Five with Fry is your go-to podcast for understanding conflict—where it comes from, why it shows up, and how to handle it with clarity and intention. On each episode, Dr. Jen Fry breaks down the moments we avoid, the reactions we default to, and the skills it takes to move through conflict without blowing things up or shutting down.
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Most of us organize our adult lives around never being bad at something in public. Our kids do it every week.
They miss the serve with the gym watching. They get subbed out in front of their friends. They get corrected out loud and have to walk back on and try the thing they just failed at. That's not the downside of youth sports. It's the lesson, and it's teaching itself at an age when most adults would rather do anything else.
I close the season by naming what's underneath all of it: working with a teammate you can't stand, taking feedback without falling apart, working hard and not getting what you wanted. And I'm honest about what the adults do to that, how easily the money we put in turns into a return we start watching for, and a return we're watching for turns into blame our kids learn to copy.
What's actually happening inside of you on that sideline in that comma and in that creature? No shaming, no finger pointing. It's real conversation. And if you want to go deeper, my new book, Before You Blame the Code, is available now. So let's go.
Hey friends. Let's talk about youth sports through the lens of what it's teaching our young adults. What it's teaching our teenagers, what it's teaching our kids. As I close out from this series on youth sports, which I hope you've been with me this whole time, I think that sometimes we get away from what youth sports is really there meant to teach our kids.
And I say that because there's a lot of money in youth sports. And I know you're probably like, Jen, yeah, no crap, I'm paying all the time. Youth Sports is a forty billion dollar industry. And I think back to when I I'm 46 at this time, to when I was growing up, and you had a lot of rec ball, a lot of parks and recreation, a lot of boys and girls club, you had, you know, Mr. John or Miss Susie who would open up the gym for you. You would just go be able to go play for hours for free. You could go find an open gym somewhere, maybe for five bucks if that and play for hours. The opportunities were just very different. It wasn't as expensive. And now every aspect of an athlete's experience is monetized. Open gyms, you gotta pay $30, $40. Privates, $50, $60, $80, $100, $200, depending on where you're at. Clinics are not a ten or twenty dollar clinic, they're maybe a hundred. Camps hundreds of dollars. To be on the team, thousands of dollars. The uniform package, hundreds of dollars. Travel thousands of dollars. Time off from work hours. There's so much money in it, and I know I probably forgot some things. And I worry sometimes that we forget about what we're actually preparing kids for.
Because youth sports is awesome, but the lessons you learn prepare you in ways that other clubs or jobs or other things just can't. At a very young age, you start to learn what does teamwork actually look like and feel like? What does it mean to work hard as a teammate? What does it mean to work hard and maybe not get what you want? What does it mean to work hard and the thing you've been working for finally happens? What does it mean to do really hard things in front of people? Because others could say, I'm not gonna fail in front of a group of people for in front of my friends or parents. But young athletes say, actually I am, over and over and over again. Youth Sports teaches athletes how to go through hard things with people and still work towards the goal of winning. It teaches you that yeah, you might not like this person, but you still gotta work with them. It teaches you how to give and receive feedback even though it's hard. It prepares you for truly leading people and leading people you don't like. It prepares you for understanding that leadership is just not the positive stuff, but it's also the really hard, ugly things. Youth Sport teaches so many skills And I think sometimes under all the other stuff that's lost sight of And My Hope
for this book is that it helps parents better prepare themselves so then they can better prepare their athletes. That to me is a win-win situation and I wrote this book because I just wanted parents to be their best selves when they're helping their athlete be their best selves and helping prepare to go off to college to be an athlete or not to be an athlete. And so this journey, while it's helping you be better, man, it's gonna help your kids be even more so better.
Friends, I hope this episode helped you. If it did, please like, follow, and share it with another sport parent, coach, or athlete. If you're ready to go deeper, please order my book before you blame the coach. Head over to my website, genfight2sports.com or Amazon. And if your team, club, or organization wants to build stronger conflict skills for parents, coaches, administrators, and athletes, let's connect. I'm talking to my and I'll see you next time on Five with Fry.
