QC, THAT'S WHERE!
QC, THAT'S WHERE!
Gary Thrapp: The power of youth sports and the strategies to make the most of the wonder years
The most profound truth about youth sports might just surprise you. For Gary Thrapp, founder of Beyond the Baseline and veteran coach with 40 years of experience, it's not about trophies or championships—it's about relationships. "I don't remember wins, losses, much of anything," Thrapp reveals, "but I remember the commitment and what's really cool is now my kids, who are parents themselves, remember that and are teaching it to their children."
This powerful revelation anchors our conversation with Thrapp, who has witnessed the evolution of youth sports across four decades. Having managed approximately 50,000 games in basketball, volleyball, and wrestling, he brings unparalleled perspective to the challenges facing today's young athletes and their families. His facility, Beyond the Baseline, began with a simple mission: creating local opportunities for kids to compete without extensive travel. That vision has expanded into community-focused programming that ensures sports remain accessible to all children, regardless of financial circumstances.
Thrapp's recently published book, "The Wild World of Youth Sports," distills over 150 strategies for parents and coaches navigating this complex landscape. He emphasizes how coaching approaches must adapt to today's digital environment, advocating communication WITH children rather than AT them. "With the power of social media and the pressure our kids are feeling, youth sports is a great way to release from that," Thrapp explains, highlighting the mental health benefits athletics provide. His innovative events—including a free "Give It a Try" program exposing kids to seven different sports in one morning—exemplify his commitment to expanding athletic opportunities for underserved youth.
What separates exceptional coaches from merely good ones? According to Thrapp, it's understanding that winning games doesn't necessarily indicate heading in the right direction. This "fool's gold" perspective on victory challenges parents to look deeper at their children's athletic experiences. Whether you're a parent considering sports for your child, a coach seeking to make a meaningful impact, or someone passionate about community development, Thrapp's insights offer a refreshing perspective on what truly matters in youth sports: building relationships that last a lifetime.
The Wild World of Youth Sports is available here.
Click or tap here to connect with Gary Thrapp on social media, learn more about Beyo
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Now, at 60 years, 61 years old, I don't remember wins, losses, much anything, but I remember the commitment and what's really cool is now my kids who are two of them now parents remember that and teaching that to their kids as well. So just that commitment that it took and that is so huge. So the one thing use U Sports to build a lifelong relationship with your child every day. That's what it's for.
Speaker 3:Where do you find a family of communities connected by the storied Mississippi River, where young explorers and dreamers, investors and entrepreneurs thrive? Where can you connect with real people living and creating in a place that's as genuine as it is quirky QC? That's where.
Speaker 2:Welcome to QC. That's where I'm your host, katrina, and today I'm talking to Gary Thrapp, beyond the Baseline. Owner and recent author. So, gary, thank you so much for talking to me today.
Speaker 1:Good afternoon.
Speaker 2:Good afternoon. So we are talking in early July 2025, if you're listening in the future, hello. So, gary, you've been in the sports landscape for decades. You've been a coach for 40 years. You opened Beyond the Baseline what 20 years ago or so? Before we get into anything, I want to hear just how did you get into, like, the sports realm? What started it all for you?
Speaker 1:I actually, when I was at college I was asked by one of my friends if he wanted to, if I wanted to help him coach a youth baseball team. So I had played sports, you know, but hadn't really coached. So that was so much fun I was only what, 20 years old or whatever and had so much fun coaching the younger generation that I wanted to really stick with that. So spent, you know, ever since then, 40 years later, have coached a variety of different sports and a variety of different kids.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, has it been primarily youth collegiate, a variety that you've been working with?
Speaker 1:I'm not smart enough to coach college, so I stick with the kids, because then I look more important, don't you think?
Speaker 2:The kids don't know what they don't know right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, actually, they teach me more than I teach them, quite honestly.
Speaker 2:That's fair. I have two little boys of my own and the things I, the things I learned throughout the day about life and everything else is yeah it's beyond, but so that's awesome. So I want to talk a little bit about beyond the baseline, so primarily youth sports. What kinds of groups, what kinds of coaching all happens there.
Speaker 1:We really do a lot of community-based stuff there because we really are trying to dig into helping anybody that's interested in sports participate. You can spend so much money these days, and you know, looking for different opportunities to play. My wife and I personally have spent probably the equivalent of a college education for each of our kids, you know, trying to help them be prepared for high school and college, so we get that. So it's very important to give every kid an opportunity to compete, regardless of whether they have the financial backing or not. So that's our primary focus right now.
Speaker 2:Have you had like a favorite type of sport or favorite moments in your years that beyond the baseline that you've been working with?
Speaker 1:Wow, do you have like six hours to talk, or what?
Speaker 2:This is our podcast. Gary, we can talk as long as you want.
Speaker 1:Oh gosh. So there's so many moments, I mean you spree, you. Sports brings out so many cool opportunities and so many, uh, I've learned so much from kids on you know the right way to do things, maybe the wrong way to do things. So yeah, it's, it's amazing.
Speaker 2:The people who work within, Beyond the Baseline, you know, is there like a philanthropic kind of background or like just sport, a love for sports Like what? What are you seeing as far as the people who are helping you on this mission?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I have really been, have been able to partner with people that love kids. They love helping kids help them go from point A to point B. They're not. You know we all want to win, right? That's so much of the purpose for playing is try to help kids learn how to win at different things. But our group of adults really enjoy helping kids improve in a lot of different ways, not just a sport that they're playing, but if they're struggling at school, struggling at home, you know have different issues that they're dealing with. These days it's so difficult to grow up with social media and you know so much pressure out there in the world that we're trying to be there to help them progress. So that's our main focus.
Speaker 2:So you've got a ton of experience. You know, like you said, you learn just as much, if not more, from these kids as you're able to share with them, and so I have to imagine that all of this knowledge base was the premise and crux of the wild world of youth sports. Can you talk about that book and what's inside?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I guess I was smart enough to take notes, starting 30 years ago, on different things that you know. I was very noticeable and put it all together with the main purpose of trying to help the young parent, young coach, have strategies to succeed, helping their child use youth sports to not only to be a great teammate, a great player of the sport, but also help them develop a strong foundation to live a long and and a prosperous life. So that's the main thing. And then another element of the book is to really try to solve that issue. What can we do to help? What can we do together as people to help youth sports improve for everyone, not just our child, but every child. So it has, you know, different elements of that and I broke it down into 150 strategies, a few more than 150 on specific things that we can do to succeed at that.
Speaker 2:Not to give away kind of like you know the whole index of what's inside the book, but like what? What is the answer? What is an answer to that question? What can we do, like you know, as coaches or mentors or just guardians? What can we do to help kids just succeed and prosper in whatever sport they're trying to get involved into?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think one of the biggest things these days, with the power of social media and how our kids are baited, just to watch click after click after click. One thing we need to do better as adults is to communicate with them, not to them. You know, the traditional coaching style is do it my way and I'm going to talk with you on how you do it. I've been the most successful coaching this generation by asking a lot of questions, by getting to know them, building those relationships and then taking what they're experiencing if this makes sense and help them take that next step in a simple sport. So, yeah, it's a whole different approach, I think, than what I grew up with. We used to just show up and the coach told us what to do. Now we need to work with the kids a little bit more and help them progress.
Speaker 2:So let me ask is that a product of like society changing and generations being different from the next? Or is that a product of like us just learning better techniques as coaches?
Speaker 1:I maybe a little bit of both, but I will say, with the power of social media, the pressure that our kids are feeling right now and the you know that input of information they're getting nonstop, a lot of it negative. I mean, if I grew up today, who knows where I would be right now? Because we were not exposed to things like that at an early age and our kids first, second, third grade are getting exposed to so many difficult things that youth sports is just a great way to release from that and that's kind of how we have to look at it as and do a better job as adults to use you sports as a great learning experience for our kids.
Speaker 2:That's a cool point. The thing that, like you know, it's like a mom that scared me about seeing social media grow and change rapidly and expand. Like, my kids are super young and they already know how to like, get on a phone and get into apps and things that, like, I didn't even know how they functioned or that I had, you know, on my phone. So, like, not only like, are they accessing things that you know it's so much harder to lock down you have to just make sure that you're on it. You know the locks, the parental controls and all of that and stuff. But, like, the thing that's always scared me is like they're going to have access to literally every bit of information somewhere somehow, and it's a lot and it's overwhelming, you know.
Speaker 2:So, having that piece of you know, being able to involve yourself in a sport at a young age is is a good way to, like you said, have a you know, a release, something to occupy yourself, to focus on. But then there's also the element of social media that's inevitable. About the comparison, you know, it's like how magazines used to be Do I look or do I? Am I doing the things that these models in the magazines are doing? It's like you know what are kids my age, or you know people doing or experiencing, and I'm constantly in that constant comparison mode. You know that's something that coaches or you know guardians or parents have to be able to step in and go hey, what you're seeing in all these places may not be reality. And even if it is, you know you're running your own race, so to speak.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and this is where we need to improve greatly. And you're right by being fearful of that. As a young parent, we need to ask more questions than how are you doing today? And if they say great, we just kind of okay, let's move on. No, we need to ask more questions.
Speaker 1:That's one thing I was smart enough to do when I was, you know, when my four kids were younger was not just be happy with a yeah, everything's great answer. It was more hey, what happened at school today? Who'd you talk to? I asked 20 questions, 10 different directions, to find out what they were thinking and what they were experiencing. What they were thinking and what they were experiencing and with the mental health crisis we have in our nation now, with our young people getting exposed to so much information, this is vital that we use youth sports to take that approach with our kids. Every practice, every game they attend, what did you see? I know what I saw if I was there, but I want to know what you saw as a young person. That can be so different. And then our teaching moments there are. Ok, now let's take what you saw and let's take that next step, If that makes sense, rather than hey, I'm the adult, I know what I'm doing. Listen to me and you'll be fine. That approach does not work. Maybe as well as it used to.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's for sure, Help me break down the title. So the wild world of youth sports, Tell me, like if I've not yet, you know, entered the world of youth sports, my kids aren't in sports yet. Or maybe I never had experience like what is wild about youth sports.
Speaker 1:go through that well, one element of is of it is the adults involved, having I estimated over the last 19 years that I've managed about 50,000 games both basketball, volleyball, wrestling in the last 19 years alone. So I so I've witnessed the good, the bad and the ugly in youth sports, and it can get wild. And one thing in particular that has become very clear to me over the years is that what happens out in our communities, what happens outside of youth sports our frustrations, our difficulties so often plays out while we're watching our child compete in a sport, if that makes sense. So you know, when I'm working daily with people during events and something frustrating happens, or they get an argument or something of that nature, and I start to deal with that and try to slow it down. So often they were mad before they walked in, if that makes sense. And so those types of de-escalation strategies are so huge in youth sports, and so that's part of the wild world of youth sports is to learn how to deal with those things when they happen.
Speaker 1:It's very easy to go on social media and hear people complaining about man. You know what happened in that baseball game this weekend. These people wouldn't let a 15-year-old umpire alone, they just kept yelling at them. All right, did you help slow it down or did you just sit there and shake your head? So you know, we have to take a little bit more active, positive role to make, to help you sports improve for everyone. That's not easy to do and there's, you know, I do include strategies in there, and it's not only for the, you know, the parent, but anybody who's interested in helping you sports improve.
Speaker 2:So yeah, yeah, I could see you know kind of coming on to whether you're a coach or a ref or something you know, involving yourself into a sport. I, you know, I can see those. There's psychology behind it and there's, you know, just societal differences behind it and I can see people easily throwing their hands up and going. I didn't sign up for this. I signed up to help kids learn how to play soccer or, you know, or something, something like that. And so having a resource from someone like yourself, who you know is decades in the making of you know, experience and situations and 50,000 events and growing, what a great, what a great tangible resource. To just go, I'm not alone. Crack open the book, take a look at someone who's walked the road before.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's really what I enjoy doing is try to share, you know, things that have worked for me and things that I've seen work for other people. I do that every time I, you know, coach a practice with our kids that you know. I just try to not be so much a preacher of here's how you do it, but more they're helping everyone head in a good direction, including myself. I'm constantly looking in the, looking in the mirror as a parent, grandparent, coach, mentor. What can I do better? My gosh, you know, when you take that approach number one, it's amazing how you can change the world right.
Speaker 2:I love that. So have you been in the Quad Cities your whole life.
Speaker 1:My wife grew up in the Quad Cities. We met at the University of Iowa and our plan was she was a little bit smarter than me, don't tell her I said that but our plan was whoever got a job first, that's the direction we would head. She happened to get a job in the Quad Cities, so that's where we stabilized our lives, so to speak.
Speaker 2:And yeah, Did you know going in? Okay, we're going to go wherever the first opportunity strikes. Did you know that a facility and a mission like Beyond the Baseline was going to be in your future, that you were going to be doing that?
Speaker 1:Heck, no, no clue, Literally. I just got really involved in youth sports. Our kids were actively involved in basketball as one of their sports and we noticed over the summer if we wanted to get any games whatsoever, we had to travel to get them, whether it was Milwaukee, Chicago or not anywhere much around our area that offered that. So you know, when I heard that our facility came up for sale, it was an old college. Then I'm like, well, let's go give it a try, See, you know, let's go take a look at it. So I ended up working out and 19 years later, look how smart I am.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's amazing. What was the college that it used to be?
Speaker 1:Marycrest College yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, gotcha, I'm not a native of the Quad Cities. I've lived here basically my whole adult life and I've got relatives who we always came and visited, so I'm very familiar with all the QC history to an extent.
Speaker 3:And.
Speaker 2:And I haven't heard of that one, but I wondered if it was something in my brain, but no, it wasn't. But, but that's, that's awesome. So you literally were like it was like a means to an end. You you needed to solve a problem.
Speaker 1:That and I was literally just looking for a place for my kids. I was looking for a garage I would drive around. My wife and I have been in real estate in our community for about 30 years, and so I was literally going around looking for a garage to have our own kids have a place to, you know, a batting cage and shoot around a little bit in the wintertime, and ended up with a 30,000 square foot gymnasium. Smart move right.
Speaker 2:That's. That's excellent and, like you know, that investment so many years ago into a community that's only grown since then has contributed eons to like we were talking earlier today about just our group business. Visit Quad Cities. You know, recruiting business recruiting group business Over half is sports related and so your facility has helped boost that. You know people can now come here. People who are here can stay here, people who you know want to have a tournament can come here thanks to what you've opened.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's interesting that when you follow what you do, what's going to be interesting is to see what the landscape is like in 20, 30 years, because massive youth sports facilities are developing all across the country, and so it'll be interesting to see what that means. Does that mean our quality will necessarily go up? You know? Are kids getting better at sports because of it, or you know it's hard to say. So it's going to be interesting what you know what the landscape looks like in 20 years.
Speaker 2:What's your take on like how the Quad Cities is competitively positioned to attract and retain youth sports?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's really like any business that you do. The one thing about youth sports is in business. It's not like going in and buying a pair of shoes. It's one of those things. Someone, when they leave our building, either won a game or lost a game. Someone, when they leave our building, either won a game or lost a game. So imagine being in business where 50% of your customers tend to be a little frustrated when they leave. You couldn't run too many businesses like that, right. So you got to do those extra things to help build relationships with people and to give them a reason to come back, and I've been able to capitalize on that. Not that we do everything perfectly, by any stretch of the imagination, but for any community we're geographically in a good spot. How are we taking care of the people that come here to play? That's the huge question. That's the question anybody asks in business, right. How are we taking care of our customers? So it's a little bit more challenging, like I mentioned in new sports, but it's doable.
Speaker 2:What's an answer to that? What's an example of what you can or have done to ease the pain a little bit on a group that came in and did lose or, you know, didn't have the championship experience that they had hoped. You know that kind of thing whether or not, whether or not they enjoyed their time in the QC is a totally different issue. But like physically walking out a little disappointed.
Speaker 1:Well, that's a challenge, especially if it costs so much to participate.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because you know having a high cost might pay the bills, but it doesn't necessarily.
Speaker 1:Well, that's a challenge, especially if it costs so much to participate. Yeah, because you know, having a high cost might pay the bills, but it doesn't necessarily help you build a relationship with your customer. And what I see is that there are so many people out there so drained of money, they know what it costs to participate and they're stretched thin. And so then, when you combine that with the uncertainty of, okay, how do I make sure my child is in a good situation? How do I make sure that the money I'm spending is going correctly, if I'm spending it wisely? And that's another reason why I made the Wild World of Youth Sports is to try to help the young parent give good strategies to make sure their money is being spent wisely. So that's one of those things. It's very difficult because new teams in any sport are developed twice a year maybe, and these are people that come together that may not have been together, so so many different things can play out while they're watching their kid compete. It's a constant challenge.
Speaker 1:That's not easy to stay on top of, and it takes a lot of empathy, takes a lot of care. People have to trust that you care about their experience and that's not easy to do in half a day, right, or in a day. So this is a huge challenge that we need to be really good at in a variety of ways to be able to communicate that to parents and to our customers and to our staffing, be on the same page on what our purpose is and that's one of my motivations now is to help utilize my experience in a variety of different ways to help other communities. You know, put on good events and what have you so?
Speaker 2:what like speaking in the Quad Cities and the partnership you know that we have with Beyond the Baseline and the relationship that parents have with Beyond the Baseline and other facilities that help foster youth sports. What can I do as a parent and a community member or a Quad citizen do to help support the growth and success of youth sports in this region?
Speaker 1:Well, that's a tricky question. Number one you want to focus on helping your child be in good situations. Number two we need leaders in charge of events to understand what our purpose is. It's not just grabbing the money when it walks in and then paying our bills. It's more okay. What are we doing here? What's the purpose of this? And are we taking care of our customer properly? And defining what that means is difficult. How are we handling issues when they happen? That's another question. Another huge thing we've got to focus on as well or at least I do, when you know I'm confronted with a variety of different situations. So it's really building relationships a lot. It's understanding what our purpose is in youth sports, why we're doing it that type of thing. Now you got me all wound up.
Speaker 2:Me too. Tell me now about the three events before we started recording. You were telling me a little bit about the three events that you helped put on the, the, the shootout, the all-star and then the give it a try event. So start with with the shootout. Tell me all about that and what that?
Speaker 1:yeah uh, it's, uh, it's a varsity girls basketball uh event and it's in january of every year and my two daughters actually played in it when blackhawk college uh used to manage it, used to run it. They started it several years ago and, uh, all of a sudden I heard maybe I don't even remember seven or eight years ago that they were going to discontinue doing it. So then, since my daughters played, and it was such a huge event for our area, I felt for female sports that I decided to reach out to the schools and reach out to, you know, augustana, mike Sapolsky over there, and keep it going. So I literally got that to happen within a couple of weeks, thankfully. So that's one event. We're up to now, 28 teams in total, 14 games. We play at Augustana College and Wharton Fieldhouse and it's awesome, I love, I love doing it.
Speaker 2:Logistically. There's so much that goes into it and the fact that you were able to kind of pick it up and run with it and make it happen so quickly, seeing the need, is super impressive and it just goes to show like the passion and the heart that you had behind that. And so the all-star event was that kind of a similar situation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was basically when I started at beyond the baseline. I looked for needs that we had out in our community. What, uh, what is missing? What can we add? I didn't try to take business from other places, I just tried to say, hey, what could we use? Yeah, and one thing that wasn't happening was an Iowa versus Illinois all-star volleyball event. So I started that about 10 or 11 years ago just to highlight, you know, more female athletes that were striving to be the best, and it's been very successful and just love having watching the best compete. I not only love having our free programs where we help kids who may be in second, third, fourth grade that don't have the money to compete at a high level yet, but I love watching the best compete as well. So we try to combine that all in one location a little bit and it's awesome. I just love doing it.
Speaker 2:I bet that one's high energy like competitive rivalry wise.
Speaker 1:It really, really is now. I was one, every one of them. Illinois has never won, in fact illinois I think it's only won a couple sets.
Speaker 1:So illinois, we got to get. We got to do a better job over there. But it is amazing how much better volleyball has gotten in our community over the years. But at the same, at the same time, it's also amazing and I keep saying this just because it's true Uh, we need to do a better job at helping our athletes who don't have a lot of money to get involved in the elite programs um have an opportunity to compete. So that's why I started. Which is even my bigger passion is our free programs to help our kids get started in a sport and try to prime that pump and and plant those seeds to be great.
Speaker 2:And that that piece aligns with the give it a try event.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Tell me about that one, that one.
Speaker 1:Well, see, one thing I love doing is is researching what other areas do across the country, and if we're missing it, I'll start it.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:I feel like I can and I noticed in some other areas that people were doing give it a try events for kids who don't have an opportunity to try stuff. So I'm like, hey, let's see, I've got a location. Now I just got to get some sports in there. We ended up having seven or eight sports, about 70 kids there in our first one here last March. So we're doing that every year, Worked with some quality local groups. I didn't come up with anything new necessarily myself in that regard, but we had some awesome people doing great things that we got them all together and put kids, give them the opportunity to play seven different sports in one morning. So it was awesome.
Speaker 2:I literally they, they come to a location and like it's like like stations you do this for a certain amount of time. Go to the next one.
Speaker 1:Yep, we had archery, we had golf, we had boxing, we had track. We had archery, we had golf, we had boxing, we had track, we had basketball, volleyball, a little workout, yeah, it was, it was awesome.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you see, any kids come into that, or parents come into that with one expectation, thinking I'm here to try X and I left loving Y and Z.
Speaker 1:A little bit. Yeah, kids, you could really see. Having worked with kids for so long, you could really see their minds kind of trying to figure this out. They had never swung a club before, sure, or pulled an arrow back before. They're like what is going to happen and just watching the young mind experience. That was so cool and what motivates me the most, of course, is to that you might be priming one person to be great at it sometime down the road. That's just how this works, right, so that's so much fun. So we look forward to doing that, all you know, every year.
Speaker 2:That's. That's a really interesting type of outreach because, like the you know, the school's PE classes can really only cover so much, right.
Speaker 1:Like.
Speaker 2:I'm from Michigan, but I'm fairly certain they don't teach archery or boxing for that matter. You know, at the public schools. I mean I could be wrong, so no hate mail please. But you know there's all these different interesting types of sports and there's all these interesting groups and clubs and like leagues in the community and in other. You know other communities too. Like you said, you research all the time but like it's all out there and you just you'll never know if you or your child or you know someone that you uh guardian over would like it or take to it, unless they get a chance to go and do something like give it a try.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, and we just try to add two things. We have so many good PE teachers in our community that do different things. I was over at the East Moline School at Glenview and the PE teacher there had the kids playing just little short pickleball little game and they were having the greatest time, and you know. So there is that element out there, especially with the creative PE teachers. But at the same time you can never do enough of this stuff for kids and it was just so much fun yeah for sure Is there.
Speaker 2:Is there a sport you kind of mentioning pickleball got me kind of on this Is there a sport that you are seeing creeping up as it's getting bigger? You know, something that maybe a decade ago wasn't really on people's radar.
Speaker 1:Girls wrestling, oh okay, that seems to be doing pretty good and it's pretty awesome to see these kids, you know, and now that's a good thing, but at the same time it's you know, you see, girls basketball maybe not doing as well as it used to 10 years ago, so it's kind of a give and take a little bit. But yeah, that pickleball is doing really well. I mean, we have a group of retired people that come in and play pickleball regularly. So I mean that's something, that's one of those lifelong sports that once you enjoy it you can play the rest of your life. So that's pretty cool.
Speaker 2:So walk me through. You know beyond the baseline. Tell me about the facility Like what's? How has it evolved over the last? You know 19, 20 years and what. What do you guys have if I'm walking in for the first time?
Speaker 1:I have the need to have somebody mop the floor. Can you do that?
Speaker 2:Yes, I'll be right there. I use Swiffers, but I'll see you at four.
Speaker 1:Wait, is it four o'clock? No, it's just an old building. Quite honestly, it's in a part of the community that I love being in. A lot of our kids can walk there and participate there and participate it's, you know, just four courts of. You know madness sometimes, but I like to use it to help kids. The thing about youth sports, like basketball, like volleyball we have a little bit of an advantage over, maybe, school, because kids who may not want to go to school want to come and play a sport, if that makes sense. So now, while they're coming in, we have their ear a little bit more and we motivate them to be the best student, and so youth sports is an awesome way to use kids' enthusiasm to help them become the complete teammate, so to speak that I like to say and also a great student, a great citizen with a future that they feel like they're in charge of.
Speaker 2:If you could offer one piece of advice to you know, say, a young parent who's thinking about getting their kids into sports, or a young coach who is kind of coming online trying to teach something that they love, what would that piece of advice be?
Speaker 1:Buy that book behind me.
Speaker 2:Now, that's the answer I was looking for, that's all you need.
Speaker 1:In fact, gosh, darn it. I might have one for you if you want one, ben. But yeah, seriously, that's what that was designed for. But I will say probably the biggest thing that, because there's a lack of knowledge on what approaches to take in youth sports, so often we rely on whether we won the last game or not to decide whether we're heading in a good direction. And that's like fool's gold in youth sports.
Speaker 1:Winning a game or losing a game does not mean you're heading in a good direction. Now, obviously, if you won a game, you feel a little bit better, right, but who'd you play? I mean you can ask a variety of different questions. There's so many teams out there. So, unfortunately, with the lack of knowledge that we have out there on what good coaching is, what bad coaching is, what our best approach is, then we will rely on whether we want our game or not, on whether we want to keep going that direction, and that's one of those things that I try to steer people away from. Some people have the absolute best coach right now and they lose half their games, and so it's hard, and then so many parents are willing to drop that because they think they can win more games than another team. So that's a difficult thing, that's not an easy. That's not an easy thing to overcome. That's not an easy, that's not an easy thing to overcome.
Speaker 2:There's so many like life lessons that I think coaches accidentally leave behind in their, in their kids. Like you know, I was a runner, basically from middle school on through college and had a variety of coaches. Some I clicked with, some I didn't, and that's all fine. But regardless of you know whether I always respected them, you know whether they, whether I felt like they were giving me advice I wanted to hear or not, you know it's like I feel like I could pluck something from each of them that they literally accidentally left behind.
Speaker 2:And you know one, one of my coaches in college, he, just he really, and you know we we would practice early in the morning but he would really just hound us like this is so simple. But like, be on time, be on time, be early. If you're not 10 minutes early, you're late in my eyes and you know it was like 6am so we're going like okay, sure, but you know that translated not just into sports and not just into preparedness and working hard. It translated into, like you know, your first job interview. It translated into he was really instilling a life lesson, that he was just trying to get us to practice on time, you know and to get things started and just to really show us, like, how can we be a solid team in this very simple way, and it's something I draw from constantly today.
Speaker 1:And that's awesome, because now look at you as a young parent. You can take things that coaches may not have done very well and you can fix that for your child a little bit better. You can take the things that motivated you and transfer that to your kids as well. So it gives you that extra edge when you were so dug in to use sports and that's what I've always tried to do. I can remember to this day and I'm old who motivated me when I was young to get better and who demotivated me, and I could look down on the ones who demotivated me.
Speaker 1:But I don't. I stay positive and I say I'm going to use that experience to help the next generation. And the more we take that approach, you know, the more opportunity we have to make positive impact in a variety of different ways. So not everybody's going to be coachable the same way. There are so many different approaches out there. We have to take that mentality, that we take any experience that we had whether we're a parent watching our kids play and try to turn that into a positive learning experience for our kids.
Speaker 2:So I asked you a question earlier that you didn't quite answer, and I'm gonna ask you again and we're not getting until you answer my question. Decades of decades of coaching experience, things that you've seen, tens of thousands of events. Do you have that one moment, that one highlight, that's just like, ah, this is why we're here.
Speaker 1:It's now looking in the eyes of my kids and knowing I was there every day, working with them to get better. That's the only thing. Now, at 60 years, 61 years old, I don't remember wins, losses, much anything, but I remember the commitment and what's really cool is now my kids who are two of them now parents remember that and teaching that to their kids as well. So just that commitment that it took and that is so huge. So the one thing use youth sports to build a lifelong relationship with your child every day. That's what it's for.
Speaker 2:That is so true. And now that you say that, like I think back to the, I think I was a, you know, competitive runner for, like you know, a dozen years or so and, yeah, like hundreds of meets, you know hundreds of races, track, cross country. Out in my mind is when I was in high school, particularly like freshman, sophomore year, before I could drive, before I could do things on my own, we had summer running schedules we had to do to prepare and my dad, like two, three times a week, would drive me up to the track and we would run three miles together and if he didn't want to do the three miles with me, he would do his own sprints or whatever workout in the middle. But he was there with me while I was doing my runs and getting my miles in. And that's the first thing that comes to mind, which is so cool. It was that commitment, it was that very hands-on one-on-one. I'm with you, I'm supporting you approach. That is the first thing I remember.
Speaker 1:Isn't that awesome. I mean, you may not remember that many wins or losses while you were running, but you remember that love and that commitment. And this is what motivates me even more as a quad citizen is to provide opportunities for kids who may not have a strong adult at home, a strong dad at home, and still give them opportunities to succeed. And that's not easy to do, because nothing replaces a parent that's there every single day and that's a tough part, but I'm inspired and motivated to work with any kids that and it's so much fun to share a smile with a kid when they achieve something and you help them do it, regardless of whose child it is. And that motivates me now to no end is just helping kids smile. And you know probably the most difficult thing that youth sports helps you achieve I don't know if it's difficult or not, but the amazing thing I'm going to warn you when you help a lot of kids, you know what it ends up having you do.
Speaker 2:What.
Speaker 1:Say I love you to more people.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah.
Speaker 1:Now I'm going to cry. Look what you did. I got to slow down.
Speaker 2:That makes so much. I mean your capacity to love and see the other side and help and help people grow is expanding. The more kids, the more families that you touch yeah the more kids, the more families that you touch.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I wouldn't change it for anything.
Speaker 2:It's so much fun helping kids, helping families and what have you. So this was so great, gary. Seriously, I can't thank you enough for for giving us the time, and I am very, very excited to check out the wild world of youth sports. I definitely. If you can't, if you're not watching the YouTube version, if you're listening to this on audio it's behind Gary's right shoulder and I've been staring at it this entire podcast so excited to read it.
Speaker 1:I'm not so stupid, am I?
Speaker 2:I see this setup. It was very it was very professional. It's the details that matter.
Speaker 1:I'm slowly learning.
Speaker 2:So, gary, I have a tradition at the end of this podcast you may or may not be aware of.
Speaker 1:I'm going to have you fill in the blank QC. That's where, okay, I'm supposed to do that. You got to help me, don't worry about it. You help me, okay? Okay, so I'll start it. Qc, that's where we have so much diversity.
Speaker 2:And opportunity.
Speaker 1:We did it. That's a good team effort.
Speaker 2:We're a good team, gary. Thank you so much. Where can people get the book from, or is it Amazon?
Speaker 1:Yes, it's on Amazon, Yep.
Speaker 2:Okay, amazing. I will link that in this description. If you want to check it out, click that link, and if you want to learn more about Beyond the Baseline, I'll have the listing also linked in the description here, whether you're on YouTube or you're listening to the audio version, and that's all from me, gary, is there anything that we didn't touch on that you wanted to mention? We could talk for hours but you can't change the world all in like. One hour right, you can solve all the world's problems.
Speaker 3:Thanks for listening to QC. That's when A podcast powered by Visit Quad Cities Text VISITQC to 38314 for insider events, activities and updates sent straight to your phone. That's V-I-S-I-T-Q-C one word to 38314. Message and data rates may apply.
