If you haven’t heard the story yet, Rutgers basketball coach Mike Rice was recently fired after videos of him screaming and swearing at, pushing, grabbing, and throwing basketballs at his players surfaced. We’re all familiar with the antics of coaches like Bobby Knight, who are about as famous for their sideline temper as they are for their winning records. And while many sports coaches can probably remember a time or two in their coaching careers when they lost their cool and yelled at a player, the kind of physical bullying Rice was videotaped doing is completely inexcusable.

Let’s be honest, no one likes losing, especially if it is something they are passionate about. But just because you lost this time around that doesn’t mean you can’t come out on top the next time. Youth sports can teach our kids a lot of great life lessons and arguably one of the best lessons to learn at a young age is that you can’t win them all. School, play, work, sports—sooner or later you’re not going to be #1 in something you care about. But guess what? That’s okay! Youth sports should teach our kids understand that failing is not the end of the world, but another chance at becoming great!

As sad as it is to say, coaches aren’t the only ones in youth sports that can take advantage of their position of power to abuse a player. Too often we are hearing stories of older players intimidating, bullying, harassing and even physically abusing their younger teammates. Earlier this month 3 Bronx Science students were arrested on hazing charges (although the allegations go far above and beyond what you might think classifies as simple “hazing”). One student on the track team said that hazing was a fairly common thing, with the juniors and seniors regularly picking on the freshman.

Right up there with the debate about whether youth sports leagues should keep score or not, the back and forth over the value of “participation awards” rages on among sports parents and coaches. Some say participation awards undermine the whole point of awards (those that do the best get the recognition they deserve so if you want an award work harder!) while others argue that participating is a lot harder than staying home (and even if your team doesn’t finish first we shouldn’t discredit what they did do). How do you feel about participation trophies?

With 70% of kids quitting youth sports by the time they are 13 clearly something needs to change. A lot of sports parents and coaches believe that many kids give up on sports because youth sports stop being fun! After all, it’s hard to enjoy doing something two, three or even four times a week if you don’t actually like doing it, right? So here’s a crazy idea—what if we made sports fun again? What if we stripped away the trainers and high-powered travel tournaments, the 6-week sports camps and latest equipment and just made do with what was left—a great game. Maybe we could all stand to play a few more pick-up games and remind ourselves that playing sports should, and is, a fun time!

Earlier this week we posted an article about helicopter sports parents, those ones that get a touch too involved in their child’s athletic career. And while most have good intentions (even if they are a bit overzealous about it) sometimes you run into a sports mom or dad that thinks their child is Heir Jordan. And they want to make sure that everyone else knows it to. One of our Little League moms dropped this comment a few weeks ago and we had to share,

Every youth sports coach is bound to run into a sports parent sooner or later that is just a touch too involved in their player’s athletic career. Maybe they’re already imaging that sports scholarship (never mind their athlete is only 7…) or maybe they think their kid deserves extra attention or personalized coaching. Whatever the reasoning is, being saddled with a helicopter sports parent that likes to coach from the sidelines (maybe even countering you) or has very specific expectations for exactly the kind of season their child should have is no picnic for most youth sports coaches. You don’t want to turn them against you, or diminish their enthusiasm for their child’s commitment to your team—so what’s a coach to do?

The word “quitting” always has such negative connotation, especially in youth sports. No one wants to be called a “quitter” (or see their child labeled as such). And although there are some cases where it might okay to let your child “quit” youth sports, even if quit isn’t necessarily the best word to describe why they might stop playing, with 70% of kids giving up on youth sports by the time they are 13 clearly something needs to give. In a LinkedIn discussion (great places for sports parents and coaches to meet and talk shop!), here’s what one dad-coach did to make sure youth sports stayed fun and kids wanted to keep playing:

This post was orginally published on mylittlegolfers.com. You can read the orginal post here.

We’ve talked about the “Great Debate” in youth sports before—is everyone really a winner? But in order to have a winner you have to have kept score, right? After all, isn’t the winner the one who did better than the other team? Obviously there are lots of ways one team could do “better” than another during a game but traditionally the scoreboard was how a winner was decided. Much like the Great Debate, there seems to be two camps around the idea of keeping score during a youth sports league. Which side do you as a sports parent or coach fall on?