The Whinypaluza Podcast with Rebecca Greene Episode 098 Raising an Athlete

No need to whine, it's Whiny Palooza! Have some wine and join us on the Whiny Palooza Podcast with Rebecca Green.

Welcome to the Whiny Palooza Podcast. I'm your host, Rebecca Green. I'm a wife, mother of 3, and licensed clinical social worker. I also have 3 fur babies at home too. My passion has always been to help children and their families. I always dreamed of being a wife and a mother. Parents are always learning through their struggles, failures, and successes and joys. I am no stranger to this wild ride of parenting, and I know behind every great parent lies a team of supportive friends and family. I want to be part of your support system. I want you to know that you are not alone. We are in this parenting world together. Join me every week for insightful discussions with experts on parenting and marriage, as well as other parents who have found the secret to successes in parenthood. You'll learn tips and tricks to make life with your family better than ever. I hope you will follow along with me while we dive into what it takes to achieve a happy family.

This is Rebecca Green for the Whiny Palooza podcast, and I am super excited because I have Jacques Ladesseur with me. With me here today. Thank you so much for being here today.

Thank you, thank you for having me.

I did a pretty good job on your name, huh?

That was good, that was good.

I'm trying. So I'm going to tell you a little bit about Jacques because he is so impressive. He was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. He immigrated to the U.S. with his family as a young boy. A high school All-America soccer player at Seward Park High, played at Fulton Montgomery Community College before attending Howard University on a soccer scholarship. He turned pro at the age of 20. He was one of the first American soccer players to play in the European First Division. He played professionally for 11 years, the first 3 years in Athens, Greece, and the San Diego from 1985 to 1993, where he was a member of 6 championship teams. Wow! He was a member of the U.S. National Team member 1986, and he is the author of the book called Make Your Life Count. He has over 20 years of coaching experience in youth soccer. He has recently recorded a CD called Maximizing the Youth's Sports Experience. It's about parents' behavior on the sidelines of youth sports. He has coached the Palomar College women's soccer team. He has been married to his wife— I should have asked you this— is it Marie Claire?

That's very good. There you go.

For 30 years, and he has one daughter named Tanya. Just let me know if I say anyone's name wrong.

Oh no, those are good. You're doing good.

He is a business coach, a speaker, and his goal is to be named Husband of the Year. Wow, this is just incredible, and I am so excited to talk to you today.

Well, I'm very excited to talk to you because I, I know there's, uh, I've, I've looked at your podcast before. I see a lot of the topics that I always talk about, people always ask me questions about, so it's—

yes, I think that so many parents are going to benefit from hearing from you, and a lot of us have our children in youth sports, so this is perfect for, for, um, my pod— our podcast. I should call it our podcast, it shouldn't be called my podcast. But, um, I want to start with what inspired you to become a professional soccer player.

Well, you know, um, when I was growing up in Haiti, back then over there we didn't have TVs. The only thing we had was radios, and then we had other people's mouths basically. And there was a rumble when I was about 6, 7 years old. There was a rumble in our neighborhood all over the country there was this young player who was 16 years old, Brazilian player named Pelé. He was just dazzling and just really just making a huge, huge impact in professional soccer. He was only 16. Now I only heard of him, I never saw him play, I never saw a video, but then ever since I heard the name and people kept on talking about him, talking about him, and it inspired me to want to be just like him, although I never seen him.

That is amazing. So someone inspires you who you didn't even see play. Wow, that's incredible. You know, you're, you're, you have so many topics that are going to help us, and I know that parents are making mistakes with their kids. Can you tell us mistakes parents are making with youth sports?

Well, one of the first, one of the first thing I see is that parents don't look at when they put their children in youth sports, they don't look at the big picture. Okay, so they don't see the big picture. It's just, it's just this one thing that they're doing. And sometimes it's, hey, I need to get my kid— I need to have my kids busy, so I'm going to put them in youth sports. I need to have my kids do something with their life. I don't want them to sit around. I don't want them to sit on the internet or whatever.

I'm going to—

but they never really see all the different things that the kids can develop, all the life skills. You know, we talk about leadership skills. We talk about communication skills. We talk about taking better care of themselves. Because right now, when your kids are, you know, 7, 8, 9, it's a great time for you to actually help them develop some critical habits that they could have for the rest of their life.

That is such an excellent answer. And I want to tell you that my 9-year-old just finished her first season of cheerleading. And— and— And they won every single competition they were in. And I want to tell you what I said to her yesterday. I am so happy that you are excited that you won. But I said the commitment and dedication that you developed is what I care about even more.

Yeah, because that lasts for a lifetime.

Yes.

Right?

Yes.

I look at myself growing up, going through that process. And parents don't know the process. They don't understand the process. They just want to, they just want to do something, put them in. But when your kid, when your children say, I want to be a professional player, what do you do? I mean, people don't know. They've never been through that process.

No, and you're going to help us because, um, you know, one of the really great questions that you and I discussed is how do we maximize the time that our children spend on sports?

Well, that's a, it's a very good question because What happens is that when you— if you go to a field or on a court anywhere where children are playing, so ask yourself, what do you see? You see parents sitting on the sidelines watching their kids. Now, if the kids are like 5 or 6 years old, it's okay for the parent to be there, but you don't have to sit there and watch your kid every single practice. I mean, it's just like a false sense of security. You need— you can go do something for yourself. We talk about taking better care of yourself. You can exercise. You can walk. You can do all these things. And if you're on a field, you can walk around the field. You can jog around the field and still see what your kids are doing. So that's one way to maximize it.

I love that.

The other thing is when you're sitting there, you're watching your kids and you're doing all this, you tend to become very critical of your kids, the other kids, the coach, everything else that's going on. When you don't really need to be. These kids are trying to do something, are trying to learn a sport that takes years to master. These skills are very difficult skills. I mean, one, when I started coaching, when my parents started acting up, I put them on the field. I said, here's the ball. You juggle the ball. You do this. You do that. Can you do that? And the answer is no. Run up and down the field like you're screaming at your children. Go back and forth. You know, hey, run more. Hey, run more. How's that? So they can't do what they're telling their children to do. So the kids need a lot of time to really learn and master these skills. And I don't need to sit there and micromanage every single step of the coach, of the kids. So that's one way you maximize it. And then when you're in the car, for crying out loud, don't talk about the sport. You don't need to. My mother never— my mother went to one thing that I did was playing hockey once in Central Park. She had— and today, even till today, I regret that I forced her to go there. It was at 5 AM in the morning, it was freezing cold. We were playing, she was sitting there like this, freezing. My mother never had the time to go there. She was working all the time. So As a parent, when you're there, take that time in the car to develop the relationship with your kid. Talk about different things. Talk about other things. One of the suggestions that I make in this— in the new book is have your kids write down 100 things they want to do in their life. It doesn't matter how small it is, how big it is, makes no difference. That's where they're at now. And if you— when you're in the car, talk about those things. If they— my daughter would ask me a question about soccer when she was— and she'd say, well, what do you think of this, Dad? And I'd say, oh, this was okay, this, this, this, this. And then that was it. I stopped the conversation. I went to other things. The time you spend in the car is extremely valuable for you to actually develop a really long-lasting relationship with your children. When they become 14, 15, 16, 17, they're going to feel very comfortable talking to you about any topic. About any problems they have, and that's what they need. But if they don't feel comfortable talking to you when they're 5, 6, 7, 8 years old, when they're 16, 17, they're going to want to talk to their friends. Their friends don't know any more than they do. The worst thing a 17-year-old could do is go get advice from another 17-year-old.

Right. It's really good advice. Really good advice. My son asked me— we were talking about my son for a couple minutes before we started. He's a goalkeeper for soccer, very, very committed, and my husband and I are very into it, and we go to every game and we cheer him on. And he looked at me in the car with his friends one day and he said, can you just be silent during my games? He's like, I just need you to be silent, right?

Well, when they get to this age, they'll talk back. When they're 8, 9, they may not, or 7.

Right, right. But I mean, what, what are your thoughts on the parents in the sidelines? Should we— I mean, cheering and being happy is okay, right? But like, the— what do you think about the sideline coaching of the parents?

Oh, bad news. Um, because see, what happens is that, especially with children, I tell parents, I said, I asked them, I said, how many hours a week do I spend with your kids coaching? 3? 2? How many hours a week do you spend with your kids in a span of 7 days? So when the kid hears a voice, whose voice they're going to listen to, the parent's voice or my voice?

Ah, yep, right.

And then the other thing is, I already had a talk with the, with the team, with the kids, with the players. I've already asked them to do certain things. I've already put it together, something for them to do. Now here's somebody, here's a parent on the sideline screaming at something that I didn't ask them to do. So the kids get confused. They're on the field, they're kind of like, they stop and they look at the parent and they look at the coach and they don't know what to do because now they've gotten mixed signals, mixed signals. Because if you hire a coach to coach your kids why don't you just let them coach your kids? If you, if you want to coach your kids, why don't you get out there and coach your kids? I just never understand. I always ask parents this question. You want, you want your kids to be on a basketball team, and then you want to sit out there and coach the coach? Why not let the coach do it? You hired the coach to do it. You thought the coach was good enough to do it. So what happened? What happened all of a sudden? Now you want to coach. But it just confuses the kids.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I'm doing my best to be quiet.

Well, but, but here's the other thing. You're not just talking to your kid. Yeah, every other kid hears what you say, and they all get distracted. If it's positive, they hear it. If it's negative, they hear it. And if you're the, if you're the loud one of the parents, all the kids now, they begin to resent you. Mm, there's a small little resentment that goes underneath. They go, oh, I wish you would just be quiet because you distract everybody on the field.

Yeah, yeah, excellent advice. That makes so much sense. I wish I had talked to you like 10 years ago when he started.

Well, look, I, I was a heckler once on my daughter's sideline. I mean And, and, you know, hey, I had reasons to be a heckler. There was a coach there coaching there that didn't have anywhere near the experience I had.

No.

So it was easy for me to be a heckler.

Yeah.

Then even if I have more experience than the coach, I realize what I'm doing is counterproductive.

Absolutely. Absolutely. I'm taking your advice to heart. I want you to know that. So, okay. So we have these children, some of them dream of being a pro athlete. Okay. So Max has mentioned it to me. Um, what can we do as parents to help them with their dream? What can we be doing now to help them along?

Well, when, when someone, when I, when I'm coaching somebody and the first thing I ask them is what their goal is, because when they tell you their goals, that means they've opened up their heart. They've opened up the doors to their heart and say, hey, Pour whatever you need to pour in. This is my goal. This is what I want to do. I'm willing to do whatever. Okay, so that's important when your son shares that goal. But there's so many other things, right? In, in the, in the book, one of the, one of the first things, the first chapter is a chapter on respect. Respect is the key to open doors, is the key to open the doors of people's hearts. So you want to teach your son or your daughter how to respect people. Don't— don't— how to approach people, how to present themselves. I teach my kids to stand up when they— if you're going to meet a coach, let's say you're going to be on a new team, you're going to meet the coach, stand up, shake the coach's hand, look at them in the eye. Boom. Automatically, there isn't a person in the world— and I do it all the time— when somebody comes up to me Oh, hi, how are you? If I'm sitting down in a restaurant, wherever, I stand up, look at the person in the eye. People don't feel important when you're sitting down. People feel honored and respected when you stand up. Just by doing something like that, all of a sudden they say, oh, well, there's something different about this guy. So that's the first thing, the respect part. And, um, your son, for at his age, one of the biggest things— I've got about 10 different things, right? But one of the biggest things is nutrition.

Yes.

So many people want to be professionals, but they're, they're, they're like really cutting the legs off underneath the kids at home. At home, of all places. I said to them, you've got to teach them good habits. Kids don't eat breakfast, they go to school.

I know, they know.

They eat crackers and a slice of apple or peanut butter for lunch, and then they go to practice at 5, 6 o'clock. Where's the energy going to come from? I mean, where do people get energy? Our body needs fuel, so the correct fuel has to be put in so these kids can have the energy to perform, to compete. So nutrition is a big thing. So a lot of people say, well, a lot of teenagers don't like this, they don't like that. I said, well, I said, Joe, what— this is your goal. You asked me to tell you what you needed to do. If you— if whatever I see, I'm going to tell you. If you're eating the wrong foods, I'm going to tell you. If you're not working hard enough, I'm going to tell you. If you're not sleeping at a certain time at night, I'm going to tell you if you're not resting. If you're not lifting weights or building your body stronger, I'm going to tell you. And that's the way it is. That's your goal. So every one of these things are part of their goal. They need to accomplish these things. So many people think being a professional is just on the field, but then there's off the field that you have to be a professional. You have to learn respect is a big thing. When I'm playing professionally, when I was playing professionally, there's tons of times everywhere I go I meet people and they know who you are. How do you treat them? How do you approach them? When they approach you, if you're sitting in a restaurant, you should already know. You should already know. Your face and your name is all over the newspaper. People love soccer and when I was playing in Europe and in San Diego, it was the same thing. People know who you are and they're going to come up to you. So I don't care what kind of day you've been having, what happened a few minutes ago makes no difference. When that person walk up to you, they're going to meet you for the first time. They don't know anything about you. And this is your chance to bridge, you know, create a bridge between you and them. You respect them. You show them that you care about them. Because look, they love the game. Because they love the game, they love the way you play the game. And because the way they— because they love the way you play the game, they go pay money, they spend money, they spend money on your jersey, they spend money on tickets, they spend money so you can build your career. So a lot of people don't look at it that way, but even if you don't go that far, it's just respecting somebody else.

Yeah.

You know, my mother always told me, when I went to somebody's house with my mother, we already had instructions the way we needed to behave. My mother told me, look, if they tell you to sit here, you sit there. You don't get up. You don't walk around. You don't look at people's stuff. It's not your stuff. You sit right there. If they offer you a glass of water, you can say yes. You don't go anywhere in that person's house unless they invite you. It's respect.

Respect. And yes, it's—

we're not teaching it anymore. I have to teach my kids that I coach how to introduce themselves, how to respect each other.

Yeah, so you're 100% correct. And I will tell you that my son does not listen to my podcast, but I am going to tell him to listen to this one. This one he needs to listen to. Um, okay. So our kids are playing sports, plural. Do you feel like they need to focus on one sport or is it okay for them to be trying different things?

It's a very good question because, um, I'm a big— I've been a big sports fan all my life. When I was— when we immigrated to New York, my brother and I, my brother Philip, we could tell you every single baseball player in the major leagues. We can tell you their average, their batting average, how many home runs they have. We can tell you every single basketball player in the NBA, you know, how many points they score, what position they play. Hockey players, football players, okay, and then soccer players. Soccer players were harder 'cause we didn't have soccer on TV. So when you talk about multi-sports, the NBA in the past 10 years, right, a lot of people follow the NBA but there's little things that they don't follow. In the past 10 years, their number 1 draft pick has been injured for a year or 2 and some of them never recover. That's because they're taking these kids at a younger age, they specialize them. When you specialize in just one sport at a very young age, your body, your muscles are doing the same thing over and over and over again. So you're not building different muscles. So give you a perfect example. So there's, there's jogging straight jogging and then this playing soccer, two completely different things. Yes, it doesn't look like it. People sit there, they go, wow, this guy runs a lot. What if I took a marathon runner and put him on the soccer field? He's not gonna last, he ain't gonna make it. His motions are all straight, everything is the same. Boom, boom, boom. A soccer player goes here, his arm goes there, his legs go here, he runs backwards, he runs forward, he runs sideways. Big difference. Yeah, so it's good for your kids to play different sports. It helps them to coordinate better. Um, so for example, um, when you're, when you're, when you're training people, the kids, because they don't play different sports, they can't throw the ball to somebody. It's so hard for them to throw the ball. If you ask them to be a goalkeeper, they can't throw the ball. Now if they're softball players If they played softball, baseball, whatever, they're used to throwing the ball. And then when you give them a soccer ball to throw, it's even easier. They just go here. Most kids can't do that. It's good to— it's good to help them understand different sports and play different sports. Like basketball kind of goes well with soccer. A lot of people transition from soccer to lacrosse, from soccer to cross-country when they get to the point where they're very serious about a certain sport. But the muscles grow. They avoid injuries. They avoid all these different things by playing different sports. The other thing they learn, which I've learned— I've learned playing baseball the difference between a line drive and a pop fly. Now you can look at soccer and you say, well, what's— how does that work with soccer? Well, when you shoot the ball, you can shoot the ball and make it go straight this way, or when you chip the ball, you can chip the ball and make it come down. So it's the same thing, line drive, pop fly.

Makes so much sense. That makes so much sense. And I know so many parents have even asked that in group settings. So that's going to be super helpful for someone.

I want to say this to you though. There's a lot of, for example, coaches who will drill into the kids, oh, you can only play baseball, you can only play basketball, you can only play soccer. They will drill that into the kids. The big problem, the big challenge is when the sports are in the same season. You don't want them in the same season. If it's off-season, different season, then it works well because there's no conflicts. But it's good for the kids to do that. It's good for the kids to learn different sports so when they come back to your sport— yes, in Europe, in Europe and other countries in the world when it comes to soccer, usually that's all they do is play soccer. And that's true. But you know, one of the biggest things they don't tell you in Europe is that what do the kids do, the ones that don't make that professional team? They never talk about that. They never talk about the amount of kids that don't make it. Where do they go? Uh, what happens to them? How do— what do they do? You know, do they have a transition? Do they go to college? Do they go to school? Nobody talks about that. They only talk about the few that actually makes it to the pros.

So that's a good point. That's a very good point. You know, I'm sure that there is going to be people listening who coach youth sports.

Oh yeah.

So my question for you is, you know, can you give them some advice? What makes a good coach?

Oh, um, number one thing a coach has to do that's coaching youth sports is to love children. If you don't love children, stay away from youth sports. Just stay away from it. I'm just telling you right now, don't do it. Go coach older— go coach people that are older, whatever. You'll be more successful. I love children, and that's what— that's the number one thing, that's the number one reason I coach. I know when I teach them something today, it may not show up in their life for a year, two years. I know that. And I know with their body language, they just, "Oh, papa that, oh coach that." I know, I know I'm planting a seed. I understand that. So as a coach, you have to understand, depending on the age group you're coaching, no matter what sport you're coaching, you're planting a seed. Yes, that's the thing. The next thing is the kids need to have fun. You're not going to be able to teach them 10 things in, in one day, in one week, and you're not So stop it. The only thing you could— you, you'll be lucky if you get one thing, one thing in a practice. But what you want to do, if they have a lot of fun, if they enjoy it— kids always want to come back to my practice. That's my goal. Yes, I teach them how to play the way I learned how to play. I played because I had a lot of fun. I played more because I had a lot of fun. I didn't— I never got to a point where I said soccer is not fun for me anymore. Never. And that's because I had a lot of fun. And if they have a lot of fun with the game, with the sport, they will continue. And then they will do 10 times more than you would ask them to do. They will practice on their own. They will kick the ball around, or they will throw the ball. They'll do baseball. They'll shoot the ball, whatever. They'll do a lot more on their own because you taught them how to have fun. So it's like completely opposite. If you're rigid, you've— you, you know, it's like two magnets. You put two magnets on the opposite side, you're rigid, and then there's a resistance and they just want to go away from you. They don't want to play sports no more. You know how many kids quit sports because the coach was just too hard on them? As a coach, you need to be approachable. One of my biggest things that I do when I coach kids is to teach them how to be leaders. So people say, well, all the kids— kids always want to be— one kid always comes up, I want to be captain, I want to be captain, I want to be captain. Well, when I'm coaching, I have all the kids, I have them captains for different games. And people say, well, why do you do that? Well, they all need to experience it. They all need to be able to feel important. They all need to be able to feel like leaders. I want them all to be leaders.

I like that.

Right, you don't want— if you put one kid to be captain, the pros have one captain, yeah, everybody understands that, ah, the guy's the captain, so what, big deal. Kids don't understand that. They're in the process of learning about leadership, and this is my way to teach them how to lead. And the other thing I teach them is how to communicate. Say, wait a minute, you're the captain, you got to go to the referee, he's got to tell you where we at, you got to come back to the team, you got to talk to the team, you got to actually do a speech in front of the team. And it helps the kids that are a little bit timid to come out more, to speak more, to talk more, to have more confidence. So the other thing as a coach that I'm doing is I'm building confidence in people. Without confidence, everything goes away. Yeah, everything. If you look at— if you look at sports, uh, the times when it comes when there's pressure If you're watching a baseball game, the count is 3-2, the game is on the line, there's 2 people on base, the pitcher is going to pitch, he's going to throw this pitch, there's pressure. The pitcher's got to have confidence they can get this guy out, the batter's got to have confidence that no matter what he throws me, I can hit it. Because without that, it's over. Soccer is the same thing, basketball is a free throw. The guy goes in practice, makes 500 free throws in a row. He comes in the NBA championship, there's 10 seconds left to go, he's got to shoot 2 free throws. He's done it 500 million times in practice, the whole crowd is there, it's on TV, and, and millions of people are watching. Here's a guy who does this every day. Where's the confidence? Yeah, if he loses his confidence, it doesn't matter how many he made in practice, how easy it was, he ain't gonna make it. Yeah, the confidence that you input in children is the thing. As a coach, you never take somebody out of the game when they make a mistake. You never do it. You let the mistake ride because they're learning. You let the mistake ride, you let it go. Later on, maybe later on the game when you take them out and you talk to them, says, well, what were you thinking there? You know, they'll say, I was thinking about this. Okay, well, next time you should do this. If you pull them out of that game right there when they made the mistake, when everybody's looking, you destroy their confidence.

Oh, you're full of so much wisdom. I wish you could talk to every single coach.

Yeah, well, they not talk.

No, no. And, and I— and you have said so many good things, but I think one of my favorite things that you said, you're talking about as a coach having realistic expectations for your players, correct? And I think that the expectations just get way too high.

Yes, it does. Yeah, yes, it does. They're not pros. No, they're not pros. They don't get paid for what they do. They only been playing the game for a certain amount of years and they're not going to understand certain things. Parents ask me all the time, they say, well, what do you think of, you know, how's my son doing, how's my daughter doing? I tell them, I said, there's two things that are working. Everything they're learning is technical, whether whatever sport it is. And then there's the maturity. Um, sometimes maturity is here, technical is here, and the person is good. They dribble the ball well, they shoot the ball well, they do everything well. But then you keep asking yourself the question, something is not right, it's not working, he's not, he's not effective, he's not mature yet. Once maturity catches up with the technical part then that's when they become effective, because now they have something called wisdom. Wisdom is know when to do what. Knowledge is knowing it. Wisdom is knowing when to actually put it into place. And they don't know when to put it into place. They, they have it, but they don't know when to put it into place. So that's, that's what you battle with kids 7, 8, 9, 10, 14, 15. It's all the same because the maturity has to catch up. Every once in a while you'll have a kid that's like this, and then what they do, they make adult decisions. They're on the field, they're on the court, they make adult decisions. They see things other kids don't see. Maturity— their maturity level has caught up to their abilities, their technical abilities.

That makes so much sense. I, I totally understand what you're saying. I want to go back to you because I mean, you're a pro. And can you tell us your biggest lesson from playing pro soccer? What did you take away from that?

Well, there's a lot, but one of the biggest lessons that I've taken away, because I think that would relate to more people than anything else, but is In the pros, when you first get in the pros, you don't know this, you allow people to put you up, to put you down, to put you up, to put you down. And it's on them because when you do something good, the fans, they scream. When you do something bad, they boo. Then you scream, they boo. They put you up, they put you down. What I've learned to realize is that you can't let people do that to you. You cannot allow people to do that to you. You have to be here no matter what. Good, bad, you're here. So when you score a goal, it's okay to celebrate, but be careful not to go too high because the game is not over yet. When you miss a goal, be careful not to go too low because you got to— the game is not over, you got to come back and score. So you have to be here. The focus is so important, how you focus, how you can just be here and things are happening in front of you. You're focused and you're not going here or here all the time like this. Because when the fans do that to you, it affects you in so many ways. When you go home, you're down. When you leave the game, you're down because you haven't learned to have this even keel. The transition from professional sports to something else is— lags behind because of that one thing. And you can't allow it to lag behind because you have to transition. Once you leave sports, you have to transition into something different.

So true. And even during the game, I see when they're getting scored on and, and it's like 1, 2, 3, and let's say it's 3 to 0, you just see them all just like so defeated even though it's the beginning of the game. And I'm like, you have a whole game, like you can do this.

Well, once you go that low, you won't be able to figure out what's wrong and fix it. Yeah. But if you stay here, okay, it's good, okay, okay, okay, you take the punches. And then once you take the punches, you can start to see what's going on because you're still focused, right? You're taking punches, you're still focused. It's just like a boxer. When a boxer gets in that ring, he knows he's going to take some punches. Yeah, I mean, nobody gets in the ring and never gets hit, right? I mean, you're going to get punched. All right. Unless, unless you will pop out and you knock the guy out and it's done every single time, it's not going to work. You got to be able to take the punches and focus, and that's how you can change things. As soon as you go too low, it's over. You're not changing it. That game is done.

Well, and, and they blame themselves. So let's talk real fast about mentality, mentality in the game, because, you know, we talked about the fact that my son is a goalkeeper. And a goal is shot, and I see the difference. He used to look totally defeated, and now he shakes it off more. But like, how can we help them with whatever position they are with their mindset?

Well, um, you— success is built on failure, right? I mean, that's the way it is, you know. Thomas Edison, before he developed the light bulb, how many times did he fail? You know, failed 1,000 times before he actually developed the light bulb. So success is built on the failures.

Yeah.

And once you fail, your passion has to grow stronger. Your emotion has to go stronger. I always tell people, they, they, they, They say, well, so did this guy kick me and I was angry, so I kicked him back. I said, you have to learn how to use anger. Anger, it's like, it's like the beach. When you go to the beach, when you sit there in front of the beach, you look at the beach, it's beautiful, it's calm, it's relaxing. But when there's a tsunami, that beach starts coming up. That beach is angry and it's coming and it's destructive. It destroys everything. It doesn't build anything up. You have to learn to take your anger and make it constructive instead of destructive. So when you fail, you're going to be angry. And when you're angry, you have to learn to channel that anger. I mean, if you go and grow up— growing up in New York, we have fire hydrants. We used to turn them on all the time when the fire department is not looking, when the police is not looking, when it's hot. We turn them on and then it goes on. We take— we cool ourselves off. But if you try to take a sip of water from that fire hydrant, it ain't going to work.

Right.

Because it's going too fast. It's too angry. But if you slow it down, comes out and you can take a drink. But that's the thing with really focusing and knowing that you have to fail over and over to succeed. You can't avoid it. I don't care who you are, I don't care what game you're playing. I mean, before I won these championships, I was frustrated every single year. I was frustrated in high school, frustrated in college, frustrated my first 3 years in the pros because my team didn't do it. It took time for me to get to that point when I saw the opportunity and I said, this is the opportunity, and to just work and work and work and force my way through there. And then once I did it one time, I said, hey, I know how to do it now.

That's amazing. So never give up.

Well, you never give up. You can't give up on your dreams. That's the way I sign all my books. Never give up.

Oh my gosh. Well, let's talk about your book. Tell everyone about your book.

Okay. Well, the first book I wrote is called Make Your Life Count. And one of the reasons I wrote the book is because of where I came from and what I, what I was able to accomplish. And I think everybody's life counts. It doesn't matter if you're a high-level professional soccer player or if you're an engineer or if you drive a garbage truck, makes no difference. Everybody's life counts. And that's one of the reasons I wrote the book and I told my personal story where I came from and so that people will know that when I'm talking to them, I'm not talking to them from— I'm not one of these guys you see a lot of politicians today, they stand in front of people and they say, they say, well, they talk about poverty. Well, they've never been poor. They've never been poor. They've never lived on a dirt floor with 10, 15 people in a house. They don't know what it's like. So that's why I wrote the first book. The second book, I wrote the second book, Raising a Pro Athlete, because there's so many people that I have kids that say they want to be a pro, but they don't have the— they don't even know the process. They don't even understand what to do. What's next? How do I do it? So, and I told him, I said, look, I have 10 things that I put in the book that will help you. There's, there's, there's more of course, but these 10 will get you started.

That's awesome. My husband, my son, and I are all going to read your books. Perfect for us. Well, what else do you want to share that I didn't think to ask you?

Oh boy. Well, one of the things, this is a big thing because you do a lot of podcasts on marriages. So this is important. When kids get into youth sports, sometimes families forget about their families. They focus on the sport. Now I'll give you an example. Some people like to go to church on Sundays, and prior to their kids going to youth sports, they used to go to church on Sundays.

As a family.

And then what happens, the kids start to play sport, and I hate, I hate when they have these tournaments on Sundays.

I know.

Because my thought is, you know, families are busier than they've ever been before. They need a few days, something during the week where they can get together as a family, where they're not running around doing all this kind of stuff. So I had a guy that was playing on my team. The team was— the girls were 9 years old. The girls are playing at one highest level here because that's all subjective because everywhere is different. That's another video. They were playing at the highest level. Then he told me that he wanted to leave my team and go to a different team. I said, okay. The different team he was going to was an hour away from where they lived. The girl is 9 years old. He's got 3 other kids. So I said to him, I said, you have 3 other kids. 2 of them don't play sports. Your daughter, one of your daughters plays sport. So now you're going to put your daughter in a car. Oh, I asked him, I said, well, how do you plan? You plan to drive an hour? He said, no, we're going to carpool. I said, you're going to put your daughter in a car with another family. What if something happens and you're not there? Your daughter is going to drive an hour to practice, practice for an hour and a half, drive another hour back to practice. She's going to do her homework in the car. She's going to be tired driving. When she gets off the car, she has to get on the field. She's 9 years old. She has to get off— get out of the car after an hour's drive and play. You're doing all of that for what? He says, well, it's a better team. I said, well, let's look at your other two kids. These other two kids have seen the sacrifice you and your wife are making to take this one daughter, and children are jealous. They're going to say, does my mom and my parents love her more than they love us? And they will say that. And you have that challenge. And if you're carpooling, one day it's going to be you driving, the other time is this another person. You and your wife are going and never seeing each other, and it will affect your relationship. Now, do people ever sit down and think that youth sports can do this to them? The answer is no, they don't. Because youth sports, it's kind of like they say in the military, is a high-value target. And then they drop everything else for that high-value target, not understanding the effects, you know, the collateral damage, the kids, their relationship, and all this kind of stuff. You only have a certain amount of time with your kids. Period. It ain't coming back. Today, if you decide not to spend time with them, it is not coming back. It's over. You've lost that. I've had so many people tell me, well, you know, I, I don't, I don't talk to my daughter a lot. My daughter calls me every single day. Every day. That's because we built a relationship over time when she was young. If you will do that, the same thing, I can't promise the same thing will happen, but the relationship is always better because of the time you spend. So this is one aspect of youth sports that's affecting millions of families and they're not thinking about it. So that's probably one of the last things I would leave them with.

I love that. It's an excellent point. Yes, this is, this is why I say no to things. So tell everyone where they can find you.

Well, the interesting part, I was thinking about that before I came on your podcast. I, I haven't built my website yet, so they can't find me on my website. They could find me on Facebook.

Okay.

They can find me through the links to the book. They can get the book through the links there on Amazon. So that's where I'm at until I start building my podcast and Facebook. That's— they'll be able to see me there.

Wonderful. Well, I can't thank you enough for giving us your valuable time today.

Thank you very much. It's a pleasure. It's a pleasure.

Pleasure speaking with you. This is Rebecca Green reminding everyone to spend every day laughing, learning, and loving.

Thank you for tuning in to the Winey Palooza podcast. If you like what you heard, please be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. While you are there, leave a review. I love to hear your feedback. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time.

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