First poker, then @campstompground and @dailyfantasysr. These days - unschooling parent, soccer coach, and a little poker.
The Seacoast of New Hampshire
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In olden times there was no greater show of love than a recorded from radio to cassette mixtape
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Of course that's your contention. You're a first-year travel soccer dad. You watched the WC this year and heard a podcast about Tom Farrey's Norway thing, so naturally that's what you believe: no scores until thirteen, kill the tryouts, joy is the curriculum.
Norway wins the most medals at the Winter Olympics, with a population of just 5.6 million. People say it’s because Norway is a winter wonderland, but they’re also elite at triathlon, beach volleyball, cycling, and as the world is now seeing, soccer.
A big part of their success is how they treat youth sports—and it’s the opposite of what we do in the US and Canada. Here’s what we can learn from Norway:
1. Scorekeeping:
In the US: Youth sports tend to be hyper competitive even at early ages. Leagues almost always keep score.
In Norway: Scorekeeping isn’t even allowed until age 13.
Removing winners and losers keeps the focus on the process not outcomes. It keeps kids engaged longer because it minimizes pressure (and tears) and maximizes fun, learning, and growth. The goal isn’t to win a third grade championship. It’s to love sport and keep playing.
2. Trophies:
In the US: If you give everyone a trophy, you’re creating snowflakes who will never gain a competitive edge.
In Norway: Whenever trophies are awarded, they are handed out to everyone.
If getting a trophy makes young kids feel good, we should give them trophies. Maybe they’ll come back and play again next year!!
As for the creation of snowflakes with no competitive edge—Norway’s athletes are tough as nails and all they do is win.
3. Prioritizing Fun:
In the US: Far too often, the goal is to win.
In Norway: The national philosophy is “joy of sport.”
Youth sports in the US are driven by adults, ego, and money. Youth sports in Norway are driven by fun.
Only half of kids in the US participate in sports. The number one reason they drop out: because they aren’t having fun anymore. In Norway, 93% of kids participate in youth sports. Fun is the foremost goal.
4. Playing Multiple Sports:
In the US: There’s pressure to specialize early and play your best sport year round.
In Norway: Try as many sports as you can before specializing as late as college.
Norway encourages kids to try all types of sport. This reduces injury and burnout and increases all-around athleticism. It also helps promotes match quality, or finding the sport you are best suited for as your body develops, which is impossible if you commit to a single sport too early.
5. Affordability
In the US: There is increasingly a pay-to-play model with high fees for leagues, equipment, and travel. This excludes many kids from playing.
In Norway: It’s a national priority to keep youth sports affordable and therefore accessible for all.
Kids aren’t priced out, which creates opportunities for everyone to participate (and develop into athletes), regardless of their parents’ income level.
Norway’s sporting success isn’t just speculation or a nice story. A large body of research supports their approach:
• Studies show athletes who specialize later in life have a significantly higher chance of becoming elite.
• Soccer players whose motivation is primarily internal (versus external) have more than a 3x better chance of making it to an elite level.
• The number one predictor of whether or not kids stay in sport is are they having fun.
• Parents connect winning to having fun whereas kids say having fun is about being with their friends and learning.
We could learn a lot from Norway:
In the US, 70% of kids drop out of youth sports by age 13. This not only diminishes an elite-athlete pipeline, but it also destroys an opportunity for healthy habits and all the character lessons kids can learn from sport.
In Norway, lifelong participation in sport is the norm. The goal isn’t to have the best 9U team. It’s to develop the best athletes. Those are two very different things. And Norway has the medals to prove it.
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Maybe then you'll meet a guy in a Man City hat and before you know it you'll be telling everyone they need to go watch Take the Ball, Pass the Ball, and pretty soon you've got ten-year-olds who just came over from rec trying to build out of the back on goalie possessions.
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And pay-to-play - don't even start. You heard Eric Wynalda call it the thing killing American soccer, and you'll repeat it like a man who is not, at this very moment, writing a $3,700 check to a club so his u12 can lose 6-1 to a team from CT in a stay to play tourney.
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But then at some point someone will tell you that, actually, Lamine Yamal DIDN'T learn to dribble by going against his dogs... that he learned at a professional academy, just like basically every player whose name anyone recognizes.
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The club only wants early developers & rich kids. They would have missed out on Ronaldinho and Vini Jr.! You're in the street soccer phase now. You heard all summer about how American kids are over-professionalized from Megan Rapinoe or whatever.
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That's going to last until sometime next spring, when you discover the phrase 'relative age effect,' because you read the first chapter of Outliers in an airport, and now every roster decision is a conspiracy against your July birthday kid...
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Until next month, when you get to Tom Byer, and suddenly it's 'football starts at home,' and you're rolling a size-one ball across your kitchen floor at a toddler and telling everyone at the U9 game that the Japanese figured this out twenty years ago.
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James Davis retweeted
re: private equity × youth sports
PE is a good thing. It's made business more competitive and efficient, enriching the economy and Americans. That said, profit-maximization isn't the right objective in every sector. Think health care delivery. Higher-ed. And youth sports.
Youth sports clubs, tournament organizers, and local venues used to be mission driven. Most were founded and run by enterprising parents who wanted what was best for their kids, the club, and the broader ecosystem.
Sustainability via breakeven or a slight profit was the goal.
Over time, the successful of these stumbled into market power and brand value. They started to have pricing power. They didn't need to raise prices for sustainability and many didn't, even though they could.
Private equity saw an opportunity to acquire assets that were still largely being run for community benefit. As a result, the clubs, tournaments, and venues switched from being mission-driven to profit-maximizing.
The transfer of ownership from a parent to a fund changes the optimization function. Maximizing profits meant squeezing more money out of fewer participants, often counter to the original goals of the founder. Not everything in American life should be optimized around profits.
The downside is that fewer kids participate, especially those from lower-income or single-parent families. For those who remain, the escalating cost and time commitment creates a worse experience for many.
But once your kid is on the competitive treadmill, it’s hard to get off. Private equity understands that dynamic. It’s why they invested.
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The point is that you may actually be offered many +EV bets in your lifetime, and if you are in the habit of refusing +EV bets well within your bankroll you will be worse off.
Everyone I know who is crushing it has SOME appetite for risk.
WTF? It’s one flip.
“Hey, I just lost 100 bucks!”
“Yes, but you won $12.50 across all flips.”
“Oh. Can I have more flips?
“Lol no.”
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For nearly 50 years the standard of care for joint sprains has included rest, ice, and ibuprofen not bc rigorous evidence showed that worked, but bc that made intuitive sense and seemed to help. Now there's good evidence those actually impede recovery.
Add it to a long list of medical reversals, whereby a practice that was once widely adopted is later shown to be ineffective or even harmful.
Promising theories, observational evidence, underpowered studies, and early experimentation can generate important hypotheses. But they do not eliminate the need for rigorous randomized trials, regardless of the financial or professional incentives to move faster.
Once ineffective or harmful care becomes embedded in standard practice, it is very difficult to overturn. There is a role for regulatory flexibility and clinical experimentation when patients have unmet medical needs. But neither eliminates the need for rigorous evidence to ensure that the medical system is actually helping patients.
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So what's the best protocol for a sprain now? Inquiring minds and impending sprains need to know
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Only if the default is to insure the traveler’s trip. There are lots of folks out there that can’t just cancel the vacation they’ve saved up for for years, or don’t want to miss their brother’s wedding, etc. Planes have germs on them… there are ways you can protect yourself.
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My favorite thing about government is that they're never held accountable for anything. Every staff member celebrates right now, just 2 weeks after writing them a big fat check, and somehow we're tricked into being happy
BREAKING: All charges against myself, my partners, and the Lodge have been officially rejected.
The seized money and equipment will be returned and we will reopen as quickly as possible, hopefully within a few weeks.
The Grand Jury in Williamson county heard the allegations against us, and refused to authorize proposed charges.
Justice has prevailed.
The damage to our staff and members has been tremendous, and it is now time to rebuild.
We will be putting together a kickoff event in the near future.
In the words of a great man: “you gotta know when to hold'em”
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I always get these weird home school people in my comments
Listen, if you're truly infinitely smarter than everyone around you, pay for the best educators in the world to tutor your children
If you can't afford that, you're probably not smarter than everyone around you
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Additionally it reduces access to the library because you have to convince your parents to take you there every time. Flexibility is decreased on all metrics unless the parents are incredibly involved which most parents fail at.
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