Your Kid’s Not Going Pro — A Primer

Welcome, outside world, to Your Kid’s Not Going Pro, a blog about youth sports written by a youth sports coach and father whose involvement in youth sports is deep enough to make him reflexively use the term youth sports with alarming frequency.

The title of this here blog (”Your Kid’s Not Going Pro,” in case you hadn’t figured that out) sounds bitter and dream-killing, but instead it should be taken as a positive. Realizing your child will never go pro, or never get an athletic scholarship, will free parents from the burden of believing someday your child is going to become LeBron James and whisk you out of your debt-ridden, sorry life (a result caused in part by the amount of money you spent on trying to make your kid LeBron James — something that is not a uniquely American situation.) It will free youth sports coaches, most of whom are volunteers, from pretending they have to be the Bill Belichick of 7-year-old football so they can parlay that gig into the head coaching job with the Chicago Bears. You’re not going pro either, bub.