This is Part II of our look inside ESPN’s “Take Back Sports,” which strives to keep kids playing from young ages.
Read Part 1: How do we help 'the most unhappy generation'? ESPN put $5M into kids sports
Imagine, for a moment, what it’s like to be Kerri Walsh Jennings.
You are a two-time NCAA volleyball champion at Stanford. You are a five-time Olympian on the beach, winning three gold medals with one partner (Misty May-Treanor) and a bronze alongside another (April Ross).
But now you’re a mom to three teenagers who play sports.
“I grew up in the generation of you ran through walls,” Walsh Jennings tells USA TODAY Sports, “you showed up even when you're throwing up. You didn't have the room to even think about not being there.
“And I don't think that
was right but it made me tough and there's a lot of great characteristics that came from that. But also I told my body to shut up for 30 years and now that I'm 48, it's like, ‘Ef you for all that.’ ”
She and her husband, Casey Jennings, a former professional volleyball player, have learned to take breaths while raising their kids. It works especially well with their sports.
“It's hard for me to find the right line of, ‘All right, you gotta suck it up, Babes,’ and, ‘No, I get it. You're human and you're growing,’ ” she says. “So that's something that's a dance. None of this to me is easy. As a mom, it's very intuitive to listen to my kids and to feel how they're feeling. The athlete in me is like, ‘How sick are you?’ ”
Jennings is one of more than 20 athlete ambassadors ESPN has brought in to be part of its “Take Back Sports” initiative, which emphasizes recreational and multisport play, along with intentional coaching and an emphasis on ensuring kids are enjoying what they are doing.
Jennings admits she sometimes struggles with the last concept, and with herself, at least the self she used to be.
Her sports journey with her kids – sons Joey, 17, and Sundance, 16, and daughter Scout, 13 – is probably not all that dissimilar to yours.
“I want them to be self-sourced,” she says, “and I think I just have a tough time because I don't really relate because I was such an internally driven human.
“My fear is that I'm enabling softer kids. But the conversation I have in my head is both can be true. Kids are kids. Even my 17-year-old, he's a kid. He's still very much growing. I want my kids to be kids as long as possible.”
Jennings spoke with us about how we can advocate for our sons and daughters in an often confounding youth sports system and tailor it to find the best situation for them:
How having fun at youth sports can be a competitive advantage
Many of us are born into sports. Kerri Walsh, who grew up in the south Bay Area of California, was born into competition.
“My Nana,” she says of her grandmother, “I don't know if she played sports, but she was the biggest competitor I ever met. You don't need to be an athlete to be a competitor, and I think that's one of the things that I so value about my upbringing.”
Kerri’s mom, Margie, has five sisters, “and they are all athletes,” Kerri says, “so I saw women compete, I saw them compete with the boys.” Margie was a prominent college volleyball player at Santa Clara.
Margie’s father, Marte, had been a star football player for Santa Clara. Kerri’s father, Tim, who is 6-8, played professional baseball in the Athletics organization. Tim’s father coached baseball at Santa Clara.
“My parents showed me the joy of competition,” Jennings says. “But also they would want to like rip people's faces off and there'd be like infighting in their teams. They were so competitive to win. But regardless of the stress of it and the anger or whatever expression came out, there was so much love and they could not wait for Thursday night games or weekend tournaments.”
Kerri’s brother, also named Marte, played college basketball. Her sisters, Kelli and KC, were Division I volleyball players.
Kerri and Marte, 11 months older, played “all the stick and ball sports” together. They were best friends experiencing the family way of life.
“I won a lot when I was having fun,” she says. “My game face was dead serious, and I'm like, ‘I'm coming for you,’ but it was so joyful inside.”
One of the four pillars of ESPN’s “Take Back Sports” is ensuring your kids are having fun. It’s as simple as it sounds. Think of the way you felt when you ran around a soccer field as a kid, the wind at your back, chasing a ball with your friends.
Jennings believes we can carry that feeling with us throughout our lives, and it can become a competitive advantage.
“I believe that you're more resilient when you're having fun,” says Jennings, who started Legend Volleyball Club last year in the Bay Area with her sister, Kelli. “I believe your team can outlast hard moments and even learn through getting your butt kicked. … It’s teaching kids that even the stress of competition can be fun. Let's equip you to handle the stress that comes with putting yourself out there. This is a fact of life. Whether you want to go talk to that cute boy or give a speech in class or get great grades, there's pressure that comes from competing and from wanting the best of yourself, but it doesn't mean it's bad.
“But I would be devastated if the kids were like, ‘(Expletive), we have practice again today?’ That's like my worst nightmare.”
There's a difference between a sacrifice and a trade-off, especially with youth sports
Jennings has learned there is a balance between trying to win, and pushing yourself to your limit, which can be gratifying by itself.
She recalls being a junior lifeguard at 11 or 12, and enduring a three-mile race in the sand. She finished first among girls and third overall, but the second-place finisher was just ahead of her.
Her brother and parents were cheering her on yet there was a lingering question after she crossed the line: Why didn't you try harder? You were so close to the next kid.
She was shocked at first, but then she realized she had nothing left to give.
“That was a big lesson for me, where it doesn't even matter, the outside noise,” she says. “As long as you give your best, you can handle a loss. And that was a loss in my family's perspective. In my personal perspective, too, but it's like, (expletive), that's OK. I gave it everything. And I want my kids to know that.
“The conversation is never about the end result or the outcome. (It’s) what are you doing? ‘Baby, if you want that, that's awesome. And today counts and tomorrow counts and the next day counts.’ ”
She and her husband recently moved their kids from the Bay Area to Incline Village, Nevada, on the north edge of Lake Tahoe. It’s an opportunity, she says, to get away from the youth sports rat race, for her kids to figure out who they are.
That doesn’t mean she’s putting limitations on them. Their 17- and 16-year-old boys, who play basketball and volleyball, aspire to play at Division I schools. Their 13-year-old daughter plays beach and indoor volleyball and told her mom: “I want to do what you do.”
“I’ve talked to so many college coaches and elite coaches (who say), ‘We recruit from little towns,’ ” she says. “ ‘Going to a little school where it's not flashy, you're fine. Just be excellent.’ Excellence attracts people.
“But it feels risky to come to a small town where the depth of talent is here and there. But my kid could be sharpened. I see everything's a trade-off and it's like, well, my kid's gonna have to lead. They're gonna have to have the courage to want the ball at the end of games because they're that kid. I think the trade-offs are something to be mindful of.
“Someone told me in my career, ‘Kerri, the moment something feels like a sacrifice, you're weaker.’ And I was like, God, that feels so true to me. … Everything just felt like a trade-off. And my parents always said that, ‘Kerri, it just comes with it. You're not above it. Deal with it. And deal with it to the best of your ability and we're here to support that.’ ”
'They're not the enemy': Set your parameters with your kids' coaches
Jennings remembers her parents being friends with her coaches. It was a practice perhaps more ingrained into 1980s culture. Today, coaches can be more distant figures to whom you hand your kid four or five times per week and hope for the best.
She says it doesn’t have to be that way.
“My husband has done a great job of getting ahead of things and just saying, ‘We want to support our kids in their dreams’ (but) we are not willing to sacrifice our family for youth sports,”she says. “We will be all in anytime our kids show up. However, if there's a holiday, - Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter - if our kids are feeling run down, we will give you the biggest heads up. But we have to look out for our kids.
“It's always easy at the start of the season because they want your kids and are like, ‘We'll be good.’ When our kids might be playing multiple sports or their workload at school plus sports plus everything is getting a bit overwhelming, where we have to pull back, that's always more challenging.
“Our kids are human first and they're not little professionals.”
She acknowledges there might be pushback, which makes the conversation especially worthwhile. It’s an opportunity to reach a shared understanding that we didn’t create this system, but we’re working together within it to carve out the best situation for our kids.
That situation is also one where they will be most productive to coaches.
“I would say to every parent, ‘I'm sorry, I get it, but you're not a victim,’ ” Jennings says. “And you can advocate for yourself. Just be respectful and tell Coach, ‘I want to collaborate with you. I understand you have 11 other players, but this is important to us and we want to do this with respect.’ They're not the enemy. They become the enemy.
“There's always a way. And if your kid gets cut because they're not the sharpest, if they love it, then just find a different avenue. There's a million clubs and there's no shame in playing on the second or third team. I would rather my kids play on the third team and get playing time. And that's hard temporarily until you see your kid actually playing, then you’re like, ‘Oh, this is awesome.’ ”
She says their high school basketball team in Incline Village has a pretty significant summer program, but she and her husband told the coaches they would respectfully pass.
“Give your kids a chance to be bored or to miss something that they want so bad,” she says. “To me as a pro athlete, I know how valuable that is. Offseason made me voracious. It gave my mind a break and it gave my body a break and allowed me to experience different things.”
Rest - and diversion - gives you hunger to succeed
While many pro athletes have extolled the virtues of being multisport athletes through high school, Jennings admits it’s almost unfair to say: “Just do what I did.” She didn’t grow up in today’s youth sports system.
“If you play two sports till you're 14 these days, you're a unicorn,” she says. “I don't know when people should specialize. I don't have that answer. But I feel like specializing before 15 would have crushed me.”
She played volleyball and basketball in high school, volleyball because she loved it and basketball because “my Nana loves this.”
“She was unwell at the time. I'm like, ‘Let me play for my Nana,’ ” Jennings says.
Our generation seemed to want to endure hard things because we thought they made us stronger. (High school wrestling comes to mind for me.) Jennings hardly loved basketball. She remembers getting beat up every game, every practice. She felt that she stunk.
But she endured, her heart and effort conquering her insecurity. She learned she was also saving herself for volleyball.
Her father, the former minor league baseball player, once said to her: “If you didn't play basketball, you would have been in trouble.”
“Had I not had that built-in break, I don't even know that I could have played in college,” she says. “That's something that we need. It's amazing if you get a college scholarship. But (what) if your body's so broken because you've taken so many swings before your shoulder is ready and you're still growing and you don't really have your body awareness yet?”
When she and her husband were professional volleyball players, they took three months off from the sport. They stayed active - watching film, lifting weights, meditating and doing yoga – and felt the hunger to play build inside of them.
She thought the time off was a competitive advantage, like the one she believes you get from having fun in sports, but also from enduring their ups and downs.
“We've been on all sides of this, and it’s heartbreaking,” she says. “But if your kid is out there to play for the joy of it and to learn through all the lessons that you learn from competing, sitting on the bench is part of it. And how do you respond to that? Getting cut from a team is part of it. Not every kid is meant for club sports. I love the rec sports movement. …
“With my generation, we were seasonal athletes. You had soccer in the fall. And that was a blessing. Then basketball in the winter. You can create that element for your kids, even if they are just a one-sport athlete. Surfing is an activity, it’s a different sport. Fishing is great. Just do other things.”
Steve Borelli, aka Coach Steve, has been an editor and writer with USA TODAY since 1999. He played baseball in high school, rowed in college and spent 10 years coaching his two sons’ baseball and basketball teams. He and his wife, Colleen, are now sports parents to a college and high school baseball player. For his past columns, click here.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: How a beach volleyball legend pushes back at youth sports' status quo
