Determined Society with Shawn French | Adversity & Mindset - The Destruction of Youth Sports with Lee Taft

Episode Date: April 12, 2022

This is without a doubt one of the most impactful conversations that Shawn French has had on his show. Lee and I cover the most controversial subject in youth sports. We dive deep into travel ball organizations in ALL sports and how they are destroying sports, parents, and more importantly the kids. Youth Sports is NOT even close to being about the kids. It has turned into a way for adults to make money and expose kids to their monetary and egotistical gain. Follow Lee Taft on IG @leetaft --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/shawn-french/message Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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It has to be explosive. It has to be as hard as you can. It shouldn't take you more than 10 minutes to do this stuff. Make sure you warm up and all that. Your kids will get faster because I've been doing that philosophy for years. My kids get faster because, number one, I'm not trying to condition that. That's not for the purpose. This is, I want a faster animal.

I want a cat that can fly. I want somebody that can move. So we're going to improve their athleticism. What's up, guys? How's it going? This is Sean French. And thank you for joining me with another episode of the podcast, Determined Society. Guys, I have an amazing guest here today.

This is something that is a true treat for me. Me and this guy have been connected on Facebook for a very long time. And we've never really collaborated on anything. And then he created a post and published it the other day about a very controversial topic. And he was catching some heat on it. And I immediately read the whole thing. And I was like, man, I got to jump in here and be with this guy. His name is Lee Taft.

He is a founder of the first speed, a basketball speed certification. He is known as a speed guy. He is a father of three amazing human beings. Lee, man, welcome to the show, buddy. Oh, Sean, I can't thank you enough. I'm so glad we, you reached out. and we got this chance to connect and see if we get people thinking a little bit differently today, or at least be a little more pissed off.

Well, hey, I can assure you we're going to piss off some people and that's okay. Because what I found, Lee, is when people get really, truly pissed off at something that somebody else says, that they know there's a level of truth to it, right? Exactly. Yep. This is like when my wife tells me something, I get pissed off at her, it's because, like, well, shit, she's right. Oh, my gosh.

So, you know, I want to give the audience. a little bit of a background here. I was rolling through my timeline the other day, and I came across Lee's post, and he was explaining that he was taking some heat from people that disagreed with his standpoint of AAU basketball and just youth sports in general, how youth sports are in so much trouble, and they are in trouble. And here's the reason why, is because all these people create all these travel ball organizations, whether it's AAU for basketball, soccer, and specifically for me, baseball, to a point where they just water the shit down so much, ask parents for $5,000 to $6,000 every season, promise playing time,

promise college recruiters, scholarships, all this other bullshit. And it's completely destroyed the sports industry. It has destroyed the parents in the industry. and more than anything, it is impacting the children to a point where they can't even perform because they're so worried about who's watching them. And most of the time, they're fucking 12 years old. So, Lee, man, what are you seeing out there, dude? Yeah, it's a great opening because I'll tell you, we, I'm having a really, this is funny,

because I'm having a really hard time every time I type or I talk and I say the word youth sports, because it really isn't anymore. It's about adult being in charge to somehow fill an ego, fill a bank account, do something on youth sport. So it isn't really youth sports anymore. They just happen to be the chess pieces, right? The kids are the chess pieces, and they're getting moved around in this game that adults are dominating. and you made a really good point about stress with these kids. And part of the reason I'm so passionate about this,

because we've all been caught up in it to a degree, because you know, like I have, you mentioned, I have three children, and you want them to be able to play. And sometimes the only way to play is if you get them in some kind of a league or travel league. And so we've done the local stuff. We've never done the big stuff. And it took us like half a month.

to realize this is crap the way things are going on. So we kind of moved on. So over many years, and I've just, for the listen, I've been coaching for 33 years. I've been the head coach of many sports. And I grew up as a phys ed teacher in a family of teachers and phys ed teachers. My father was in it for 44 years. My brothers, my sisters.

So I grew up in the environment where it was free. You were in school. You went and played. And then when the season was done, you put that. implement down and went and played the other one. And then at night you went down to the park and you played with your friends. So that was what I grew up in. And then as things started to change, you saw less and less people showing up at the park because they were gone doing these travel sports. And then you started to ask him, well, how does that work? Like, well, we pay a bunch of money

to go play against kids that are the same talent that we play here at the park. I'm like, oh, that sounds like a good tradeoff. How's that working out for you? And so I've just gotten so frustrated with the fact that travel sports, okay, AAU, whatever you want to call it, because there's different organizations, have put such a stress on players that haven't even really earned the right to travel from Georgia to the state of Washington to play in a weekend tournament because that's where supposedly the coaches are going to be. And none of them are there, but that's what they're told, right? And they go do that and spend, you know, five grand on the travel flights

and bringing the family and doing all this stuff. And the kid, in our case, in basketball, if we're talking basketball, can't even shoot a left-hand layoff. So what are you doing? Where are you going? I've always said this, Sean, and this is really the same for baseball, volleyball, tennis, whatever. If you're not the best player in your school, when you walk down the hallway, why the hell you travel out of your state to go play somebody else?

You can't meet the kid who's in a home room with you in the morning. Where are you going? You know, go beat that kid out at recess or that lunchtime, you know, basketball or something. But it just drives me nuts. Dude, those are some great points, Lee. And I love it because I remember when I grew up playing baseball, right? And that's the only sport I played in my freshman year. I tried to play football.

I didn't like being hit. It was too late, right? It was too late for me to expand that. just in my own mindset, I just wanted to play baseball because that's what I was really talented with, you know, and, you know, I ended up going playing at LSU. I did pretty well. And, you know, I mean, hey, listen, it was great. But do I regret not playing other sports like you mentioned? Absolutely, right?

Because I think it hurt my athleticism. But going back to that, just thinking about the progression, right? It was Little League, Little League, Little League. And then once we were 12 years old and we turned 13, and we turned 13. like when we finished our 12 year old year, some of the coaches in the 12, in the 12 year old deals like, hey, listen,

we want to take the best players, the best like 15 12 year olds in this league, and we want to start a pony league program, right, called the Concord Reds. And of course, I was a part of that program. I was one of the catchers. And it was,

it was simply because we felt that, or they felt that the competition at the Little League wasn't at a high, high enough level and it wouldn't prepare us for later levels. It was never about, hey, let's go do all this travel bullshit and let's go get you scholarships. It was like, how can we develop you better? And that's the thing that I loved about it. And, you know, we all did that, right? We all went and we did the pony league and we played together. And man, we had some great times. And it was we, to your point, we didn't go out of state.

We went to, I'm originally from California. I'm from the San Francisco Bay. So we went to Vaccaville, Fairfield, Martinez, Pinol, San Francisco. We stayed regional in our area, and we beat people up, right? We won tournaments. And, you know, it was so much fun because what it taught me was the camaraderie of travel baseball. Like, that was real fucking travel baseball, man. The team concepts still matter.

But now what we have here, since, you know, all these coaches want to build these businesses because they can't build anything else. They couldn't fucking play. So what they're going to do is they're going to build, they're going to bring all these, all these kids and these poor parents that are being gollable, right? And these people have no pedigree. And they're going to build these travel bowl organizations just to make a penny and fill their ego and travel all around the country just to get their asses kicked. I just don't understand it. I don't understand it. And it's one. And it's being repurposed as we're doing it for the kids. No, you're not. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No way. Because you know what? So I was very fortunate the other day because of these social media posts I put out. I've had a lot of people contact me. I had a medical emergency doctor reach out to me and say, Lee, can we jump on a call?

So I was fortunate enough to be on a call with him for 45 minutes. He's out of Indianapolis, Dr. Lewis Profetta. He's written an article. He's written many, many, but he wrote an article that actually became one of the best-selling articles ever, millions of reads on this thing. And it basically had to do what we're talking about right now. And he shared with me because of his experiences and the people that he's dealt with, the very things that you're talking about where like parents think or these youth coaches

think that investing all this money and taking all this time and going to exposure events and camps and all this is the way to go. That's the only way to go. What they don't look at, and this is what he saw, and I've seen this myself, but just coming from another individual, he saw that when kids were asked or told, when parents said, hey, listen, we're not going to, we're not going to do it this year.

Kids are, okay, great. That was it. That was the response. Okay, good. You know what I mean? As where the parents probably felt like they lost a leg or something because now they couldn't get their kid out there, exposed and shown all over the world and this and say to their neighbors oh yeah my kid's on the

elite team you know not on the other team it's not the elite team right yeah and so he's like kids are like okay good no i get to go play now i get to go play with my friends or go to my friend's birthday party which i've never gone to over the last three years because i was always traveled right i couldn't do that and he shared with me just to kind of go a little deeper here he shared me stories that just literally broke my heart and it bothered me so much and i and i've started sharing this too He had grandparents, Sean, reach out to him. And his grandparents said, I, the, the article you wrote literally was like, changed my life because we, as grandparents, older, it's very hard to go to these long events and sit and walk and wait three, four hours between games or whatever, especially in the case of basketball, sitting on bleachers or baseball, sitting on aluminum bleachers for hours on end, really hard on them. bothers them, all these different things, but they said if we don't go, we don't see our grandkids

anymore. Because every weekend, there's a tournament. They're gone. We'll go six months and not see our kids because the weekends used to be dinner at grandma's house. Now it's not. Now it's, you know, a weekend somewhere playing baseball or soccer or volleyball or basketball or whatever. And we don't see our grandkids anymore. And they're like heartbroken, but they said if they say anything, to their children, to the parents of these kids, they don't invite them anymore. So they're calm. You know what I mean? And that to me is just destructive.

He talked about, you know, marital stress because one parent, one parent is usually gone for months and months on the weekends. They're around. They don't go to movies anymore. They don't dinner. They don't do these things. So we can talk about, you know, hey, you know, the skills not being improved because all they're doing is playing or this and stuff.

But the reality is, it's the destruction of a family environment now. It really is. there's no longer Sundays together as a family or hanging out or going to the park or going to the movies or going to the beach. Can't do that anymore. So that's the tough part that I don't think people want to hear. But when they do hear it and they step back, it's kind of like, what the hell are we doing? Really? What are we doing to the family environment?

You know, it's hard because, you know, I went off on a rant, right? And I want to clarify, it's not the parent's fault, right? They're being sold a good of service. They're being sold the shiny red apple or whatever the hell you want to call it. And I'm very passionate about this type of thing. And so my listeners are probably going to hear more inflection and more tonality in my voice this episode than they really ever usually do. But it's because this is something that, again, that we're experts in, right? We are coaches.

We're professionals. And the problem with all of this is, and you hit it on the nail on the head when you're talking about it is destroying the family structure. Like, dude, like on Thursdays, we have, my son has tennis. He does tennis lessons, right? Wednesday, he has baseball and Saturday and Sunday, right? Just for Little League. And they've been on Thursdays, he has tennis, but my daughters have gym. So we split up, my wife and I.

And you know what, dude, it's only an hour, but I love my family. I love being, I didn't grow up with everybody being together, right? Yeah. So, like, I love having my family all together in one spot. It's just my preference. you know what you know it is what it is and that hour is hour and a half is long right like i miss my girls or i miss my son my wife and i can't imagine it being months and months and months but the problem to to your point of um one parent's always gone and we're doing all the stuff

it's really sad because the parents are being sold this freaking dream that if your son or daughter plays travel ball and it's not just summer let's be honest with each other if it were just like summer fucking cool go play travel ball in the summer but it's fall it's winter it's summer and all the while with baseball players their arms are breaking down hmm i wonder what tom house has to say about or doctor andrews has to say about arm injuries right they're trending upward because the kids never stopped throwing so but they're being sold this dream that if you do this here's what's going to happen like Listen, I played Little League, Pony League, and I played high school baseball. And we didn't even really have a fall.

Okay. When I got to play fall ball, it was like fucking telling me that I had backstage passes to the Deaf Leopard concert. I was jacked, bro. I was like, I get to play baseball this fall. This is incredible. But now it's like they don't get away from it. Yeah. Yeah. And all and in, and, but my point is I went through all that. Yes, I played American Legion. There's nothing wrong I played American Legion baseball. That, oh, by the way, that doesn't exist anymore. Yeah. Yeah. No, right. It doesn't exist. Or not that I'm aware of. You know, so, but I did all that, right? And at a high school, I had no offers. I went to junior college, ended up at LSU.

Yep. Parents, if you're listening, you can. can have your children be children and you can be a family by just going to literally games by just going to youth basketball, volleyball, whatever it is. When the time is right and your child needs exposure and they've earned it, then go do it. Yeah. Yeah. But, yeah.

I mean, it's a great business. Don't get me wrong. I mean, I'm sure perfect game is going to hate me, but I don't give a shit. You know, it's like all, they have all these fields. all this, everything. And like, I understand, it's a great business model. But like my issue with all that, Lee, and I want to get your feedback on this one, I know this is a long rant, but I'm, I'm, I'm on fire with this. Wait, yeah.

Is I remember when I was a head coach in high school. Okay. No longer, I, you know, I value my family time way too much, right? Yeah. Hey, coach, I went to the showcase this weekend and, and look on the internet. I'm the ranked number fifth hitter in this in this showcase i looked at i'm like yeah but you could hit water if you fell out of a fucking boat dude that's a lie and but then i'm the asshole right yeah it's like i'm just telling people what the truth is like hey listen like cool like but like you're hitting 150 out of 50 at bats like i can't even believe i've given you 50 at bats and this and this and this is a marketing ploy it's frustrating. It is. It's, it's, uh, I had a, I had a guy respond to me during this last couple

weeks, a baseball guy saying they're seeing rankings that are bogus. They're actually finding out, it actually, they, they, to get more support from the parents and to drive their business to this ranking and this almost combine atmosphere of so they're, they're kind of deflating some of the, or inflating some of the numbers of the. kids because some of the kids were saying oh i didn't think i hit that that well and they found they didn't but but it shows better that way yeah so you're right to the fact that it's a business and you know i i have no problem with people making an income doing things that are serving a purpose that are really good but to be deceitful and to to take uh the innocence out of youth to me is just not right

It's not right. Now, if somebody wants to, if there's a parent that has the means, wants to hire a, you know, a private coach to enhance a talent that they have and they want to do that aside of them, that's fine. Go ahead and do that. But it shouldn't take away from, you know, kids being kids and kids playing with friends and friends, you know, growing together on this. But that doesn't mean it has to diminish a kid like yourself, who was probably a pretty good, baseball players, a youth player who made the pony league, and then your friends as well and climbed the ladder, that should happen. And I think it's going to happen naturally for a lot of kids if they're just, if they're just around it and they're just doing it. And you mentioned a word, because there's another word that goes with your word. You mentioned the word that coaches always say, hey, we got to

get you to this camp because you're going to get some exposure. Well, my word is for 99% of those kids is they get exposed. And what happens is now all of a sudden the coaches say, I'm checking that kid off of the list because he can't, he can't hit, you know, but one pitch, and it's usually from his dad, lofting and underhand, right? Or he can't field with any depth.

He doesn't have a, he can't get to his backhand side and field and make that. We're not going to spend time teaching him the fundamentals at our level in college, right? So he's checked off with, So most of these parents are bringing these kids or these youth coaches or excuse me, travel team coaches, are taking these kids to exposure camps, getting their kids exposed when what they should be doing is getting them, getting them at the park, getting them in a batting cage, getting them in a gym with a, you know, the lights on so they can dribble and shoot. Get their skill foundation up.

So now they have a well-rounded game that a coach can say, hey, I can work with that. But the other thing that always bothered me is because I've dealt with so many athletes for so long, if you're good, you're going to get noticed. If you can put up numbers, if you can defend, I don't care the sport, coaches will find you especially, it was harder in my day because we didn't have the internet. I couldn't post my game up on YouTube or on Instagram and coaches look at it that same day. You had to actually do some work, right? now in my daughters both were scholarship NAA IA players I didn't put them in the big AAU thing they did some local stuff but what I did Sean is I would tell the local teams around us because we lived in Indiana we're in Florida now Indiana was like the capital of AAU right well what what I did is I would tell the local AAU coaches look at if anybody gets sick and you need somebody to fill in because most of the games are like 10 minutes from our house and I'm like, my daughter will fill them. That's how they would play.

We didn't even pay. They just show up. They'd play because they needed somebody. They would get playing in. And other than that, I was in the gym with them working them, or we're in the weight room, or we're working on speed training, so they became better athletes, and they never burnt out. All their friends burned out.

A lot of them didn't even want to go to the next level because they were so tired of traveling 60 games in the off season. And even more than that for baseball, softball, I had a girl that played back. for me played 92 games when her softball season ended in high school up until our basketball, she played 92 games. The dad kept track of everything. Can you imagine that? Dude, that's insane, bro. Yeah, yeah. And then she didn't, she didn't want to go beyond that. That was it. And I'm like, I mean, I'm not surprised. I'm not surprised. I, you know, I think it takes a high level of confidence and also, um, wisdom to do what you've done with your

children. And I want to applaud you for that. Because, you know, I'm sitting here. You know, my kids are young. My kids are eight, five, and three. And my son's getting into baseball. I didn't push him into it. I started him when I started him. Seven years old.

He's eight now. Do I mess with him at the field? Yeah. Hey, have fun and focus. Yeah. Listen to your coach. I don't care if he swings and misses at every single pitch. I don't care if he misses every ground ball.

I don't care if he can throw the ball. I want him to learn to love the game. And the one thing that it's very, very difficult in what you did so well is just have that faith that, you know, hey, if you're a dude or you're a girl, like someone's going to find you. You're going to find your place. And that needs to be more appreciated nowadays. And I can see it at the high school level. You know, when you start your season, right? You start your season.

because I still, you know, volunteer a little bit. You start your season in January. Well, you had your spring season. It went right into your travel ball, right? And who I made the number one team of the Scorpions or the number one team of, you know, the Florida burn or, you know, like whatever. Whoopty who cares, right? And, you know, it's like a, you know, it's a pissing match.

And then you play that season. Then you play the fall season. But you also have a fall ball season. of your high school team and then January rolls around and no one, where's the energy? Yeah. That one's hurt. Dude, you play too much baseball, man. Like, to your point, though, I think what's so valuable is, and this is something that kids do now or parents do now, is they coach hop, right?

And they also do it with travel ball. But to your point specifically, like, you know, you teach speed. You're the speed guy. So a kid would go to you. And the parents are like, no, no, no, we're going to go to this other guy. And then they keep hopping coaches and they never get the full system. They never truly develop, right? And for me, when I was a kid, I found this guy, God rest of soul now.

Michael Dudesman. He's one of the most influential people in my baseball career. I love that man to death. I still talk to his wife at that time. And I'm still connected with his children. Tyler was six when he passed. And Michaela was like one or two. when he passed away.

But when I was 12 years old, my dad started taking me two lessons. It was catching lessons and hitting lessons. I did an hour twice a week. Half of it was hitting and half of it was catching. And he taught me the fundamentals. He taught me how to be a better baseball player. And that's how my time was spent. That's all the micro stuff underneath, right?

Now everybody's just interested in the macro result. Yep. Yep. They don't want to walk off home run, but they don't want to do the work. in between. Like they don't because they don't understand it. That's right. And the other thing is if you and I would sit down for one hour and watch ESPN, how many highlights do you see from these top players doing some kind of training, right? Running with parachutes or doing so the kids say, well, I want to do that. I'm like you can't run yet. Like you didn't even know how to get in an athletic

stance and take off to steal a base with proper footwork or in basketball. You don't know how to defend someone because you can't get down in a stance and you have no mobility or strength or whatever. So let's get the basic foundation. So Sean, the other day, two days ago, I had a dad reach out to me and say, Lee, I just got actually asked to coach this youth basketball team. Actually, it was like a middle school. So youth that way, but it was a school team. And he goes, he goes, I need to get them more athletic.

What do I do? And here's the system I use a lot. I give to coaches all the time. Sprint twice a week. Sprint start on week one, twice a week, 20 yards. Each week add five yards until you get to 40. Start out with five sprints each session. And then eventually as you work your way up to 40, you only have to do three. But it has to be 100% effort. And you have to time everything. So you see your times, right? So you see yourself starting to get some improvement there. And then I want you to go seven yards on a lateral shuffle, like a defensive shuffle, okay? Just lateral, push, push, push, push.

Seven yards, do that three times facing the right, three times left, do that twice a week. And then I want you to jump up onto a box, step off, do that three to five reps, two to four sets, period. That's it. It has to be explosive. It has to be as hard as you can. it shouldn't take you more than 10 minutes to do this stuff. Make sure you warm up and all that. Your kids will get faster because I've been doing that philosophy for years and my kids get faster

because, number one, I'm not trying to condition them. That's not the purpose of this. This is, I want a faster animal. I want a cat that can fly. I want somebody that can move. So we're going to improve their athleticism. conditioning will come. That will come. That's, you know, nobody loves conditioning, but it's not that hard to do. You just, you know, go run down and back until I feel tired. Then I'll tell you when it's tough, right?

You can get up. Go run to say to stop. But speed, you got to go hard and keep it simple. So I have athletes that I work with now when they're not with me. That's their homework. Just get outside, warm up, make sure you're loose, mark it off, do those. And we just keep seeing times drop. daughter who's in college right now, my older daughter is out of school, she keeps getting faster because that's the process. I've actually bumped her up to 50 yards now because it's plyometric for her and she's gaining, but she only does it twice. She warms up, does all the high knees and the skips and the back pedals, gets formed, boom, blows those things out and her times keep coming down because we're training her nervous system. So Sean, what it's doing is it's simple, it's not time consuming and it's healthy it's healthy on the body versus a two-hour volleyball

junk training session that you hear these travel clubs do and these kids the kids kneecaps are swollen and they're they can't move for three days i'm like that's not training that's abuse that's that's that's not how we train athletes right and you came from a program one of the best uh LSU with one of the best overall strength coaches in the business, you know, with, uh, Tommy. Tommy was, Tommy. Tommy. I mean, he was, he was, he was great. And a lot of the other people, even, you know, Rachel, uh, who's with the Yankees now, Belkovic, she was a softball player there. She's, you know, obviously just a lot of intelligence of how to get athletes better, but safely. So we can don't, we can, you know,

kind of donate our time to these kids, just teach them the basic stuff of fundamental sports skills, fundamental movement skills, and then let them go play. Let them go play with their friends. Let them go play if you're going to play in a game or something good. But stop monopolizing their time and not getting improvement. You're going to at least monopolize their time, at least improve the kids. We're not even seeing that. They're just, I have a girl that played on my little wreck basketball team.

This is the local, it's called the Morgan Center. Once a week, Saturday, they play for an hour. everybody has to play the same amount of time. It's one of those things. But it was a middle school age level. My son, it was co-ed. This girl played on it. And I've watched her play her high school season. She still can't make a left-hand lay-up. But she's on every travel team. She's going to travel from Florida to Texas to Lexington, Kentucky. They're going to South Carolina and to Georgia. She can't make a left-hand lay-out. Why are you traveling when you've got to drive way out there with a basketball who practice a left-hand layup before you start spending your family's money to go play and you can't dribble or shoot with your left knee. I just don't get it. See, this is the problem though, man. Coach, this is it.

Like, there's no time spent developing kids now. Everybody wants to just go and play. Like, for instance, the biggest, here's where I got frustrated with travel ball and baseball. right your kids would go off and play right there would be no direction as far as practice or anything that would be specific to elevating their game skill wise it's like all right boys here's the lineup rip it and rip it let's go let's go win some let's go hit some BP let's sew the ball across a diamond as hard as we can let's have the scouts you know there it's going to be great show out run your 60 you know and and there's nothing done to develop

these kids over the summer. So they get into a lot of bad habits, right? And there's no one there to fix those bad habits. And they come back to us completely worse, like totally worse. And but here also, here's the big problem. Coach, I just got offered by University of so and so D1. I accepted the offer. I'm signing. And I'm like, they never even called us. So what's happening, these, these college recruiters, sorry guys, but it's the truth. you guys are trusting a coach that spends this much time, very little time with that athlete, right? Whereas the high school coach knows the whole deal.

The high school coach knows his true demeanor, his family dynamic, right, his practice habits, his study habits, his integrity and his character. And I can't tell you how many times that a kid has gone on to play division one baseball and i've actually known the coach and i don't hear from the coach and the kid doesn't pan out yeah and the coach goes well i didn't know so-and-so was going to be like this i'm like

well you didn't do your due diligence you didn't ask you trusted the summer ball coach or you just saw him throw 95 in a showcase and you figured hey he can play here yeah so it's there's a lot in that rant, but I mean, the bottom line is it, the whole system is busted. And it could work if everybody started to work together and understood like, hey, we got to decrease the level of teams, right? Like, oh, but we have this big demand. We don't want to turn kids away. No, no, no, no. You can turn kids away. You just don't want to because it's, it's another $15,000 if you, if you create a seventh team. Yeah. Dude, yeah, listen this. This is what's crazy to me. This is where we're we're at. Okay. And this is why I hope I know we're going to get major blowback on this and I don't care.

I welcome it. I welcome it because we're right. I mean, we're right. And I'm sorry. There's no other way to look at it. And you know, I'd be very careful because this is Little League. So Little League that my son plays at here in Fort Myers, Florida. my good buddy that I coached with came up to me and said, dude, I got to talk to you about something. I'm like, what's up, man?

Because I had a parent, another coach, a six-year-old parent, come up to me and say, hey, you know what we should do? We should combine our teams and make a travel ball team. I was like,

I'm like, please tell me you kicked him in the dick. He goes, he goes, no, I laughed at him. I said, dude,

that's never going to happen. is a horrible idea. And like, dude, these kids are six years old. There's eight U teams right now. And it just blows me away. It's just like, guys, we are not, we are so far away. And we are so far away from youth sports being what it needs to be. I'm sorry, I'm a firm believerly in performance.

Okay. You don't perform. You're on the bench. You're not the best on your team in your position. You're buried. You're buried on that pine until you can prove that you can beat somebody out. You know, there's no, why isn't my son playing? Or how come my daughter isn't playing center?

Like, well, because she's not good and the other girl is. Like, what do you want me to tell you? But we've lost sight of all of that. And the other thing that's happening is if, let's say, you and I start a travel ball organization because we're high-level baseball coaches, right? And we got all these parents wanting to come and play in our travel ball organization. we have two teams, right? Because we're just starting. Well, one kid, you know, isn't playing at all barely, right? Because he's not as good as the other dude. So the dad rips his kid off the team and they go start a travel ball organization.

There you know. There it is. Right. It's called daddy ball. Like, well, okay, you can't play here. So I'm going to create a scenario. I'm going to take all the adversity tools out of your tool belt at 12 years old. And I'm going to teach you how to be entitled and go build your own thing so you can feel comfortable and you can get playing time. Instead of battling and telling you like, sorry, dude, you better figure it out, beat that dude out. That's what my dad did for me, you know, and my dad and I, we have a lot of differences, right? But if it wasn't for him teaching me how to battle through those things, I wouldn't be the man I am today. Right. And so I can't, I can't give him credit for all the bad shit, not any of the good stuff, right? Yeah.

But like, but that's happening. Daddyball. I don't know if it's happening in your industry, but in baseball, dude, it's like, like. Oh, I actually think that's, that was kind of the, the foundation of what happened with AAU basketball was it was originally, AAU was originally kind of this thing where the, the elite players got together, they played. And then when a kid didn't make the team, the dad made his own team. And then when, when there was a, you know, a scuttle butt between the two dads, they split, made their own teams and now you've got all the all the different teams and all the different and the

problem is this is the one thing okay so we we know in baseball as well there's like if you go south korea very instructional base really disciplined right the way they play and the different countries have different ways of doing things and especially south america right and dominican and um in basketball, we start talking more about Europe, how it's really on the come on, right? Look at the NBA, how many teams are, you know, got the top players, right? Well, the thing is, they're very much instructional based. And I shared a little post the other day, and Kobe Bryant talked about it. He goes, I was fortunate.

I grew up in Europe. So he said, we learned and we practiced a lot. We didn't do the, you know, just go play games all the time. And, you know, we learned the game. So what we're seeing is, you know, like in Europe, those coaches have to be certified. They have to know how to teach, how to coach. They have to understand pedagogy, which is how to progress a skill and how to teach. They have to know those things.

They have to know a little bit about psychology, not to be a psychologist, but just to understand, hey, this kid looks like he's struggling. He's not focusing. They just teach stuff. I've dealt with a lot of people there, and they brought me through their system. Here, the dad, because he's mad, his son or daughter's not getting tight,

can start their own team. And as long as they have the best-looking backpacks and, you know, then travel. You know, the unies, man, the swag. Got to have the unies. As long as they have that, they got a team. They got parents want to be a part of that because that looks really good.

that we look for you. We can't play, but we look better than everybody else on the court. And so that's been my problem being someone who's been in, I'm on the educational side of sport. Like I love how do you teach a skill? Like if you were going to teach me how to how to get in front of a ball in the dirt, you could do that. Because number one, you've had good teachers. Okay, you've had people who taught you how to do it. And that is critical. We don't get that anymore. We're not doing it. getting that because we're not getting people who are qualified. You know, God bless the parents who are trying to offer something anyway. Right. But they're not qualified. They don't know how to teach. And then when a kid makes a mistake and they tried really hard, they just got a bad balance.

They get screened at and yell that. And like, it's not their fault. The way you get on kids, and this is what I've always said in basketball, a kid tried to do the right thing. The ball got stolen. I'm fine. What bothers me is the addict. and the lack of effort. You're going to give me attitude, you're getting me lack of effort. Sit down. You know, if you're ready to play,

we'll get you bad. But I don't mind the mistake when you're trying to do the right thing. I get annoyed with the lack of effort and stuff. So, but those are things you have to learn how to coach, have to learn how to teach. And like you said, daddy ball, they're not qualified.

They're not qualified, not only to teach the skill, let alone teach the game. They don't know how to teach with the end of, or work with the individual. person. So yeah, it's crazy. It really is. You know, dude, it's funny because you said something right there that I want to go back to the things that bother you is lack of effort and a poor attitude. I always tell my kids

this and they're young, but they need to learn it. And I always told my baseball players and people I work with on a one-on-one coaching basis is you can control two things in this world, your attitude and your effort. It takes zero talent to have a great attitude and to give your effort. That's right. And what we've, what we've, what we've, what we're seeing here in youth sports is we're skipping those steps because we want that instant gratification. And quite honestly, that's no different than society. You know, you look on Instagram, you know, and everybody has a shortcut, a hack to be a millionaire, to make multimillion dollars. There's no hack. Actually, there is a hack. You know what it is? It's called work and time.

Yep. You know, you stay with something consistently enough. It's like that 1% better every single day. You get 1% better every single day. By the end of the year, you've gotten 37% better. Right. It's like that interest. Like all of a sudden you have all this proof and you have you have gone like this, right? That curve. It is not linear. Okay. It is something that you have to work out every single day. And, you know, when you make it, you know, or when you become that great baseball player, that great basketball player that can just shoot when the lights are off in the gym, everybody wants to call it an overnight success. It's not. When my brand blows up, when this podcast goes it, it's going to be, oh my God. God, that guy came out of nowhere. No, I didn't. I've been here. I've been in the lab, right? Like, we've been building things. And you, for instance, with your business, right, the world's first speed certification coach. That didn't happen like that. That was a progression of actionable steps that you took. And to your point, and I look at your Instagram and I'm like, dude, this guy's a freaking coach. He's a dude. Like you literally break down how to jump and how to connect with the power source and make sure that you don't go, you know, in or out with your knees. You can't be too wide because if you're too wide, it's good to go left and right, but not to jump.

It's like that's what this world is missing. Like all these gurus, whether it's sports, whether it's, you know, on Instagram, fitness influencers, there's no teaching. No, you're right. you're right it's it's an environment right now where if we can get there faster and cut corners we're going to be ahead of the Jones is right we're going to get ahead of them and it just doesn't work that way it just it never it never has um you know i i i go back to where i grew up and when i all the sports i'll give you an example i played in the spring like i played baseball when I was younger. But then my family was really big in a tennis. So I was a tennis player,

and I ran track in the spring. So I played those two. I played football and I played basketball. But when I grew up playing basketball, we would go to the park. It was common. You played outdoors all the time. That was just, that's in New York. You played outside. You played at the parks. A lot of the cities, that's what we did. Well, I was fortunate enough where I'd get, I'd be allowed to play with the older guys. Okay. So the older guys, so I'm seventh grade, eighth grade. I'm playing with the men and the varsity type players on the courts and they let me play. Well, that's how I learned because they were bigger, faster, stronger.

So for an order for me to get a shot off or to stay in front, I had to figure that out. I had to compete and they didn't make any apology. They didn't say, hey, we're going to take it easy. And they didn't, but that was the good thing. And then I now I see this environment. This is, you know, 40 years later. Now I'm seeing the kids that it does.

doesn't work one time, one rep, I don't want to play. I'm not going to mind. I don't want to do it. Do you know what I mean? To your point, and to your point, they can control their attitude and their effort in that moment. They might not control if the guy they just went against is bigger, stronger, faster. I can't control that. But I can control my mentality towards that and become a thinker. And I can control my effort level. And then last point, and I'll let you go because I know you got something to say. My high school team, and this is why I said I ran track and played my high school team, all my friends, they won the state championship in baseball. My senior year, my senior year. We had a kid, Stephen St. Clair, he was a 97 mile an hour pet, he just throw smoke. Well, all those kids, including me, when we grew up at this park, we called at the playground. That's where we were. We played home run derby all the time. That's awesome. Non-stop. All of us. And we could,

we could hit. We used to use a tape ball, they'd get a tape ball, tape the thing up really hard. We'd use anything we could find. Play home run derby nonstop. And then what it did, though, is we're also out there trying to catch it and do stuff. These kids go on and they win the state because they were the best sandlot players around. They just honed their skills. And then they had some pretty good coaches in baseball as they went through it. But it was like if they didn't have that foundation of play and competition at the park where, you know, if you're if you're whiffing out on every pitch, you know, the kids are laughing at you. You know, I have kind of having fun. You know, like guys, they got so, man, they could play. And that's how I developed as a basketball

player. My friends developed. And I was a pretty good baseball player. I just because, you know, I loved tennis and I ran track. But yeah, so go ahead. I know you were going to say something there, Sean. You know, it's, you know, it's, you know, going to. going back to if they try one rep and it doesn't work, they abandon it, right? Like, it takes time to perfect any skill, right? And what you do, for instance, in your business, in my business, what we are doing today is not going to show results. But if we stay consistent over 30, 60, 90 days, well, those things start to pay dividends, right? It's that compounding effort, right? The atomic habit of getting 1% better every day.

So that was the first point. The second point is, you know, you hear all these people talk about getting rooms with people that think bigger than you. Like my buddy Ken Josselin, I did an episode, I don't know, about a month ago. He put that on, he made a planner and that he has it on the bottom of every single page. Getting rooms with people that think bigger than you. And I think that's so great. And it's connected to what you're talking about. You're playing with these dudes that were bigger and faster and stronger than you.

you put yourself in a room that was bigger than you, right? Everybody else, like you were sitting there trying to level up every single time. And that's what I try to do. I try to surround myself with people that are way far ahead than me because I want to be that person that is leveling up. I don't want to feel like, you know, like, hey, I'm comfortable. Like, anytime I feel comfortable, I get uncomfortable. It scares me. It's like, why am I so comfortable in this room right now?

And I'm talking like, I don't care if I'm. down the street at a party or if I'm out at a dinner with somebody like like it gets uncomfortable to me because I always think of like how am I developing from this and if I can't develop then how do I show my kids how to develop that's right exactly you know so you know many years ago I was a head football coach for for several years in New York and about 45 minutes away was Albany State Well, Albany State is where the New York Giants go for their camp, right? That's where they go. So what I would do is I drove down in the morning session and then I'd go back in the afternoon session to watch the Giants practice.

My team wasn't even close to the little giants here on that movie. That's a good movie. Yeah, they weren't that type of. We were a small school, but we were pretty athletic. But what I did, this was for me, my education. Like you said, get in the room. You want to be a millionaire, hang around millionaires. Think like them.

But what I would do is I wasn't always watching their drills because some of them was just too advanced for us. I would follow the coaches around. And I'd listen to when somebody made a mistake, a player made a mistake, I'd listen. And how are they addressing it? And most of the time, it was like you said, it was effort and attitude that they attacked because they know they could make a change right there on the time. They couldn't always make a change on a particular skill.

It might take two, three weeks for those guys to develop that new pattern, pass pattern or whatever. So I'm watching, and I'm literally those little tiny memo pads that are, you know, they're not very big. You can put them in your pocket. I had that and I'm making notes. Oh, okay. That's why, you know, at the time, Fossil was one of the coaches then.

And I'm following him and different people, just listening to them, how they're coaching and that's how I learn. I'm like, okay, that's what those guys do. And I would do the same thing with college coaches. Some of the college coaches, as you would know, too, some of them aren't very good. They just got the job because they graduated college. They stayed in there and they got it, but they never really learned how to teach. If you want to learn how to teach, teach kids your son's age.

If you can teach a kid, you know, six, seven, eight, nine, ten years old how to do stuff, you're starting to learn how to coach, right? So, but yeah, I always try to surround myself and then I would do the same thing with my athletes. I would make them, a lot of times, play against better talent. I'm like, but that's what it takes. If you want to compete, that's what you have to do. And it can be done right into print. It doesn't have the cost of dime.

We can just, you know, we'll bring kids in and we'll play. So, yeah, it's, it's amazing what little steps we're willing to skip that are sitting right in front of us. success leaves close and we keep ignoring the clubs. There's a ton of breadcrumbs there, man. And, you know, it's like, you know, like you said, that's a whole other podcast about college coaches in the game. And they don't know how to communicate. I truly believe, I mean, these baseball coaches in Division I,

especially the big conferences, right, they're making over a million dollars to coach a game. and they don't know how to communicate properly to young adults. These young men are impressionable. They believe everything that you say. They think you are God. And we are tearing kids down instead of having teachable moments and really breaking down and communicating properly. I'm not, listen, I'm all for people sit in the bench and never playing and getting cut.

But it's how you communicate those things, I think to me, makes a world of difference. And that's the one thing that I saw that was broken. It was not Skip Burtman. Skip Burtman was a special man, still is. He's a visionary. You know, talk about law of attraction. That man created something out of thin air at Louisiana State University. Sure did.

He visualized it. He showed us the sheet that everybody, all of his coaches, sat on the mound with him and laughed at him. And now look at it. That's because of Skip Burtman. He had a bunch of great kids, great athletes that bought into the vision. He taught them how to talk. them how to visualize it. He was a genius. He's saying was. And he adjusts. He was great at adjusting.

Like he adjusted to the game to the player. He was he was great at that when he had the big the big hammers at the plate, he used them. But when he did he like you said, he visualized things. And that's so powerful. So smart, man. And you know, the only negative is we don't have, you know, 10 hours of chat. We're running short. But dude, I just, I appreciate you so much. I'm glad we were able to hop on so quickly because it was a hot topic. And, you know, the thing that I've really enjoyed about this episode, first and foremost, we've formed a new friendship. And I'm, I'm hoping we can stay in contact first and foremost, because I think we can both help each other as far as just grow as professionals. But the other thing was, is like, I just really enjoyed how this was so different

than any one of my other episodes. You know, we didn't go through the same questions. We had a very open conversation about a very controversial topic. And there's going to be a lot of people that, you know, I want to hear their opinions. You know, I don't, I don't want this to be something that isn't, you know, spoken about. So, you know, please share it on your social. I want people to really kind of dig into this because I want to hear people's perspective. And, you know, for you guys that are listening, if you guys, please, once again, the only way that this show is growing, I don't do ads. I don't do anything like that. I don't do sports. sponsored ads on on Facebook or Instagram. I don't blow your ears up with, you know,

Sharpie pen announcements or commercials or anything like that. So share the show, guys. You know, share it out to your friends. If something I said or, you know, Lee said that really compels you to think on a different level, made you laugh, or even if we pissed you off when you think that we suck, share it. Go ahead. We, we, we would, we would really love for you to do that. And Lee, with that, man, I just, again, thank you so much for being on the show. You're a true professional with an amazing amount of knowledge and wisdom. And I love your videos because you're a true teacher of your craft.

And I want to say from one coach to another, I appreciate that about you. Well, thank you. I appreciate it. And I appreciate what you're doing. And the fact that you reached out to me means the world, because even though this is a really uncomfortable message for people and it might hurt. There is no ill intent. Like I am not trying to hurt the youth industry. You're not trying to injure the growth of youth athletes. We're trying to just the opposite. I want to, yeah, I want it back. Yeah, we're just, we're just being very

thoughtful in this process, rather than just being those sheep that are hurted in one direction and never realizing where they're going, right? We're just trying to make people think differently about that. And as many people as we can to think that way is a good thing. So thank you for offering this platform, this opportunity to share. Hell yeah, man. Hey, listen, at the very least, we're trying to put, you know, about $20,000 back in parents' pockets every single year.

Not a bad thing. You can't afford a vacation. Stop paying so much money for travel ball. There you go. You just got a $20,000 raise. You're welcome. Your financial advisor, Sean Frickson, Dato. So listen.

The most important question, right, it's a two-part question. How can my listeners and myself best support you? Oh, I appreciate that. Well, one of the things we're going to do very, very shortly here is we're actually going to get stuff out, and I'm going to get it out there in social media. We're going to get steps because you and I talk about a really tough subject for people, but it isn't do any good if we don't have strategies, just like coaching. I can say, well, you've got to be able to hit the ball to the opposite field.

Well, how do you do that, right? So we're going to now give strategies that because my saying is I want to bring youth sports back to families and communities. How do we do that? So I'm going to be sharing things to even if a community has to develop a small committee of just parents are willing to say, hey, can we get some rec space? Can we get the fields on the weekend? Can we rent the high school or the elementary school to play some raffle ball or to do some things with the really young kids and do some stuff like that? There's got to be a way to do it. So we're going to come up with strategies. And the other thing that I want to do, as you know, and you've alluded to this, let's make these kids better athletes, too. I want them better skilled baseball and tennis and volleyball and basketball. But I also want them to let's be a better athlete so you can enjoy life beyond sport.

Let's move better. Let's get quicker and faster because that's fun. It's fun to be fast and have some strength and stuff. So we're going to show real basic stuff like that and teach people how to do that. You don't have to have a degree in it. going to follow the clues that those who've been successful are leading for you and just follow those steps. So listen, I have an idea. I think you and I need to get together because clearly we can get together in person. We need to figure out a way how you and I can do a speaking to her on this and talk to

people and get this in front of as many parents as possible. Okay. And high school coaches to support them because what people are failing to realize is these high school coaches do feel less than because they don't have as much influence as their AAU or Summerball baseball coach. So let's, I think you and I can collaborate on some stuff and really, you know, bring some awareness and if not anything, give people a different perspective. So I think it's something that we can both support each other on.

That'd be fun, man. I agree. I agree. And that's what it's needed. When I started this journey and you can't believe the emails and the text, positive and negative I'm getting, and the DMs, this is so much bigger than, me, I need a lot of helping people like you who get it and have an influence. That's what we need.

We need to go and we need to tell, like you said, these high school coaches that feel like they're losing influence and they're being pressured by dads or saying, yeah, but no, no, no, has they you coach said this, right? They're getting that kind of pressure or their traveling coach said this. We need to let them know their strategies we can do to help us. We're going to start giving you guys some ammunition to be able to bring back sports to your to your schools and your communities and to your family but it used to be a family thing now family sometimes they're going to get to see it because they're gone right so yeah unbelievable unbelievable well listen guys um i'm going to put everything in the show notes here but please uh go on instagram at lee taft

l-e-e-t-a-ft follow them up uh learn some speed agility drills learn real education on becoming a better athlete. I will drop his website into the show notes as well. And Lee, I am looking forward to bring in some more awareness and getting eggs thrown at us in the community right alongside with you, buddy. I love eggs.

I love eggs. All right. Absolutely. Well, guys, hey, you heard it here. So many great nuggets, so many gyms that were just dropped, knowledge bombs. Please share the episode out.

And until next time, talk to you guys soon.