Here’s a heartwarming memory from my summer:

Two men shouting invectives at each other in a parking lot, the specifics unfit for print but with a generous helping of violent threats. Me—and likely many onlookers—wondering if this would evolve to blows. One of the men backing away towards his vehicle (smart), but continuing to hurl insults with the same ferocity (not smart). And the real lovely bit: the young boy listening as he trotted beside the man, presumably his father.

What had precipitated this spectacle between two adults on a Sunday afternoon? A semifinal soccer game. Between 14 year-olds.

And what better place to do it then a public parking lot! A busy tournament schedule meant adults, teenagers, and young children milled about, all within earshot of these two men. I was nearby preparing to coach my own team. Regardless of our wishes, we all secured tickets to this impromptu spectacle.

Their shouting match hadn’t emerged from nothing, of course. I had seen how the civility of some supporters frayed as the game marched towards its shootout climax. I had noticed how the flow of supporters from both teams converged as they exited the field after the game, a recipe for barbed comments and post-game fireworks. The spectacle I witnessed that afternoon felt like the inevitable culmination of many small moments.¹

I hope we can agree that such a spectacle has no place in sports, let alone youth sports. And yet, I’ve observed similar spectacles. I’ve seen clusters of parents from opposing teams get into shouting matches during a game. I’ve seen parents and coaches yell at referees for “bad” calls. I’ve seen coaches berate their players. All within an environment whose main purpose is supposedly for kids to have fun.

I doubt anyone wants these spectacles to occur. So why do they? I think it’s because sport creates a cocktail of stakes and emotion for coaches, spectators, and athletes. Every touch of the ball, swing of a racquet, step, throw, or jump is a moment in a tug-of-war between competitors. Everyone wants to win. But sport is abundant with challenges: tough opponents, silly mistakes, and calls that make us want to bring a referee to an optometrist.. Mixed together, this cocktail triggers spectacles.

I’m not surprised when athletes struggle to maintain composure in the face of this cocktail.² I see it all the time in my own adolescent athletes (and have continued to see it while writing this essay). Trying to perform your best while also not wanting to fail and look like a fool to their peers isn’t easy. External frustrations such as referee calls and opponent behavior only compound the difficulty of handling the stressors of sport with grace. This doesn’t mean I give my athletes a pass on their actions, but it does invite compassion from me as their coach.

The standard must be different for adults. My raison d’être in youth sports is simple: support the development of our kids and create an environment for them to have fun competing. These are the two pillars on which youth sports should stand. As a coach, I place them above winning. Don’t get me wrong: I love winning and strive to do so every day. But winning is a byproduct of competing, a much more useful habit that I try to instill in my athletes. You don’t have full control over winning, but you always have full control over the effort you give in every moment. In other words, you control how hard you compete.

What undermines this development? Adult spectacles in youth sports. When the two men made a scene after the soccer game, they sent a message to all kids within earshot: this is how we act after a game. When the coach of the losing team vented to a referee about a missed call following a game-tying goal, he sent a message to his athletes: it’s okay to waste precious mental energy on complaining to a referee who will never overturn the goal. What messages do we want to send our athletes?

Our actions set the standard for kids in youth sports. As spectators, parents, or coaches, we can support our athletes’ development or we can undermine it. When I’m coaching, I ride a rollercoaster of emotions like anyone else. But expressing it helps nobody. Worse, I set a bad example for my athletes and distract them from their task. My job as a coach is to help them focus on the game, improve themselves, and have fun. Nowhere does my job description say, “complain to the referee and/or scream from the sidelines throughout a game.” I’m not perfect, but this is the standard I strive towards.

Sports offer wonderful opportunities for growth and development through challenges and camaraderie. If I want to provide these for my athletes, I can’t get sucked into the emotional pull of sports. That means no yelling at referees, no emotional explosions to the athletes, and always a focus on their objective. The same applies to parents.

Every adult is a role model in youth sports, especially parents and coaches. We must take that duty seriously. If not, youth sports is simply entertainment for adults. That’s unacceptable to me. We should never find ourselves shouting violent threats to each other after a game between young kids. We can—and must—do better.

In 1921, Lewis Fry Richardson wasn’t satisfied with the current state of weather forecasting. His criticism of the paradigm was fundamental: it relied on pattern-matching instead of modeling the physics of the atmosphere. In the preface of his book Weather Prediction By Numerical Process, which would go on to revolutionize how meteorologists forecast the weather, he described the dominant approach:

The process of forecasting, which has been carried on in London for many years, may be typified by one of its latest developments, namely Col. E. Gold’s Index of Weather Maps. It would be difficult to imagine anything more immediately practical. The observing stations telegraph the elements of present weather. At the head office these particulars are set in their places upon a large-scale map. The index then enables the forecaster to find a number of previous maps which resemble the present one. The forecast is based on the supposition that what the atmosphere did then, it will do again now. There is no troublesome calculation, with its possibilities of theoretical or arithmetical error. The past history of the atmosphere is used, so to speak, as a full-scale working model of its present self.

Richardson, as well as meteorologists Cleveland Abbe and Vilhelm Bjerknes, wanted to infuse the discipline of meteorology with a more scientific approach. Indeed, Abbe wrote in 1901 that the predictions, “merely represent the direct teachings of experience; they are generalizations based upon observations but into which physical theories have as yet entered in only a superficial manner if at all.”

It was halftime in a close tournament finals. My basketball players gulped water and breathed heavily. It was our fourth game in two days. But we were here, vying for a championship just a week after a disappointing early tournament exit. We were so close, yet there was still work to do.

I spoke before they returned to the court¹. “Guys, we have one last half, and I know we can do this. We can’t control if we win. The other team has just as much of a right to this game. But what we can control is how much energy we bring on defense, how smart we play on offense. We can control how mentally engaged we stay throughout every possession, every minute, and every shift. Are you ready to do it?”

They were. We won the game and the tournament.

As a coach, I was super proud to see my players band together and win. But I’m also aware that we could have lost. Some unlucky bounces, a few clutch shots from the other team, or our opponents maintaining their energy for longer could have made the difference. If any of these had happened, what would I have thought of my team?

I’d be just as proud, because they reached a new level of performance. Becoming champions was sweet, but it wasn’t necessary. Losing would have hurt because I’m competitive at heart², yet what thrilled me is that we did everything to put ourselves in the best position for success. Winning was just a marker of our growth, not the growth itself. In my view, this is what we should be seeking with most youth sports (and probably many other pursuits).

Take care of the conditions, and the conditions will take care of the outcomes.

There are experiences, commitments, environments, people, and roles which will grow your identity. There are also those that will shrink it. You won’t know which you will get in advance, but here are a few points to consider:

First, the larger your identity’s radius, the more resilient you will be in the face of setbacks. For example, if I’m struggling in my work, I can turn to my sports coaching as a way to relieve stress. But if I’m only ever working, then a setback looms large in my life. A larger radius protects against this. That being said, you can have too large of a radius, where you stretch every minute of your life to a pursuit, which gives you little room for margin. The result isn’t resilience, but brittleness.

Second, growing your identity’s radius through volunteering has done wonders in my life. It embeds me within my local community and gives me a sense of satisfaction independent from my professional work. As a coach for teenagers, I can assure you none of my players care if I’m struggling in my work. I need to be there for them, and that’s it!

Third, your identity’s radius is dynamic. You can always change it, and it will sometimes change on its own depending on the seasons of your life. A stressor can warp a small radius and make you only focus on it. A new opportunity can expand the space of possibilities for your identity. The challenge is keeping your radius large enough to not collapse under stressors but small enough such that you still have margin. In my experience, neither parts of the inequality are easy to achieve.

It’s natural that my identity’s radius will need shrink if I need to focus in a particular period of my life. But I try to remind myself that this is intentional and it has an end. Without an end date, I’m setting myself up for a miserable time.

When I get the balance right though, it feels like living on easy mode and makes me grateful for the opportunities I get in life.

I was almost seventeen, not an arts and crafts kind of guy, and wasn’t looking to repair anything. So you can imagine my surprise when I unwrapped a bottle of glue as a gift.

This also wasn’t from some kind but clueless family member; it was from my two soccer coaches at the end of the season. In fact, they had gotten a gift for each of my teammates, and we were opening them one by one.

Though my expression likely betrayed my puzzlement, I do have manners. What I probably did was begin making a fool of myself by inspecting the glue like it was a rare and valuable treasure. Thankfully, my coaches took pity on me and presented me their actual gift:

“We got you glue because you hold the team together.”

A decade later, I still remember the feeling of my coaches really seeing me. I wasn’t great at soccer, I was just an athlete who could run a ton. But my coaches hadn’t missed me communicating on the field, nor the effort I gave each time I was on the field. They hadn’t missed how I cared about leading my team. They saw.

My coaches could have just congratulated us on the season and that would have been fine. It would have been expected. Instead, they went further. They may have bought us physical gifts, but what they really gave us was the gift of noticing.

You can’t buy what my coaches gave me. It requires time, care, and investment in your players to even gather the raw materials to create this gift. As a coach now, they are the archetype I choose to follow.

The half-life of the memories of what a coach does on the playing field may be short, but the half-life of such a gift can endure for years. It has for me.

Thank you Mohammad Khan, Dylan Kurt, and Josh Knox for feedback on this essay.