In 2017, outfielder Jeff Francoeur retired from Major League Baseball. A few months later, he was back at the ball field, watching his 4-year-old daughter.
“I’ll never forget the first year my daughter played T-ball,” he said. “I remember watching some of the parents and coaches and thinking, Am I really watching this? Like, 5- and 6-year-olds shifting—you know, they’re putting three people on one side. And I just want them to get the dang ball off the tee. And I remember thinking, Oh my gosh, I’m in for it.“
He’s in for it.
Over the last several decades, youth sports in America has done its own shift. When Jeff was growing up in the ’90s, he played all kinds of ball with friends—basketball in the driveway, baseball in the park, football in the backyard. Nobody specialized; everybody played what was in season at school. In the fall, Jeff wasn’t at the ballpark most Saturday mornings—he was washing the car and cutting the grass. On Sundays, he’d go to church with his family. Sometimes he’d toss a ball with his dad on Sunday afternoons, but not every week.
That’s not the sports world his children are stepping into. His 10-year-old daughter’s travel softball team played more than 40 games this spring. Parents wrote checks for fees and uniforms, booked overnight stays for weekend tournaments, and worried they weren’t doing enough. When the season ended in May, some parents asked to extend it into June.
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Jeff didn’t accidentally move into a neighborhood of overachievers. That same shift has been happening all across the country. Over the last two or three decades, youth sports has been professionalized, which means parents are paying coaches and organizations to do things they used to do themselves, or have the kids do—things like playing catch, setting up games, and supervising disputes. Over time, that grew to include things like scheduling tournaments, renting facilities, and offering specialized camps or one-on-one coaching.
This shift has led to a lot of problems. At The Gospel Coalition, we realized parents and pastors were worrying about it when we posted athletic director Ross Douma’s article “Why We Pulled Our Kids from Club Sports” at the beginning of 2024. So many people read it that it has remained our most-read article of the entire year.
The closer we looked, the more we saw the problems—but also the opportunities—for faithful Christian parents.
The Change
“When we were young parents in our 30s, we wanted to get our children involved in sports activities,” Ross said. “We looked for opportunities for them to play a myriad of sports.”
One reason he was interested in sports for his kids was that he was an athlete himself. He played college basketball for Northwestern College in Iowa, where he made so many three-pointers and assists that he’s still on their list of all-time record holders.
By the time his oldest son was in third grade, Ross was an assistant principal and men’s basketball coach at Chicago Christian High School.
“Not knowing the landscape, we started to plug them into a number of different activities,” he said. “Most of the time, these activities spilled into Saturday and Sunday. These were organizations that were beneficial for our children. Looking back, we formed excellent relationships with the people, and our experiences were really positive. But we would go to work on Monday morning tired, having sacrificed our Saturday and Sunday for a couple months of the year.”
The organization Ross is talking about is the Amateur Athletic Union, or AAU. Way back in 1888, most sports were done by amateurs playing for fun and by house rules. So a couple of athletes founded the AAU to get everybody competing by the same rules and to set up competitions.
Americans love sports, and the AAU was immediately successful—in fact, it wasn’t long before it was too successful. The amateurs began organizing professional leagues: the National Football League, the National Hockey League, and the National Basketball Association.
Never mind, the AAU said. We can still organize competitions for younger athletes. But after World War II, lots of young athletes went to college on the G.I. Bill, and the National Collegiate Athletics Association—or NCAA—gained ground. More and more young athletes were playing each other through school instead of the AAU.
It’s OK, said the AAU. We’re still preparing amateur athletes for international competitions like the Olympics. But then Jimmy Carter created the United States Olympic Committee, and the AAU was left without much to do. By the 1980s, the only athletes left who weren’t organized, monetized, and professionalized were . . . kids.
“When I started teaching and coaching in the fall of 1995 until the time I moved out of athletics in December of 2023, there were significant changes,” Ross said. “The club scene, the AAU circuit, became much more organized. They became comprehensive in terms of their programming. And it became a significant business.”
If the AAU wanted to survive, there was really only one market left. But it was a big one—in 1990, there were more than 40 million American children between the ages of 6 and 17.
“So we moved really from a few AAU teams that were very selective, competent, and high-achieving to the AAU providing club teams for students of all ability levels,” Ross said.
This makes perfect sense and actually sounds great. The organization that previously only catered to top-tier athletes was now opening its services to all kids. By 2004, the AAU had half a million memberships. Today, it’s nearly a million.
“There are a number of AAU and club teams who really want to provide a wholesome experience for children, and who do it in a very God-honoring way,” Ross said. “Those organizations do exist. But more organizations exist from the standpoint of trying to make money. And that’s just the honest truth.”
The Money
Let’s be clear: Human beings have always made money off sports, from early Olympians winning cash prizes to 17th-century Americans betting on horse races to Michael Jordan advertising Nike shoes.
The AAU brings in about $20 to $30 million a year. That might sound like a lot of money, but friends, it’s not. The AAU is one of the biggest players in this game, but it’s far from the only one. Thousands of other organizations—from Little League to Pop Warner Football to U.S. Youth Soccer—jumped in to offer seasons and tournaments, team and individual coaching, sports camps and clinics. Right behind them were sports psychologists, companies making uniforms and equipment, and real estate developers building giant sports complexes.
By 2010, the American youth sports industry had grown to about $10 billion. Nearly a decade later, it doubled to close to $20 billion. Four years later, in 2023, it had doubled again, to almost $40 billion. By 2029, it’s predicted to reach $72 billion.
For comparison, the amount of money the NCAA awards in college athletics scholarships each year is $3.6 billion.
College Scholarships
Let’s talk about money. As a Christian, I believe God has given me the gift of both work and a salary. The Bible tells me he means for me to give generously and to care for my family. That doesn’t mean I can’t sign my kid up for soccer camp. It just means I need to be thoughtful about what I spend and what I think I’m buying.
In fall 2022, parents spent, on average, $168 to register a child for a team in their primary sport. They spent another $150 on equipment, $260 on travel, and $300 on lessons or camps. All told, it was about $885 per kid per sport per season.
Depending on your income, that’s a lot to spend for kids to have fun playing ball with their dads.
But that’s not all parents are buying, Brad Williams told me. He was the athletic director of a Christian school near Atlanta, Georgia, for seven years before becoming associate head of the school. He’s also the cofounder of Pure Athlete, an organization that helps parents think wisely about youth sports.
“It seems to be a means to an end,” Brad said. In other words, “Parents seem, a lot of times, to have an end goal for their kid. That end goal could be making your high school team or [earning] a college scholarship, which is a very big deal.”
In a 2021 survey of parents of 8-to-18-year-old basketball players, 90 percent thought it was possible their child could receive a college scholarship to play basketball. Fifty percent said it was somewhat or very likely.
I completely understand the appeal. Since the NCAA started offering athletic scholarships in 1956, college costs have skyrocketed. In 2023, the average price of attending a public, in-state university was more than $27,000 a year. Since that rises faster than inflation, the younger your child is, the more of your income their tuition is going eat up.
If only that child could get a full ride, wouldn’t it save hundreds of thousands of dollars in the future?
Ross spent nine years as the head basketball coach at Dordt University, then another six years as athletic director. He has looked at hundreds of scholarship applications.
“It’s important to be realistic about one’s chances of playing in college,” he said. “I become frustrated when clubs and AAU programs really sell parents on the notion of a college scholarship when, in fact, I think they know that many will not be able to do it. Or if they do play, that they’re going to get a very nominal scholarship.”
I know it seems like colleges have gazillions of dollars to spend on athletics—if you walk into their facilities, it certainly looks like they do. And it’s true that media rights, donations, and ticket sales do pull in billions of dollars for Division 1 schools. But listen to this—those same schools are also spending billions on coaches, administration, and facilities. Of the 130 Division 1 athletic programs, only 25 turned a profit on athletics in 2019. The median program lost nearly $19 million.
That is why only 2 percent of high school athletes will get a college scholarship. The average payout for a Division 1 male athlete in 2019 was about $18,000 a year. In Division 2, the average annual scholarship was about $6,500; in NAIA, it was around $8,000. And there are no sports scholarships in Division 3 schools or in the Ivies.
So when you get an email asking you to sign up your child for a camp or a clinic, hinting at the possibility of a future financial payout, be aware that’s a sales pitch.
It wouldn’t be so bad if you were just out a hundred bucks for a training camp. But there’s something even more insidious at work. Here’s David Prince: assistant professor at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary; pastor of Ashland Avenue Baptist Church in Lexington, Kentucky; and author of In the Arena: The Promise of Sports for Christian Discipleship.
“You talk about unhealthy pressure for performance,” he said. “The parent’s going to say, ‘I invested all this money and now you’re blowing it.’ The child is going to resent the parent and resent sports. Character deformation is going to happen, and it’s going to end up with everybody disappointed.”
But sports aren’t the problem, he said. “The problem is a parent who has created a value that is not biblical and treated it as if it’s the most important.”
It’s easier for us to overprioritize youth sports, even to make an idol of it, when we’re paying a lot of money for it. This is natural—if the uniforms are expensive, we expect a nicer uniform. If the registration is a lot, we expect a higher quality team. If the ticket prices are high, we expect better facilities.
And if we invest a lot in a child’s development, we begin to expect results. In the basketball parent survey, nearly 80 percent said it was moderately to extremely important to their family that their child earn a basketball scholarship to attend college.
“Do not use sports as a tool to try to get an athletic scholarship or to become a pro,” David said. “Enjoy sports, learn from sports, form character through sports. And whatever comes from that, comes from that.”
The Time
Ross and his wife saw how much money AAU was costing them. But what bothered them even more was how much time it was taking.
“After a few years of living that lifestyle, we realized we were a tired family,” he said. “We were not living as close to the Word as we could. It wasn’t just one or two or three things that transpired—it was small touches over a period of time, a slippery slope.
“Our children were having good experiences, but we weren’t spending much time together as a family. We were missing church services on Sunday. We didn’t have recreation time together as a family on Saturday because we were dictated by the schedules of youth sports. Part of that is our fault for sure, because we could certainly as parents step back, evaluate, and discern that we were involved with too many things. But sometimes when you’re in it, you go and go and go, and you begin to think it is normal. So it took a bit for us to step back and say, ‘This isn’t probably the best for our family, and this isn’t the normal that we desire.’”
In September 2022, more than half of children who play organized sports were spending three to four days a week on them. Nearly a quarter said they played five to seven days a week.
Parents are basically doing the same thing. Before COVID-19, kids spent about 13 hours a week total on sports. Parents said they averaged 12 hours a week doing things like driving to practice, cheering at games, or buying and passing out team snacks. About 20 percent of parents spent more than 20 hours a week on these activities.
Nobody has noticed this more than pastors.
Church Attendance
There aren’t surveys on how often families skip church for sports, but at TGC, it’s one of the top complaints we hear from pastors and youth leaders—they can’t preach to, encourage, mentor, or disciple people who aren’t there. In a recent survey, 40 percent of evangelical pastors told LifeWay Research it’s never OK to miss church for sports.
Evangelical churchgoers, on the other hand, felt differently. Only a quarter said it was never OK to skip, and a third said a few times a year was alright. Eight percent said skipping “many times a year” was fine.
It’s tricky, because a few decades ago, this wasn’t even an issue. When Jeff Francoeur was growing up, the culture was so Christian that nobody scheduled games for Sunday mornings. That’s different now. When faced with a rigorous sports schedule, what are Christian parents supposed to do?
“That’s not a problem—that’s an opportunity,” David said. “Sports have never caused anybody to miss church ever—not one time in the history of the world. Sports can’t cause you to miss church. You choose to skip church. You’re not a victim to the sports team’s schedule any more than you’re a victim to anyone else’s schedule. You decide what you do and what you don’t do. I grew up in an area that had a lot of really nice lakes, and the lake never caused anybody to miss church, even though a lot of people skipped church to go to the lake.
“This is not a problem; it’s a parenting opportunity. The rest of your life, your children are going to navigate choices about what they do. . . . So you’re not using sports to disciple your kids if you hardly go to church. Or if during the season you skip church all the time. You’re teaching them that there’s something more important than church.”
OK, I can see his point. It’s logical that kids who grow up skipping church for games might later skip church for birthday parties or brunch with friends. That’s not great.
But what about being faithful to your commitment to your team? Honoring the coach? Not letting down your teammates?
I asked David, who not only played college baseball but has eight kids working their way through youth sports.
“We tell the coaches up front that we don’t skip church to play athletics,” he said. “I’ve never had somebody be negative about that.”
For example, when his kids would make the baseball All-Star team, he’d tell the coach they could be at the Saturday games but not the Sunday championship.
“We won’t be there,” he’d say. “If you do not want [my kids] on the team because they’re going to have to miss some time, I completely understand that. We won’t feel persecuted. That’s a completely valid thing for you as a coach to make a decision on behalf of that team.”
So far, he’s never had a coach kick his kids off the team for not playing on Sundays. “If you’re upfront and honest, and you tell them about your convictions, and you are supportive and there when you can be, generally it’s not a problem,” he said. “What they don’t want is for you to spring it on the backside, ‘Coach, we’re not gonna be here.’”
That makes sense to me, especially when they’re younger. But what about older kids? Their games are more competitive, and weekend tournaments can be important. David knows this—his daughters play competitive tennis.
“Tennis is tough because the tournaments are all on weekends, and the championships are almost always on Sunday,” he said. “You’ve got to travel to play the big tournaments to get your ranking up high. We just didn’t do that. We played only local tournaments close by. We didn’t skip church to play. We have two daughters whose ranking was never as high as it could have been because they didn’t play all the tournaments.”
But both of them got scholarships to play in college.
“If the kid has the right work ethic and they’re good enough, they’ll have the opportunities,” he said. “And if they don’t—OK, no big deal.”
David’s daughters play for Georgetown College, an NAIA school, and for Cedarville University, which is NCAA Division 2.
“I know a pastor friend of mine who has a totally right perspective of this,” David said. “His daughter was a fantastic basketball player, but didn’t have the exposure that a lot of people have. And so he took three weeks off when she was a junior in high school and they played AAU showcases. She did really well and got a D1 scholarship. Here’s somebody who never really skipped church, who said, ‘OK, let’s put her out there and see how she does.’ There are all kinds of things you can do.”
I’m impressed. And I also get it—I know it takes a ton of hard work and drive to play collegiately, but I also think it takes a naturally athletic body, which is a gift from God. I can see how a really talented athlete could be more relaxed—playing multiple sports, not playing on Sunday, and taking long breaks—and still be successful.
So I asked Jeff what he thought his dad would’ve done if there had been Sunday games, and he didn’t hesitate: “We would go to church and I would play whatever game was after and that would be that.”
I believe him, because Jeff’s dad didn’t put a lot of emphasis on baseball. When Jeff was 12, he told his dad he was tired of it and wanted to quit. Jeff spent the whole summer swinging golf clubs instead. And he never did specialize—all through high school, he played on both the baseball and football teams. From June to January each year, he never even picked up a baseball.
But he was also 6′4″ and 225 pounds, and he could throw harder than 85 percent of Major League players. When he graduated from high school, Jeff turned down a scholarship to play football for Clemson, a D1 school, because at the same time, he was also a first-round draft pick for the Atlanta Braves.
OK, so some kids—those who play professionally or even collegiately—are exceptionally gifted by God. But what about the regular kids? The kids who just want to play with their friends, have a good time, and get some exercise? What are they supposed to do?
The Friends
In 1993, a Swedish psychologist named K. Anders Ericsson published a study claiming the difference between an expert and a mediocre violinist was how many hours he or she practiced—specifically, an average of 10,000 hours. He also noted that the earlier one begins to practice, the better. Fifteen years later, author Malcolm Gladwell used that study to advise readers of his book Outliers that if you want to get good at something, you need to start young and put in 10,000 hours.
Five years later, a group of researchers in Chicago wrote that “these concepts have been extrapolated to sports.” They defined athletic specialization as “intense, year-round training in a single sport with the exclusion of other sports,” and note that it’s becoming “increasingly common.”
At Providence Christian Academy near Atlanta, Georgia, Brad Williams noticed parents were worried. Here’s what they were asking: “Is my kid falling behind because they’re not playing this sport year-round?”
This is especially worrisome for parents of regular kids. Because if my child can’t compete, then he can’t play on the team. And not only is it fun to play on the team, but that’s a built-in group of friends to practice with, laugh with, compete with.
That social piece is important because we know we live in a world where screens are isolating our kids. Our own screens fuel our anxiety because on social media it seems like all those other kids are having a great time winning games, going out for ice cream, and having birthday parties with their team friends.
But here’s the thing about anxiety—it’s so often a sign of idolatry. If we’re depending on a sports team for identity or belonging or hope for the future for our children, it cannot hold the weight.
If we’re depending on a sports team for identity or belonging or hope for the future for our children, it cannot hold the weight.
In fact, it’s already buckling. The Chicago researchers found that early specialization in sports doesn’t work the same way it does in music—it’s the opposite. Intense early training is more likely to lead to injury, psychological stress, and burnout.
Ironically, it doesn’t even lead to particularly good friendships.
“Our children were 10, 11, 12, 13, and there was no reason for them to be as busy as they were,” Ross said. “They formed good friendships, but they could have formed friendships at a much less intensive level of playing baseball and soccer and basketball.”
Brad did that, back when he was playing in the ’70s and ’80s.
“There weren’t travel teams,” he said. “Back in [my] small town, a lot of the teams I played on were with my friends from school or from my neighborhood. What made it so much fun was not only playing in our backyards, but we were on the same football and basketball teams. And so it was a social thing, not just a sports thing. It felt serious, but not nearly as serious as it feels nowadays.”
I heard the same thing from Britt Lee, who works with Brad in Atlanta.
“Intramurals today is really a picture of what sports used to be,” he said. “You play intramurals for fun, and you play everything. It doesn’t matter how good you are. You’re playing with your friends, your buddies. This season it’s softball and then it’s basketball and it’s flag football and then it might be tennis. Intramurals was my favorite part of college.”
Here’s what I’m noticing—these guys aren’t talking about making friends on the team. They’re talking about making a team out of their friends.
And here’s what else I’m noticing—for the first time, we’re talking about having fun.
“I think back to when we were young,” Jeff said. “You would get home from school, me and eight buddies would get together. We’d get a football and we’d go roughhouse for an hour.”
That light-hearted, free style of play probably prevented injuries. According to Jeff, here’s what happens when kids get tired: “The coach is, ‘Hey, you got to keep going. You got to keep going.’ Whereas, back when we were [young], when you’re tired, we’re done, and we go do something else. Now we have these two-and-a-half hour regimented practices, and these kids just can’t handle it. Heck, I could barely handle it when I played in big leagues. How are you going to handle it at 10 years old?”
When 12-year-old Jeff quit baseball, it wasn’t regimented practices or even his coach who lured him back. It was the love of the game—and it was his friends.
“When I was 13, 14, 15, I went back and played baseball,” he said. “But I also played on a travel team that was close to my house. And it was with my buddies that I was going to play high school with.”
I’m not saying your child can’t make friends—good friends—on a travel team. Of course they can. But in general, it does seem like those friendships are more transitory because the makeup of those teams changes from season to season. Those kids don’t usually go to school or church with your kids. They aren’t usually hanging out together outside of practice and games.
When I talk to college students who played club sports, they compare sports friends to work friends.
Actually, compared to the rough-and-tumble, backyard play of the past, a lot about today’s youth sports—from the schedules to the logistics to the stat tracking—looks like work.
The Work
Jack Lee worked hard during high school to play tennis at a D1 college. He left school at noon each day to practice. He played in dozens of tournaments. When he suffered overuse injuries, he patiently waited to heal and then headed back to the court.
And he made it—freshman year, he played tennis for Kennesaw State, a D1 school.
“When they say that college sports is a job, they are not lying,” he said. “Basically I’d get up and go to class to start my day. After that, I’d have lunch and then head to practice for about two hours. I’d immediately go to either weights or conditioning. After that I would go to study hall. . . . I’d get home and be worn out and not really want to do anything else.”
And that was in the off season. In the spring, he’d add 6 a.m. pre-class weightlifting and weekend tournaments.
“So it was definitely fun to be a part of,” he said. “But I didn’t get to play a whole lot my freshman year. Most freshmen don’t, unless you’re really good. It was kind of hard to practice a lot and not get to play. And that’s where a lot of the burnout—like, do I really want to keep doing this?—stemmed from. It felt like a job.”
Here’s what Jack was thinking: He didn’t have a big sports scholarship. He’d chosen Kennesaw State so he could play tennis, but it wasn’t where his twin brother was. He was having fun with his teammates but didn’t have time to make other friends. He tried to get involved in Young Life, but he was so tired at night that it was hard to make it to the meetings.
So at the end of freshman year, he quit. This was a big deal. Jack had been playing tennis since he was around 10 years old—so basically half his life—and playing competitively since seventh grade.
I asked him what sophomore year was like.
“I transferred to the University of Georgia—my twin brother and a lot of my buddies went there,” he said. “From the start, it was nice not to have to wake up at 6 a.m. I haven’t really played a ton of tennis. I’ve gotten into a lot of other intramural sports, which has been fun. I play intramural basketball and flag football and softball. I’ve really picked up pickleball too, with a lot of my friends, which has been nice because it kind of fills the tennis urge but isn’t actually playing tennis.
“And I do Young Life here at UGA, so I made a lot of relationships through that, which I didn’t really get to at Kennesaw State because of tennis,” he said. “I’ve gotten really involved in that, become a Young Life leader at a school here in Athens. It’s been really cool to get to pour into these kids. To not really worry about tennis and just be a college kid has been nice. I think I made the right decision.”
Should We Quit?
At his high school in Chicago, Ross and his wife, Shawn, noticed their kids seemed, like Jack, to have lost the joy of the game.
“As I continued to coach and teach and observe other families, I saw the same thing—that they were tired, that their kids were experiencing burnout,” Ross said. “I saw more burnout with 15-, 16-, 17-year-olds at the high school level. There was usually a common denominator—they played a lot of youth sports at an early age and were very busy on the weekends. And Shawn and I looked at each other and said, ‘Hey, that’s us. That’s what we’re doing right now.’”
“That’s what we’re doing right now”—this might be the most important sentence in this piece. Because while his kids wanted to play, it was Ross and his wife who were signing them up for travel teams, squeezing in practices after school, and driving to tournaments on the weekends.
I’ve read a lot on this topic, and most advice seems to boil down to asking your kids what they want to do. I’m all for having those conversations, but I also wonder if we might be unfairly shifting some of the responsibility and hard parenting decisions onto our kids.
Because sometimes, yes, our kids want to quit because they don’t love hard work, and they need to be reminded to honor their coach and their commitment to their team by showing up and working hard.
Other times, they might want to keep going but we can see they’re tired and need a break, and it’s on us to make sure they get one—just like we did when they were overtired toddlers. And just like when they were little, we might have to watch for nonverbal cues. Because even though they’re older, it’s not always easy for our kids to communicate with us.
“Parents are very well-meaning, and they want to give their children an advantage and help them be successful,” Ross said. “In doing so, many times they simply are involved in too many different activities and the child, in the adolescent years, doesn’t want to push back on Mom and Dad because they see that they too are sacrificing time and money. To tell them that this isn’t fun anymore—that’s a lot to ask of a youngster.
“Parents need to be able to ask their child, ‘Is this still what you want to do?’ and really have that earnest discussion, because most of the time [the kids are] going to tell Mom and Dad what they think they want to hear. It just becomes really difficult, and a lot of times you see burnout when you go two or three years of living that hectic lifestyle and the joy continues to disappear. The child just doesn’t have the gumption to tell Mom and Dad that this isn’t fun anymore, and so the cycle just continues to perpetuate itself.”
If you’re a sports parent, it’s possible you’ve already noticed some challenges with the system.
Down in Atlanta, Britt and Brad noticed so many with their own kids that they began having regular lunches together to talk about what to do about tired kids, demanding sports schedules, and overuse injuries.
“It was super valuable to have somebody that you trust and that has some wisdom,” Britt said. “It’s funny now, cause I’m done with my story, and Brad’s son Brady is still in playing high school ball. So they’re experiencing things that I experienced and that were gut-wrenching for me at the time. And I would talk to Brad about them.
“Now he’s talking to me about them and they’re not gut-wrenching to me at all because it’s not my son. So I can see things in a different light. That to me proves out the value of having somebody else who’s not quite as emotionally involved in it as you are, because we’re so emotionally involved in our kids.”
Brad and Britt talked about it so much that in 2022 they created Pure Athlete to help other parents navigate the pressure. Jeff joined them in launching a podcast.
“We weren’t expecting it to resonate as much as it has,” Brad said.
The trio planned to release six episodes but got so much feedback that they’ve now released more than 80. They average 25,000 downloads a month and have more than 60,000 followers on Instagram.
“The response we’ve gotten from parents, whether it’s the Holy Spirit or conscience or whatever it is in them, they’re realizing that it’s not healthy,” Brad said. “A lot of them are calling in and DMing us and asking ‘What do we do?’ because there’s something in their guts telling [them] this is not right. . . . And they’re asking, ‘What do we do now?’”
What Do We Do Now?
As Christian parents who want to glorify God and enjoy him forever, and who want our kids to do that too, what do we do? How do we play sports in a way that delights in the goodness of a perfectly executed pass or a beautifully arced shot but also fights against all the ways sin has crept in?
Sometimes it’s easier to get clarity when we ask somebody who was doing it wrong.
“My family wasn’t a Christian family, and basically our community was the sports community,” David said. “That’s what we did. I grew up feeling like I didn’t need anybody or anything, and I was achieving the goals that I wanted to achieve athletically.
“When I was in college, a guy invited me to church. He wasn’t a godly guy—I’d go out and party with him. He just happened to have a family that went to church. So I went to church and the pastor read, ‘For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.’ It made me angry. I’m like, Who is this jerk to say that about me? I decided I was going to go home and find a Bible. We didn’t hardly have one in our home—my sister had one of those little zipper Bibles. I figured out where the book of Romans was, and I thought, I’m going to prove this guy wrong. And well, Romans has slayed better men than me. When you’re looking for self justification, Romans is a really bad place to go. By the time I got through reading about chapter 5 of Romans, I was on my knees crying out for God to save me.”
The first question that David the Christian asked himself was “Should I keep playing sports?” Not because he thought God didn’t like running and throwing but because he thought becoming a Christian should change the way he lived.
“I decided I had always done this, so I was going to play as long as I could,” he said. “But it never really left me that as a Christian I ought to be at least asking the question ‘Should I be doing this?’ Now as a dad of eight children, I’ve still been dealing with that question.”
To be clear, David’s not asking if his kids should be active.
“We’re all in with athletics,” he said. “When my boys were still at home, I had a batting cage and a pitcher’s mound in the backyard. So we’re all in. I love baseball more than anybody I know. I see a beautifully turned double play and I say, ‘Praise God,’ because I think it’s beautiful.”
David loves sports the way some people love music or dancing or the ocean. He loves it because God made it and it’s good. Exercising is a way to honor and care for the bodies that the Bible calls temples (1 Cor. 3:16–17; 6:19–20) and living sacrifices (Rom. 12:1–2).
“The benefit of sports is that they test you,” David said. “Sports don’t build character. Otherwise, every athlete you know would have the greatest character, and that’s not true. But what sports do is expose character because they put pressure on you.”
I know exactly what he’s talking about. I’ve sat on lots of bleachers, watching my two sons play sports. And I’ve been amazed at the strength of my emotions toward the other team, toward the refs, toward the parents on the other team. I can’t think of anywhere else where the dark sin of my heart surfaces so quickly. I don’t think I’m alone—every time a parent screams at a coach or a child throws his bat, that’s sin.
And here’s David telling me that the exposure of that sin is the greatest value youth sports has to offer. Not the potential scholarship. Not the friends. Not the wins. Not even the exercise. It’s the chance to see your child’s character—and your own—because when you see it, you can ask the Lord to help you work on it.
For example, a child who hustled, encouraged his teammates, and was always ready when the coach needed him can be praised and encouraged on the way home. And a child who lost his temper, sulked, or quit trying can be guided toward repentance and restoration.
Both of those are heart issues, not performance issues. And whether your child is in T-ball or March Madness, heart issues matter. Addressing them with truth and love will produce fruit that will last far longer than a sports season.
“Parents ought to be worried about attitude, effort, energy, respect for coaches and those officiating the game, and enjoyment of the game,” David said. “Everybody can control those.”
Then he told me a story to explain.
Bench Warming to the Glory of God
“One of my sons wanted to try out for the basketball team at the school he was going to,” David said. “I said, ‘Well, you can do that under certain conditions. You’re not in great shape right now, and so you’ve got to get up before school every morning and do two miles on the treadmill for a month, and then I’ll let you try out for the basketball team.’”
David’s son did it.
“So he made the team, and he was thrilled,” David said. “He gets out there and the first game he doesn’t play. The second game he doesn’t play. The third game he doesn’t play. All of a sudden he’s not as excited, his shoulders are slumped. And so we’re driving home in the car, and I said, ‘Man, you were so all into this basketball team. And I’ve noticed your attitude has really changed. What happened?’ And he looked at me like, ‘I’m not playing.’”
“You know why you’re not playing?” David asked.
“Why?”
“You’re not very good,” David told him. “On this team, you barely made the team. That’s perfectly fine. You can work to get better. You should want to play. But even if you don’t play, you should do everything you can to make this team better because you’re on it. . . . In practice, go after those guys as hard as you can. Make your teammates better.”
David and his son came up with a list of how to warm the bench to the glory of God. Here’s what was on it:
Sit on the edge of your seat—don’t lean back. Don’t talk about anything with anybody during the basketball game that isn’t about the basketball game. During the time-outs, be the first one off the bench, high-fiving your teammates as they come over. Listen to everything the coach says in the huddles like you’re in the game. Don’t be disconnected; show the same energy and attention as if you were playing. Want to win as badly as the guys on the floor.
“You might get some playing time,” David told his son. “But whether you do or not, you can glorify God and you can make this team better.”
David’s son participated differently after that.
“We completely reversed his attitude,” David said. “That season he had the time of his life on that team. What we had to do was take away this expectation or this entitlement attitude he had. Anytime entitlement creeps in, joy and enjoyment goes away.”
I love this story because it’s an example of how to love your neighbor—in this case, your teammates and coach—really well. And then David tells me trying hard is also a way to love the other team.
Playing Hard as a Way to Love Your Opponent
“Competition’s a gift,” he said. “You should play as hard as you can to defeat your opponent, not only for your sake, but for your opponent’s sake. This is how iron sharpens iron and we become better. They need you to do your best so they can figure out who they are.”
He tells me about Andy Roddick, an American tennis player who happened to be really good at the time that Roger Federer was the best tennis player in the world. So Roddick always lost finals to Federer.
“Somebody asked him, ‘Do you wish that you hadn’t played in the era of Federer? Because you would have had a ton of Grand Slam championships.’ And he said, ‘Are you kidding me? I became a better tennis player because I was trying to match the standard of Roger Federer. One of the greatest privileges of my life was to compete against Roger Federer.’”
As someone made in the image of God, how can your child use and hone their athletic gifts in such a way as to learn about themselves and God—and to help the competition do that too?
“You only learn about that by going through it,” David said. “When Paul talks about winning the perishable wreath and imperishable wreath—there’s something more than a perishable wreath. But you don’t actually learn the lesson of the something more well through athletics unless you really want to win the perishable wreath.”
This reminds me of something the football coach at Dordt University said to me a while ago: Playing sports is like modeling Jesus, the Lion and the Lamb. Jesus the Lion was unquestionably stronger than Satan or death. But Jesus the Lamb was completely submitted to his Father’s will, and because of that, we have salvation.
When our kids play sports, they roar with all their strength and speed and athleticism at the competition. But then, in the space of whistle, they set it down completely, submitting without complaint or question to the ref, the clock, the scoreboard.
We don’t think our kids are weak for obeying a ref or stopping at the end of the half. We know those limits are good and right—they’re even beautiful. Obeying them is what makes the game work.
And that makes me wonder—can we, as sports parents, also model the Lion and the Lamb? What would it look like to give youth sports our all? Maybe it means practicing with our kids in the backyard after dinner, willingly organizing the volunteer sign-up sheet, or serving cheerfully as the assistant coach. Maybe it means waiting after practice for our kids to get in extra shots, buying team-colored hairties for all the girls, or offering to run the scoreboard during games.
And at the same time, we must be willing to lay youth sports down, to submit it underneath the priorities of regular church attendance, real-life friendships, and healthy bodies. Maybe that means choosing a team with a lighter schedule or one that plays closer to home. Maybe it means switching sports throughout the year. Or maybe it means quitting.
Pulling Back
“We had been observing families, children, and students who were burned out,” Ross said. “We began to see that a little bit in our own kids as well. They were not loving the sport with the same passion and the same intensity that they had. It was more laborious for them to play two or three games a day on a particular weekend day. And it was being revealed to us that they were doing it because they were signed up for it and it was on the schedule versus having a great deal of excitement of wanting to play.”
Ross and Shawn thought about it. And then they quit club sports.
I asked if it was hard on their kids.
“They really did not put up too much resistance,” he said. “I think it was almost a relief for them. And again, those are our experiences and other families may find something different, where the kids have such an appetite for more and more and more play and competition. But I think for most folks, most children, there is a tipping point. And I felt that because of the schedule that we were adhering to, we were pushing them beyond what was enjoyable for them.”
Ross and Shawn’s kids didn’t stop being athletes. They still played ball at school. They even did some AAU sports, just at a much less intense level.
“Our rhythms were more healthy,” he said. “We had more time together. Beyond that, there was a return to joy for our children in their play. It was less pressure. It was more organic, where we would just go and initiate playtime. And that was really good to see.”
Sports is a gift from God. Running the bases, kicking in a goal, or shooting a basket are ways we can delight in how God made our bodies, and our kids’ bodies, to move. Because our God is generous, sports is also a way we can connect with and enjoy our relationships with other people.
But sports make a terrible idol, for us and our kids. Let’s guard against that, taking care with our checkbooks and our calendars. Let’s pursue teams for our kids that are built from real friendships, model right attitudes, and encourage virtue.
And as we do, let’s give praise to God. What a gift he’s given us—just like music or dancing or the ocean—to help us know and enjoy him better. And what an opportunity he’s given us to see and disciple our kids’ hearts—and our own.