I grew up in England, which probably explains at least part of my approach to mental health.
Keep calm. Carry on. Stiff upper lip. Whatever version of it you prefer. You don’t complain too much. You don’t make everything about yourself. If something is difficult, you put your head down, deal with it and get on with the job. One of my favorite club leaders and I talk about this all the time. Get your head down and move forward.
There are actually some things I appreciate about that mentality. But there are also times when I wonder if those of us who have spent our lives in sports — particularly youth sports — have become a little too good at just getting on with it.
We talk a lot about the mental health of young athletes, and rightly so. We talk about pressure, burnout, anxiety, expectations, overtraining, social media, parents, coaches and the pressure to make the team, stay on the team, earn a starting position or get to the next level.
Those are important conversations. But there is another mental health conversation in youth sports that I don’t think we have nearly enough.
It’s about the adults.
“You work in youth sports. That must be amazing.”
It is amazing!
I genuinely love what I do. I get to work in a sport that has been part of my life for as long as I can remember. I get to work alongside people who care deeply about kids. I get to see programs created, opportunities opened, communities brought together and young people fall in love with a game that has given me so much.
There are moments when I stop and think how incredibly fortunate I am to do this for a living. But that doesn’t mean it is easy.
I think sometimes, from the outside, there is an assumption that because our mission is a positive one, working within that mission must always feel positive too. The reality is more complicated.
Youth sports is emotional work.
For those in leadership positions, at the state level, or at a club, we deal with budgets, employees, boards, policies, facilities, insurance, technology, registrations, complaints, discipline, schedules and all the other things that come with running an organization.
That’s the job. But there is another layer to almost every one of those decisions: the kids.
If we get something wrong, somewhere down the line a child may be affected. That’s what makes this work so rewarding. It’s also what gives the work weight.
I know that from experience. There have been situations during my time in this position that, with the benefit of hindsight, time and reflection, I wish we had handled differently. That’s part of leadership, too. You make decisions based on the information you have, learn when you don’t get everything right, and hopefully allow those experiences to make you better the next time around.
I don’t spend my days dwelling on those decisions, nor do I think we should. But they do help explain why this work isn’t always as easy to leave behind at 5pm as people might imagine.
Because ultimately, the decisions matter. And that isn’t unique to people with my title either.
The responsibility exists at every level
Think about coaching.
I’m fortunate enough to coach at the college level. I’ve also been around this game long enough to see coaches at virtually every other level, too. I genuinely love seeing people coach.
Whether you’re coaching college players or you’re the parent who reluctantly raised your hand because nobody else volunteered to coach eight-year-olds, somebody has entrusted you with their kid. That’s a pretty significant responsibility.
And then comes everything nobody sees.
It’s sitting at the kitchen table planning tomorrow’s training session when you could be spending that time with your own family. It’s getting to the field early and leaving late. It’s figuring out how to give 16 kids meaningful playing time. It’s thinking about the player whose confidence seems to have disappeared over the last few weeks.
It’s answering the email from the parent who believes their child didn’t play enough. Or should be playing a different position. Or should be on a different team. It’s having a difficult conversation with a player, checking the weather, organizing equipment, communicating schedule changes and trying to remember which family told you three weeks ago that they would be gone this Saturday.
And then you get home. Except sometimes the job comes home with you.
Your family might be sitting next to you while you’re responding to somebody else’s family. I have done that countless times.
That’s a strange thing when you really think about it.
For thousands of coaches across youth sports, this isn’t even their profession. They have already worked their actual job that day. They have families of their own, bills, responsibilities, stress and things happening in their lives that the players and parents they serve know absolutely nothing about.
And still, they show up. Not every coach gets everything right. Neither does every administrator, referee, volunteer or executive. We shouldn’t pretend otherwise.
But I do think we could do a better job of recognizing just how much time and emotional energy people throughout youth sports give to other people’s children.
The hidden economy of time in youth sports
Maybe that’s the part we underestimate most. That was the part that got me to write this.
We tend to measure youth sports in registrations, teams, games, tournaments and participation numbers. We don’t measure the hours.
“It’s hard to smell the flowers from a galloping horse.”
The session plans written after dinner. The weekends away from home. The early mornings and late nights. The phone calls taken during family time. The volunteer board meeting after a full day at work. The referee driving an hour to make sure a game happens. The administrator answering a message on Sunday because someone believes their issue can’t possibly wait until Monday.
Or the coach lying in bed thinking about whether they handled a conversation with a player correctly.
Multiply that by thousands of coaches, administrators, referees, volunteers and staff members and the amount of human energy invested in youth sports is pretty staggering.
Most of it is given willingly.
That’s important.
People aren’t necessarily looking for applause. They’re doing it because they love the sport, love working with young people, love their communities or simply saw something that needed doing and stepped forward.
But willingly giving something doesn’t mean it doesn’t cost anything.
Time is still time. Stress is still stress. Missing dinner with your family because practice ran late is still missing dinner with your family.
And perhaps we should acknowledge the families behind the people doing this work too. Every Saturday morning someone gives to coaching somebody else’s child may also be a Saturday morning their spouse, partner or family gave up. Every weekend tournament, evening meeting or late-night phone call has a ripple effect beyond the person whose name appears on the staff directory or coaching roster.
The sacrifice isn’t exclusively ours.
Passion is both our greatest strength and one of our vulnerabilities
That’s the paradox of youth sports. The entire system depends on people who care.
It depends on the coach who stays another 20 minutes. The volunteer who says yes. The administrator who solves the problem. The referee who takes another assignment. The board member who gives up another evening. The staff member who answers the phone.
That passion is what makes youth sports work. But passion can also make boundaries incredibly difficult.
When something matters to us, we can always justify giving it another hour. One more email. One more phone call. One more problem to solve tonight instead of tomorrow.
Because what if somebody is counting on us? And when the work involves children, almost everything can feel important.
That’s where I think those of us in leadership positions have an additional responsibility. Not just to recognize it in ourselves, but to recognize it in the people around us.
We can’t tell people that mental health matters and then quietly celebrate the employee who answers emails at midnight. I had an email from an employee at 1:20am the other day! Yes, you know who you are!
We can’t talk about work-life balance while creating a culture where everyone feels they have to be permanently available.
We can’t preach healthy environments for young athletes while ignoring the wellbeing of the adults responsible for creating those environments.
Sometimes good leadership might simply mean telling somebody: This can wait until tomorrow. Go home.
And sometimes the person we need to tell that to is ourselves.
This isn’t a request for sympathy
I want to be clear about that. This isn’t a “feel sorry for people who work in youth sports” article. I chose this career. So did most of the incredible people I get to work alongside at OYSA. Coaches choose to coach. Volunteers step forward. Referees pick up the whistle. Board members raise their hands.
We do it because there is something incredibly rewarding about creating opportunities for young people.
But gratitude and exhaustion can exist at the same time. Passion and stress can exist at the same time. You can love what you do and still need a break from it.
Perhaps we need to become more comfortable saying that.
There is also growing research around stress and burnout among coaches and the connection between the wellbeing of adults and the environments we create for athletes. That shouldn’t really surprise us.
Taking care of ourselves isn’t separate from taking care of the kids. It’s part of it.
The mission needs healthy people
I’m still learning this myself. Downtime isn’t something we should feel guilty about. My close group of friends here in Albany always joke when we try to get together because I am usually “busy with soccer”…it’s the ongoing joke in the group.
The walk. The workout. Dinner with family. Watching a game without analyzing it. A weekend where the phone isn’t permanently attached to your hand. A vacation where “vacation” actually means vacation.
Whatever allows you to remember that you are a person who does this work — not a person who exists solely for this work.
I don’t think the answer is caring less. I certainly wouldn’t want that.
The passion people bring to youth sports is one of the things I love most about this community. I think the answer is learning how to care deeply without allowing the work to consume us.
Because there will always be another season. Another registration deadline. Another difficult decision. Another complaint. Another board meeting. Another training session. Another weekend of games.
And, hopefully, another generation of kids discovering why we all fell in love with sports in the first place.
They deserve adults who are present, patient, thoughtful and healthy enough to create great environments for them.
And the people doing this work deserve those things, too.
So perhaps the mental health conversation in youth sports needs to become a little broader.
Yes, let’s keep talking about our players. Let’s keep asking whether we are creating healthy environments for kids.
But let’s also occasionally look around the meeting room, the office, the sidelines, the referee tent, the coaching area and the board table and ask another question:
How are the adults doing?
And when somebody answers honestly, let’s make sure we’re prepared to listen.
Even those of us who grew up believing the correct response was simply to keep calm, carry on and get on with it.