Fans First? We’re FUN First!

You’ve probably heard of the Savana Banana’s motto by now: “FANS FIRST.”

And I hope you know that Spring Training’s motto is “Play Hard, Have Fun.”

It took me a long time to come up with a short phrase that captured everything Spring Training is about (and I love it), but if I was ever going to modify it, it would become “FUN FIRST.”

Let me explain why.

Youth sports can be one of the best venues to teach critical life skills like effort, work ethic, positive attitude, sportsmanship, and resilience.  Those are important character traits for all young people to learn, and all of our Spring Training coaches take that responsibility seriously and bake those lessons into every high five, trivia question, word of encouragement, and sports stories.

But what’s really amazing about youth sports is that those “serious” traits are most effectively taught and learned in a fundamentally unserious setting like a baseball, soccer, or lacrosse field!

The secret sauce is finding those types of environments for our kids where they have the opportunity to learn both skills and life lessons while having fun because after all, they are still just kids.

Despite what we all might feel as adults in the moment watching our kids play sports, none of the games they have ever played in their lives has mattered.  Not one.

Sure, we would all rather our kids play well and win than play poorly and lose, but no result or performance has had any material effect on their future.  Nothing changes with a win vs a loss or 4-4 vs 0-4 day at the plate. 

Now, that won’t always be the case, but it’s absolutely true now.

There will be a time when, for some athletes, playing sports gets serious; when it has real-life implications.

Playing well as a High School Junior or Senior might mean getting the opportunity to play in college, being offered a scholarship, or using one’s athletic ability to get into a better academic school than would have been possible strictly as a student.

Performing well in college might lead to the opportunity to play professionally.  Gentle reminder, these opportunities are for 5% (play in college) and .1% (play pro) of high school athletes nationally.

But here’s where we’ve lost to the plot lately with how seriously we’re taking the unserious part of youth sports…

Most kids won’t make it far enough in their sport where they’ll ever play a game that can change the direction of their life.  Most high school athletes won’t have something like a scholarship or pro contract hanging in the balance, where their future might fundamentally change based on their performance.

In Baseball, less than 3% of all High School players in the country will play at a D1 college.

And of that 3%, about 15% get drafted.

And of that 15%, less than 10% will ever play in the MLB for even 1 game.

The odds of playing at any of the higher levels in any sport are long.

So if the odds of ever playing a season or game that actually means something, like in a life-changing way, are so low, then the emphasis at the younger ages should be on character development and having fun.

But when adults make winning and losing and personal performance the focal point at a young age, it robs kids of the only guaranteed time in their lives when they can participate simply for the joy of it. 

It also prevents those same kids from the chance to learn and grow and battle through some of the inevitable struggles and slumps that come in sports, and to feel the exhilaration and pride when they finally get that clutch catch or hit!

That’s why everything Spring Training does is designed to teach those valuable life lessons WHILE making sure every kid is having as much fun as possible.

That’s how to give kids the best of both worlds.

And here’s the kicker about getting to the higher levels of any sport that only people who have been there understand; an athlete will NEVER put in the amount of effort, dedication, and sacrifice required to succeed in High School, College, or beyond unless they absolutely love it.

They have to love practice. They have to love working out.  They have to love competing. They have to love figuring out why they are not succeeding and they have to trust that their work will pay off even on the hardest days. Their love of the sport must outweigh other sources of joy like parties and vacations.

As soon as their sport stops being fun, they’ll quit.  That’s fine, and that’s natural.  The problem is the current youth sports world seems to be designed to accelerate how quickly kids fall out of love with sports.

More pressure to win. More expectations. More practice. 

More intensity. More travel. More burnout.

And as a result of this, more kids are quitting at younger and younger ages.

Let’s flip the script on the current conventional wisdom about youth sports that says MORE serious playing environments are the way to get ahead…

If our ONLY goal as a parent was for our child to become a professional athlete, the single thing we should be investing in right now when they’re young is FUN.  Because without that as the foundation of their athletic DNA, they will likely quit before they even have the opportunity to find out what their full potential might be.

And fun in sports these days is an extremely fragile thing!

A coach who yells instead of encourages…

Teammates who are negative instead of positive…

Environments that add stress and anxiety…

Adults with unrealistic expectations or misplaced motivations…

A team playing so often that games and practices feel like a job…

Sadly, none of the above are rare these days.  In fact, they are each increasingly more and more common.

As a long-time student of youth development in sports, operator of youth sports programming, and the parent of 2 athletes under the age of 12, I can not emphasize enough how important it is to focus on character development and the love of the game until high school, above all else.

That’s literally the only thing my wife (former D1 athlete) and myself want for our kids right now.

I’m proud that for 2 decades, Spring Training has been doing our part to help young athletes fall in love with sports, and I can’t wait to bring baseball joy to hundreds of kids in Long Beach, PV, and the Beach Cities again this year…

Hope to see you on the field this Summer.

Play Hard, Have FUN!