on the bench, because at some point in your life, you are going to be the last kid on the bench in some aspect.

What are you going to do about it?

(Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; Jacob Kupferman / Getty Images)