Steve D'Agostino
Appearances
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
So I could be as crazy as you need me to be. But in fifth grade, the biggest thing is not that we win games. It's not that we run a million plays. We have one play that we run. It's that your kid, by the time they're in eighth or ninth grade, if they want to do basketball, that then they're ready to be in the gym all the time and compete.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
Yeah. I, you know, obviously that's like never a good thing. You don't want to like rail on volunteers because they are given their time. Right. And I've always said like, yo, if you're going to complain about the volunteer coach, then you go coach. Yeah. Go do it. You know what I mean? And so that, that stinks, but you know,
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
Kids are going to if they're going to play sports and it's going to be competitive, they're going to have to deal with all different types of coaches. And so, you know, you get a coach that maybe is not your style for a year. It's a good thing for your kid. Yeah, it's a good thing. And so how can you support your kid?
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
And like maybe they don't get they don't like getting yelled at and that coach is a yeller. Then how do you support them to get through it? And then once they get through it, they'll be able to deal with people like that. And then as far as finding another team, the team hopping is crazy, especially in basketball. I'm sure it's similar in baseball.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
Not having the continuity of players and coaches and all that is not a good thing for development. But if you are lucky enough to have options, then you've got to balance it. What happens now is parents want the perfect situation. They want the best coach. They want their kid to play a ton. They want their kid to be the best player on the team. And that's not the case.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
You're almost never going to have that, right? And so you have to sacrifice in some areas. So if you're going to prioritize the coaching over everything, then you can't all of a sudden come back and be like, well, my kid's playing half the game. Yeah, but he could have played on this team where the coaching might not have been as good and they would have played the whole game.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
But you prioritize coaching. And so there's no perfect scenario. And so the parents have to really, hey, what do I prioritize? And if they're not in a great situation, maybe their kid's not playing a ton. Great. Support him through it. And then he should be stronger or she should be stronger because of that. And they got through it.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
Yep. So we can get into the talent levels later because obviously the more talented you are, the more opportunities you're going to have. But I would say this, and this is kind of like – what I've come to realize with this generation, and this is if everybody had this mindset of this is what you're trying to build in your kids, right, with youth sports.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
If you can get your kid to be competitive and resilient, you've done your job. Doesn't matter how many games you've won, what sport you're playing, you know this, when they get to college and beyond for life, if they're competitive and they're resilient, they're gonna have a good chance to succeed.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
And so for our development and our training, how do we put them in situations where they have to be competitive? Wins, losses, go as hard as you can. And then put them in adversity so they learn that failing is a good thing and they're going to build up that resilience within themselves. Then go let them play whatever sport you want. Start a business.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
You're competitive, you're resilient, you're going to figure it out. That's really what the mindset should be for you sports and beyond.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
Yeah, clarity. And fifth grade, sixth grade may be too young for them to completely understand it, but they'll get it. Competitiveness is not the result. It's the action. Okay, what does that mean? You're focused. You're engaged. You're giving 100% effort. You're being physical. You're trying to do everything that you need to do to win the game. The result is separate from that.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
right you could be more talented and not be not compete in a game and still win that's not a good thing right so them understanding that that result of winning is separate from the action of being competitive yeah
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
I think you put them into challenging situations, right? And so, like, you know, we'll do it with, you know, in our area, we've been lucky. We've had a ton of really good, like, shooters come out of this area. You know, Joe Girard was at Syracuse in Clemson. Kevin Herter was in the NBA. Joe Cremo was at Villanova.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
And so what we what we do is we try to get them in a situation where let's say they come in and we're doing shooting stuff where they're not going to win every drill. I think and you know this with coaching, you want every drill a lot of times to be like clean and you want your kids to do it like really well. And part of what I've started to embrace is like chaotic drills.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
We're like, yo, you're going to lose. It's going to be messy, but you've got to figure out a way to get through it. And so that inherently putting them through more adversity and everything that they do, then they tend to start figuring out, okay, you know, I haven't beaten this shooting drill, you know, seven days in a row. And then on the eighth day, they get it. Boom, you did it, you know?
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
So we put that into all of our development stuff.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
Yeah, I think it's it depends on the kid. Right. And really how, you know, opposed to contact and all that they are, you know, but we throw them right to the fire. I mean, most of the time there's no especially when they're in eighth, ninth grade, younger kids. Yeah. OK, you ease them into it.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
But most of our drills are, you know, when we're doing, let's just say like finishing drills, which is like layups around the basket and stuff. We'll work on some like on air, meaning it's just like reps one on zero. But most of them are live. They're one on one. It's a defender pushing you out. It's a rebounding drill where, again, two guys or two girls are pushing against each other.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
And so the more they're exposed to that contact, the more comfortable they get in it. But you can't talk your way through that. You have to experience it. That's my biggest thing, too, with like...
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
with youth kids and high school kids and all that right I always hear coach like well I told them yeah but when you were a kid you didn't listen to any adults you learned from experience right and so yeah as coaches we want to keep telling them and telling them and so they're hearing the same things over and over again so that once they do experience they're like oh crap that's what he was talking about they don't just learn by hey you got to be more physical
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
No, throw them in a physical drill, be physical, get beat up for two, three, four, five days, and then you figure out how to be comfortable with it, you know? So we throw them right to the fire. It's the only way.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
People think it's like such a good thing for their kid to be the best player in middle school. And I would almost argue that it's not, you know, that you're better off having them like not be the best player and be chasing because that best player can be complacent. And so like, how do you fight complacency? I think the kid has to constantly be challenged.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
I think that they have to not only play in a space where, OK, they can go be the best player and kill because they are the best player, but then go play against older kids, too, where they get beat up a little bit and they're not the best player. And so I. It's hard. And again, the kid's going to lead the way.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
And so a lot of these kids, when they're in middle school and they're the best player, in middle school, you don't even know what hard work is. And so you're just talented. And so when you get to high school, some of these kids, they're not that personality where they're going to put in the extra work, especially as others keep catching up to them.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
And so what you're trying to develop, again, is that competitive competitiveness, the resilience and then that work ethic. Right. And that comes from the people that you have around them and and the perspective that they have. And I think that's where I mean, there's in our area, Ryan, this is crazy. I did it with my camera guy the other day.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
There's at least 16 other trainers, player development coaches that do like workouts and stuff. Dude, I'm all for it. There's enough kids. I don't care. But a lot of times, yeah, you're going to work out with these people, but now you're listening to them too. And so if you're not hearing the right things, then your mindset when you go back to your high school team is going to be off.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
Your mindset on how the world actually works, the world of basketball, whatever sport, is going to be warped. And I think that's what ends up happening is... Not only do the players have like, they don't really have clarity on how the, you know, basketball. These kids, when they're freshmen, are like, well, offers, offers.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
Dude, unless you're a top 100 player, you're not getting a scholarship offer in freshmen. Colleges aren't recruiting freshmen and sophomores unless you're the best player in the country. Right. And so but they're hearing that and that's what they're focused on. And the parent gets hyper focused and they get more stress. And it's that whole snowball, you know.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
And so I think it's it's like I said before, like it's it's not only the training, it's the perspective. You have to have somebody that's giving you the right information, because if you don't have the right information, you're going down the wrong path.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
The expectation of the division one college basketball is so blown out of proportion that people don't even know what they want. Meaning, if you're good enough, where you play in college is a byproduct of how well you do in high school when you're a junior and a senior, whether it's high school or AAU, right? And so the focus now is, well, we got to do this to go to college and that.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
No, you have to try and be, if you're into it, the best high school player that you can be. And guess what? There's not many players that should be playing in college that weren't good high school players. Because when you're in high school, if you're the best player, it's going to show that you're the best player, right?
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
And so we have this expectation from when they're younger, it's like Division I, Division II, Division III, college. And you're sitting there and you're like, why not just try to be the best high school player you can be and develop all these life skills? And then if your talent raises and you're productive, all that other stuff is going to come.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
The second part would be, so I'm a junior national team coach with USA Basketball. And so there's like 15 or 16 of us. And during COVID, we had all these Zooms. And one of them was with a Harvard professor. And she was saying how they've been doing like a study on student athletes at the college level. And I know the number was over 60%.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
I want to say it was like 70% of the student athletes had some form of anxiety and depression. And for those people that have played college basketball or college sports, it's hard. It's really hard. And guess what? You're not going to be happy. You're not going to be happy most of the time.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
Unless you really, really love what you're doing and you can handle, like we've been saying, the adversity, those hard times. Yeah. Right. And so I always say when these people are chasing this, like, OK, would you rather your kid be a college basketball player? Would you rather be happy? Yeah. Like, oh, happy. Well, then wait. You're pushing college over happy.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
You don't even know if you want college basketball. You don't even know if your kid wants college basketball. But yet you're pushing this notion that... And to your point, I play Division II. I don't care what level you go to. I mean, obviously, for all these organizations and businesses that have players, you want them to go to the highest level, right? I'm the opposite.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
We had a kid who's probably the best player in the area right now. And he's... He was choosing between Johns Hopkins, Tufts. I think he's a Division I player. Those are high academic Division III schools. And we had a conversation. I'm like, dude, you're going to go to Johns Hopkins.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
And in 10 years, you're going to be looking back and be like, oh, my God, I can't believe that I was going to go to, you know, name a low division one school. It doesn't matter this school that I don't even want to name any because I don't want to disrespect anybody. Right. But you're looking at it from such a short lens of like, you know, Johns Hopkins, man, are you crazy?
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
You've got to go to Johns Hopkins. And so if the focus was just be the best you can in high school, if you're productive enough and good enough, somebody's going to want you. And then hopefully you choose that right situation that's going to benefit you the most for your future.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
And we phrase it, not to cut you off, but the way that it's framed to these kids by the parents and the other AU coaches, trainers, decision makers, is that the college level is like good, better, best. It's not the case. It's not the case because everybody's different. So what?
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
So you get a Division I scholarship to a low Division I school that's better than going to a Tufts or a Williams or a Johns Hopkins? Not in 20 years it's not, you know? And so, again, and this goes back to the right information.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
Do you have somebody that can frame it in a way so that you and the kid and the parent can still make the choice on what they think is better for them, but they have all the right information? You have all of it, you know? Yeah.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
Yeah, so I think a couple things. When I started Dags Basketball, which is the local business, I'm just reacting to what the market is, right? And there wasn't a ton of honesty and value. Right. And so what I've always said is whatever we do, we're going to try to provide the most value and we're going to mess up. We're going to have days where we're not great.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
But for the most part, we're going to try to provide great value. And then we're going to be honest. We're going to be honest with the players. We're going to be honest with the parents. And I think that social media following. is there because of those two things. People see like, whoa, there's value in this. And it's honest.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
It's not some in an authentic like somebody trying to do it because I want to be famous. If I could not do social media, I would not do social media. Yeah. But the fact of the matter is that The people who get more opportunities are the ones that have a great social media following. So I have to do it.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
And so all you're seeing on there is like actual conversations that I would have with our parents and players and during our training sessions, you know? And so I think that helps. I think. The other thing is, you know, it's crazy. I can't remember, like, our area having as many high-level players as we have right now. Andre Jackson with the Bucs. Kevin Herter with the Sacramento Kings.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
Boo Booey just signed with the New York Knicks. I know I'm missing a handful of players. I mean, we had guys at Villanova, Syracuse, like I mentioned before, North Carolina. And I think...
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
What happened, you know, in like that small period of time in Albany, New York is I was able to work with all those players and it wasn't anything that I did, but they were all around each other and they all had a similar perspective. Right. And so like when you know, like Andrew Playtech played at North Carolina before he went there his freshman year.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
I remember being in the gym with Joe Cremo and Kevin Herter or both, you know, high major players. And Playtech was saying how, you know, what he thought that North Carolina would be like. And we were all sitting there like, you're going to learn, buddy, what you think it's going to be like. And after your freshman year is going to be.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
And so you have all these people that have real life experience. It's not somebody spewing some crap so that their business makes more money. Right. And so I think, I always say this, especially it helps when you have NBA players. If I was in New York City or Los Angeles or Miami, I'd have triple the amount of NBA players that I work with now. But I'm home in Albany, New York.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
Yeah, 100%. So I've been lucky. So my dad was a high school coach forever before I was even born. And then he coached youth. He coached my brother all the way up and then was an assistant on our high school teams. And then once we graduated high school, he went back to being a varsity head coach.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
So whoever comes in the gym, we're going to do the best job. And it's been crazy to see the success of some of our players. And it's on them because they're the ones who have to decide who they listen to and how they go about their business. So it's been cool to be a part of it. That's for sure.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
for them it's it's so hard because ready I do this I've been doing this for a long time right and so this is like not what we do but I think I can make my revenue could double easy ready hey right Duke and Colton are one of the they're some of the best basketball players that I've seen like really if they like locked in and really trained a couple times a week I think that they could end up being like some of the best players in the area
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
What are you going to do? You're going to say, oh no, this guy's BSing me.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
You know? And so like, it's so hard for the parents. Like somebody wants to compliment your kid and say that they're doing really, really well. You're going to be like, oh man, I knew my kid was pretty good, you know? And so it's just, it's that your question of the BS filter, it's hard because that's all you have to do. I think over time though, you figure out like a lot of the trainers, you
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
You know, I think there's two things. One, a lot of them do it because they want themselves to be famous. They want to be famous and they want more for themselves. And then, you know, the other ones are I think they're good hearted, but they might not have like the background and really the capabilities to really, really like help a kid.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
So they think they're helping them, but they're maybe not as much as they think they are. And so, listen, at the end of the day, it's this. If your kid's in middle school and they're putting in extra work, no matter what that work is, it's a good thing, dude. It's a good thing, right? And I think, so I've been doing a lot more consulting now.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
And to me, the number one thing that a person could do, if you're going to spend money on anything, is find somebody that's been through it and knows what they're talking about and invest the money and let them give you an honest opinion of your kid. Hey, here's an honest opinion. Here's what the landscape is.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
You know, we had a guy from Massachusetts who hopped on a consultation consultation the other day. His son's a really good baseball player, really good basketball player. And he's like, hey, he doesn't know which one to choose. What should he be doing? He's in ninth grade. And so we went through the whole landscape and he decided at the end, like, you know what, we're going to stay with baseball.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
We're going to train a little more basketball. for basketball in, like, our hometown, get in the gym with our high school coach and stuff. And then when he gets to, like, 10th grade, maybe 11th grade, see how things shake out. See how tall he ends up being. You know, a six-foot guard. You know, does he go and start on varsity baseball in eighth grade?
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
You know, like, I don't think you've got to choose right now. But at least he's got better clarity on, oh, wait, I don't have to go to every AAU tournament as a ninth grader because I'm not going to be seen. Dude, nobody's looking for you in ninth grade. You know, that's the one thing that I would do as your kid gets up there, because then you're operating with, again, the right information.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
And so I've always had a good perspective from him on the youth basketball landscape, the high school basketball landscape. And then my brother went on to be a college coach locally at UAlbany, Hudson Valley, and then down in Florida at an AIA school. So I got the insight right for like the college stuff through him. And then just in my own career,
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
Yeah, so if they're outside of the area, just Maximize Basketball is the name of that company, MaximizeBasketball.com. All the information for the consultations, online courses to come in if they want to come fly up here and work with us or need us to come down there. And then if they're local, just DagsBasketball.com. And all that is on my Instagram.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
So if they follow my Instagram, SteveDags0, they'll be able to get all that information.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
Yeah, thanks for having me. It's fun.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
having played elite AAU on the Nike circuit and then Division II basketball and then overseas for six years. I went through all that as a player. And when I transitioned to being a trainer and a player development coach, Typically, what happens is these development coaches are in one level, right? You'll see their college MBA or their youth high school.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
And I have two businesses, one Dags Basketball, who has we do kindergarten all the way up through 12th grade. And then my national brand, Maximize Basketball, that's where we focus on our MBA clients, all of our national camps and clinics. And so I literally get every single level that I get to work with.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
And so I'm able to see, you know, obviously, like you're saying, with the adults and all the craziness of youth basketball, the high school recruiting college landscape, and then the professional aspect as well, too. And so there's so many different variables that go in it. And I'm sure we'll get into a lot of them. But I've been lucky enough that I have experience in all the different levels.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
Yeah, 100%. I think at the youth level, it's different now. And I'm a player development coach. So I do a lot of like the training. And so I can see that parents are a lot more invested in their kids' youth sports now than maybe they were 20, 30 years ago. And I'm not saying like emotionally invested as far as like, hey, you want your kid to play sports and
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
and be well, but like the time and money that goes into it and those both lead into stress, right? So like, hey, I'm investing this time, I'm investing this money. And then also now everything is on social media. So like you'll have, you know, if you're a parent, you go on social media and just take AAU season.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
you know, your kids on one team and then you go on social media and all these other teams are posting their championship and I'll put it in quotes, right? Like t-shirts and pictures and now you're like, man, I wish my kid was on that team and this.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
So there's all this like fear of missing out and trying to keep up with the Joneses and it really takes away with like the best thing about youth sports is that It teaches kids how to be accountable, how to handle adversity, how to be part of a team, how to sacrifice.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
And like you were saying, we've lost a lot of that for like this manipulation of like trying to win games or having to be on the best team. And and it leads to a ton of stress and that stress.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
is mostly there because of the adults, and then it gets taken out on, whether it's a coach taking it out on the players, whether it's a parent taking it out on a coach, whether it's the parent or the coach taking it out on the refs. It's just, it manifests in all this chaos, and it's like, yo, just let the kids play.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
Yeah, so I think when they're younger, so I would say like, just take basketball, for instance, like typically these kids will be on teams starting in like third grade, right? And then like from third grade to seventh grade, I think it's very much like the parent kind of like leading the way a little bit.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
Like, hey, you're gonna be on this team and you're gonna go to this and this might help, this camp might help you and you're leading the way. But when they get into like eighth, ninth, 10th grade, dude, the kids are gonna tell you by their action. I can't tell you the amount of kids that come into our gym locally And you could tell they don't want to be there.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
And so, you know, like, and it's extra work. So, so I get it, but, but, you know, at some point the kid is going to lead the way and you're going to be spending all this time and money and the kid's not even going to want to be there.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
My thought is, and there was actually a study, I was listening to Malcolm Gladwell podcast and there was a study, they studied like elite runners in the UK when they were, I think like 15 and they, what they did by the time they got up to 22 and like the smallest, smallest percentage of those elite runners at 15 ended up being elite at 22.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
And we sit here and there's all these like elite middle school teams and they're traveling all over the country. And it's like, dude, you can, you can literally pick out the one or two kids like Andre Jackson's in the NBA for the Milwaukee Bucks. He was in fifth grade. You're like, whoa, that guy moves different. You know what I mean?
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
Kevin Herter when he was in seventh grade, like, yo, that kid's got a chance, you know? And, and so, What we do is, it's the intention behind it. It's, okay, I'm going to invest all this because I want my kid to be great and they want to play college sports and they're going to go play college basketball or college baseball.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
That shouldn't be the intention because all of that is just a byproduct of how productive the kid is when they're on varsity.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
right and so if the intention was i'm going to invest in my kid just say basketball training because they're going to learn how to be dedicated to something be disciplined wake up early go hard in training sessions fight through adversity struggle learn how to come out on top and then whatever they end up doing in high school college and beyond this is going to help them there that's how my philosophy has always been when we're training people so like when they come in eighth ninth grade they're talking about college like
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
we lose all the crazies because we're not on the same page. That's not what we're looking to do.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
So there's like, so I coach my daughter's fifth grade team. I also coach third grade. The third grade is like, you know, they're just learning whatever. But like fifth grade, I've had them now for a couple years. And so I am the same way as you. Like we're going to compete to win, but I don't care whether we win or lose.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
I actually prefer, like we lose, man, over two years, we probably lost seven games by like one possession. And part of the problem with our team is we're not focused. Like we come in practice and it's not like we're on them, but they have a hard time. And you're not going to win. close games if you're not focused.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Building Resilient Kids: The Real Game of Youth Sports
And so I actually like it because they're learning now like, hey, you don't like losing by one point, two points, three points. We missed 10 foul shots. We didn't run this play and execute. And so it's helping us, right, like fight through adversity, lose, and now come back and practice and work on those things, right? And so I'm the same way as you, like, I do this for a living.