Equal playing time!

Welcome to the Healthy Mindset App podcast where host Mike Hartman, a performance coach and former professional athlete, brings his passion to help athletes and workplace athletes achieve their dreams and goals while being mindful of everything else in life. Mike also uses this platform to share his targeted assessment applications. Healthy Mindset course meditation and goal setting technique for the athlete and workplace athlete. We're glad you're here. Now let's dive headfirst into this episode of the Healthy Mindset App podcast. Here's your host, Mike Hartman.

Today I'm going to share a story about why I personally believe that equal playing time in youth sports, especially between the ages of 6 years old and 11 crucial and had a pretty good debate actually. One of my very good friends called me and he asked me my thoughts about 8 year olds that play hockey in Canada and they play in the rec league for fun, which to me everything's fun. So when someone says they play for fun, professionals should play for fun. The next thing he was asking me about was what about somebody that plays what we call as triple A at the highest level, should they have equal playing time? I said absolutely, that's how we develop for many reasons. And I'm going to share a little story at the end with the stories of gratitude and how I view things and some people don't agree with me. Next thing they're going to say is, well, does everybody get a trophy? No, it's not about that. But good wins come from good development. I played on the world junior team and our coach was Dave Peterson and the first thing he told everybody is yes, we were all elite players, supposedly some of the top players in the country back then playing on that rural junior team for usa had a great team with Brian Leach, one of the best all time New York Rangers ever to play. All star defenseman Scott we had Scott Young, we had Bobby Corkham, Marty Nanny, Lou Nanny who was the, he was a longtime coach. Then we had just a good group players. Adam Burt, first round pick, played in Hartford and then later the Philadelphia Flyers. And just overall you could see we had a really good team. Darren Turcotte and I think you'll get the hint here. And what, what the coach said is, hey, everybody's going to play equally. We're going to have fun. Especially you know, when you know the game's going well, we might have to shorten the bench. We're going to have, you know, people that play power play more than others, people that pedal to kill. But overall we're going to have fun. We're going to put a smile on our face. And we're going to compete and we're going to develop over here and get better. Like even develop and learn when he meant develop. It was such a short tournament. It's like when it's the Christmas time when teams actually release their players, not release them from the team. These are good players, but we have Division 1 players, some NHL players that get sent back and they're that junior age and they're playing on the world junior team. But the seasons in junior slow down and the colleges slow down and they might even be playing at that time too. But it's still that time of year where they send over the world junior. Canada has a great team. Russia always had a great team. Finland, Sweden, Czechoslovakia, great players. But the point is our coach made sure that we developed. And what he meant is we're going to develop and learn. We're going to play and learn. We want to win this tournament. That's what we're here for. But we're going to learn. And I never forgot that. So one thing is, for some of you coaches out there, I call it inclusive development. Equal playing time ensures that these kids will have an opportunity to develop their skills, girls and boys. Let them enjoy it, make it a very supportive environment for them. I talk about fairness. Someone said to me, well, life isn't fair, Mike. Well, sure, I mean, providing equal playing time promotes a sense of fairness and equality among the team members, especially at that young age. And what they're going to want to do is they're going to learn to work together and have that teamwork and they're going to all bring in this unity that's going to help everybody. The second thing is you start singling out players at a very young age. Remember, I'm talking as young as 8 years old. And these travel teams are playing these kids. One thing, if you don't play, you're going to lose your confidence. So building confidence is so important to me. Allowing every girl or boy to have a chance to boost their confidence and give them a chance to improve their self esteem, improve their game on the ice, field, court, course, whatever they're doing, I don't care if it's pickleball and there's a pickleball league and it's, you know, because they're starting to have these kids play pickleball and tennis, they have to develop. And one thing I'll share with you, the best kid you see today at 11 or 12, he might not be the best kid later on. That's not always the kid that moves on. And what are we really trying to do at the end? I'm going to share my story for the end this time. Talk about skill improvement. When you're playing, you're developing. When you're practicing, you're really developing. So you're practicing your skills. You know, the game is fun. You know, if you're playing hockey, the average kid might, girl or boy, might have the puck on their stick for a total of maybe a minute, a minute and a half. I mean, and that's not a lot. That's really not a lot for. So that's how they develop in practice. But you want them to take those skills that they learned in practice and apply it to games. Same with dribbling a ball. I don't have the stats there. Whether it's in plays, you're playing, flag football and if someone's just on the sideline or if it's soccer, lacrosse, whatever it is, you're not going to develop it. So skill development to me is taking the skill, what you learn in practice, and apply it to the games. Because when you get to the game, it's not even, you know, it's not even the same reps. It's completely different. One thing I like to do is I encourage a passion for sports. Like, I love sports. No matter what. It was mostly baseball and hockey, just loved it. Whether it was playing dodgeball in school, it was just such a good early experience. And I could tell you right now, I never would have gone on in hockey because I was a late bloomer. If I was nine years old, there's no way I would have wanted to play hockey. I probably would have quit if I'm going to sit on the bench and not participate. So the other thing too is it adds a lot of stress to these players when they're not playing a lot. So if you ensure this equal playing time, I'm talking, I'm not talking about 13, 14 and 15. That's a different, that's a whole different experience. I'm talking about very young athletes and we can have a whole discussion about that as well. You may not like what I have to say, but reducing the stress for these players so they can compete, develop, like I said, that confidence. The other thing is a team bonding. And when a player is not participating, they're not going to foster those, the camaraderie. I said they're not going to foster those relationships with everybody because they're going to feel they're different. And my friend said to Me, well, should we baby them? No. But this is when you develop their skills, develop them as young people. The sport is second. And if you're a coach in you could, I'll debate this with you as long as you want. Because I believe that good development comes from a good coach who's offering their wisdom and their love and their caring. That's development of players, not just developing them as athletes, developing as young people. So to me, I have a whole thing about this and talking about long term insecurities as well because they start, you know, you sit them on the bench and I know kids, I went to school with them, they played recreational basketball, then they end up quitting. When I was very young, I could think of kids off the top of my head right now. So allowing equal playing time exposes coaches to a broader range of skill within the team, helping them identify who they are as a person. And as they get older, if they want to compete at high levels, that's a whole different story. But now, even so, it doesn't matter. When we have young athletes, like look at a hockey player, their ankles, that's a big. People don't really think about that. You look at an 8 year old or 9 year old and their ankles are not even developed. And kids grow and develop at different times. So I really hope that parents, we have a community and we have community support for this. So I could help you ask any questions because this is something that we have a lot of parents we work with very big sports organization that has players come to us and families. And the whole purpose that what I do is I want to help provide a positive experience for young athletes and families. So I told you I was going to tell a story and my story goes something like this. Here it was my son and he goes to a very good school, great coaches, just a great environment. And one day, this happened one time, my son was in sixth grade and he was playing on the sixth grade lacrosse team and he wasn't playing much. And I'm not the parent that ever says a word. I'm not going to say anything that's not me. I'll sit there and watch and I'll help him and we'll take it be a Saturday. And I throw him balls and he could throw the ball back to me. I could barely use a lacrosse stick. Sometimes I'd have a baseball glove. So I'd throw him a ground ball or throw it to him in different places, he'd whip it back to me. But the one time I remember and it Wasn't even the coaches as much as the parents. And I went to the game and we were playing, I think it was Charlotte Country Day, which is another private school. And what I was told is we never beat them by 10 goals and the score was nine nothing. And there was about six minutes left. So what would you think we're gonna put these other kids in? I would have played them anyways earlier, like, you know my philosophy, but I'm not coaching there. I don't have the whistle, so I'm not gonna say anything too much about. About that situation. So when the parents came to me and said, mike, you've been pretty quiet today. Well, I usually don't cheer anyways. He goes, nah, but you just seem quiet. I said, well, just watching the game. And he says, well, what's wrong? I said, well, you want to know? We have about six kids, including my son, sitting on the sidelines. And again, I'm not that parent that says a word sitting on the sidelines and not even playing a minute. So now we're up by nine goals. Six minutes left. Throw them in. He goes, oh, no, no, we don't do that here. My kids, my. My older son here played on the varsity team and we grew up playing lacrosse. And we've never beat, I think it was Country Day or Charlotte Latin. We've never beat country day by 10 goals. And I said, oh, and I'm not going to argue with anybody. I said, really? It's going to make a difference in their life. It's going to change their lives if they win by 10 nothing, which maybe they did that day, maybe they didn't. But my philosophy is that good wins come from good development. And, you know, and again, not everybody will agree with me, but that's why, you know, it's. It's great that we're open to different things and discuss different things. So that was my story today. I'm sharing that story with you. Where. Where does the gratitude comes in? Well, I'm not sure stories of gratitude, that's what going to be doing. But I'm also going to be mixing up actually many other topics. I had some messages from people in our community and says, listen, we love the stories of gratitude. We know you have hundreds of audios with your course and everything in the community, but can you please add on your podcast, we like your stories instead of just stories of gratitude. So I thought about it and I said, sure, I'll throw different things in here and there. We're going to have other people do as well, but I hope I got the message across today. We love to have you check out our community. We believe that you should be working on yourself. We have the healthymindsetapp.com it's a community for athletes and workplace athletes. Doesn't matter what age you are, you get an assessment. You get a ready to play assessment and total wellness if you're the athlete. And if you're the workplace athlete, you get a change readiness assessment, trying to make a change within your lifestyle as well as a total wellness. And then all the audios, weekly group coaching, and many other things. And there's nothing better than working on yourself. So we'd love to help you in any way. Any questions, please reach out and have a great day.

We're so glad you joined us for this episode of the Healthy Mindset App Podcast with your host, Mike Hartman. If you're enjoying the show, please feel free to rate, subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to your podcast. That helps others find the show and we greatly appreciate it. To dive deeper and learn more about the Healthy Mindset program or to get in touch with Mike, please Visit our website, healthymindsetapp.com thanks again for listening and we hope you'll join us again in the next episode of the Healthy Mindset App Podcast. Until then, be well.