REFS NEED LOVE TOO
An honest perspective from the 3rd team on the pitch... the referees. Through humor, analysis and education, we are slowly changing how people view referees and officials in all sports. We care and have a love for the game as much as any player or coach. Sometimes even more. Youth soccer (proper football) is a multi-billion $ industry in the US. Tremendous money is spent on players, competitions, travel etc., but almost nothing spent on developing the next generation of referees. I hope that this Podcast inspires, educates and humanizes the next generation of referees for their own development and appreciation from the players, coaches and spectators they need to work alongside.
REFS NEED LOVE TOO
Crazy Soccer Parents! The Path to Healthier Youth Sports
What if the secret to transforming youth soccer wasn't silencing parents, but engaging them properly? In this eye-opening conversation, Skye Eddy, founder of SoccerParenting.com and "The Sideline Project" challenges the conventional wisdom about "crazy soccer parents" and reveals a path forward that benefits everyone in the youth sports ecosystem.
The narrative that parents are the worst part of youth sports has dominated for too long. Skye argues that while the truly problematic parents make up just 4-5% of the population, they've "ruined it for everyone" - driving away referees and coaches while silencing the level-headed majority who fear being judged if they become involved. Through her groundbreaking work, Skye is helping parents distinguish between supportive and distracting behaviors, with remarkable results: 32% report improved relationships with their children after just 15 minutes of training.
We dive deep into the structural problems plaguing youth soccer today - from the "professionalization" of childhood play to the excessive travel and financial burdens placed on families. Skye explains how these pressures create the perfect storm of parental stress that manifests as sideline behavior issues. The conversation takes a fascinating turn as we explore coach-parent dynamics and how establishing proper boundaries and communication channels naturally improves the environment for everyone, including referees.
With over 40,000 people already committed to the Sideline Project Pledge and partnerships with 175+ clubs nationwide, Skye's vision is gaining momentum. Her ultimate goal? A youth sports landscape where parent education is required, coaches are certified in parent engagement, and the focus shifts back to where it belongs: creating positive experiences for children.
Whether you're a referee seeking relief from sideline pressure, a coach struggling with parent relationships, or a parent navigating the complex youth soccer landscape, this conversation offers practical insights that could transform your experience. Join us as we reimagine youth sports from the sidelines up.
Hello and welcome to the Refs Need Love 2 podcast, a show that gives you a real, raw and behind the scenes view of one of the hardest jobs on the pitch the referee. I'm your host, david Gerson, a grassroots referee and certified mentor with over 11 years of experience and 1300 matches under my belt. You can find me at refsne love tocom, on Insta, tik TOK and now YouTube. Today I am joined by sky Eddie no relation to us Soccer's Rick Eddie.
Speaker 1:Sky is the founder of soccer parenting and the sideline project aimed at engaging parents to make youth sports better. Sky is a sought after speaker for parents, coaches, clubs and players. A former professional player, she was a collegiate athlete, a youth All-American goalkeeper, defensive MVP of the NCAA Final Four and a state champion track athlete. Skye has coached extensively at the grassroots, youth and collegiate level. She's an MBA graduate from the University of Richmond Go Spiders, I think. Skye has learned her USFB license the National Goalkeeper license, which is amazing and a coach educator for US Soccer and United Soccer Coaches. Welcome to the pod, skye, eddie. Thank you so much. I'm really excited to be there.
Speaker 2:That sounded like a very long bio. I'm looking forward to the conversation. Oh, no, I'm Thank you so much. I'm really excited to be there. That seemed like a very long bio. I'm looking forward to the conversation, oh no, I'm thrilled to have this conversation.
Speaker 1:I'm so glad that we can be together today. This is obviously. Parents make up a big part of the grassroots reality for referees everywhere, so this is a great conversation to have. As a former NCAA athlete and coach at the collegiate level, did you ever anticipate that parent education would be your mission?
Speaker 2:Oh, you know I get that question or a frame of that question, like what are you doing? Or thank you for doing this, why did you do this? Like, I get that line of question a lot and you know what I have to say with complete clarity. I feel like I'm doing exactly what I'm intended to do with my life, while maybe when I was playing I didn't, but from a very early stage in my coaching, randomly, I was like the one doing the parent meetings at number one camps when I was 19 years old.
Speaker 1:So there was this natural inclination or affinity for connecting with parents around the child, sporting experience for sure, again, I feel like I've read in your bio as well that you've also I guess this was before you had your own kids, but you've been a parent with your own kids, going through the sporting life as well, right?
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah for sure. So I have two children. My daughter's now 24 and works at the crew a Columbus crew and my son is just going into a senior year in college. So, yeah, I mean, my experience is, of course, everything sort of lined up perfectly in starting this business, and my daughter was just going into more of paid coaching situation, and I just started to peel back the layers and get curious and also realize that this was a big problem, that parents were an issue in a lot of different areas. Parents, I don't believe, are necessarily a problem themselves, but how they're treated is how they show up is sometimes, and so it was something that I just got really curious about and decided to start to just write about it, and then that turned into Thacker Parody, which I launched in 20.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. I love your goal. I mean, this is really, unfortunately, I'm always like it and again, maybe this isn't just me trying to cut through all of the noise and get to the. You know that. You know something that I think a lot of referees feel is like parents, please shut up, just shut up. But your goal very different. Your goal is to elevate the game and enhance every child's experience. That is like really powerful words. Help me understand what that means Elevate the game and enhance every child's experience, cause we're talking about soccer parenting. So what does that mean? You know, what changes have you seen since you've started this business?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, really, foundation to our work is empowering parents and, interestingly, you're right, that can be a confusing statement for somebody that is perceiving our work to be oh my gosh, we don't want to give parents any more power. You know, if anything, parents need less power. There's an easy way to look at the word empowering around that and, in fact, what we want to do is help parents understand the power that they have to ensure that their child has a successful experience, and we believe that parents will be difference makers when it comes to improving the game. No-transcript work as an option for parents if they want it. So we're really seeing a wonderful movement towards parent education, which we know.
Speaker 2:Will, you know, establish trust within the ecosystem, which is what we need right From the bottom up, I mean from the very. Will, you know, establish trust within the ecosystem, which is what we need right From the bottom up, I mean from the very beginning. I've been talking about trust. That was the first thing I talked about. Referees have been part of this conversation from the beginnings. You know, there's just such a pervasive lack of trust from the bottom up, from the grassroots parents' trust of a referee to the top down, for our trust in, you know, in FIPA or, in your case, ifab or whichever organizing body I don't know. Referees fall under. I apologize.
Speaker 1:Sorry, referees.
Speaker 2:But this is it Like. We need to have open conversations and we need to start to bring everyone together, and that's what I want to do I want to bring everyone together.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's so interesting you talk about that. I mean, I'm sure you've heard this a million times and it's a big part of what you guys do, but it's a common refrain that you hear that parents are the worst part of youth sport. Parents are the worst part right, it's said so often People say that, but then what do you do about it? Because you can't not have parents involved in youth sports. You got to have parents involved in these sports, but there's I'm so glad you do what you do, because there's really not a lot of people out there teaching parents how to be a parent at a youth sporting event, like how to have a relationship with a coach, how to be a good participant on the sideline, and I think that's you're really filling an important gap that's out there I wanted to ask you about, because we get it a lot like actual on the sideline.
Speaker 1:So you know, as a referee, we're out there in the middle of the pitch and sometimes there are calm and respectful parents and sometimes there's not. Can you describe the concept of what you see as kind of a level-headed parent? You know the kind of people that you're trying to grow. It contrasts that with, like the crazy parent, that one who's just like yelling and like into every single kick of the ball or whatever it might be. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I definitely will. I like to kind of talk about the dynamic of the crazy soccer parent. So you all, as referees, experience this and really I should connect more with referee groups because I think that you know the narrative of the conversation is really important. But I will say that we believe that crazy soccer parents have ruined it for everyone, because the crazy soccer parent which, by the way, is much less than what a referee would perceive because what the referees are running into is they're running into distracting parents that are really stressed. They're running into because of the structure that a child really should not necessarily be competing in and the parent is trying to live in the middle of this structure that a child really should not necessarily be competing in. And the parent is trying to live in the middle of this structure that is really stressful for their child and try to mediate that and support their child. And then we are met with a situation where these distracting parents kind of become hostile. But the really irrational crazy soccer parent is what we refer to them.
Speaker 2:I'm kind of like air quoting that that it probably makes up four or five percent of the population. I can hear the referees now, no way, but it's probably one or two parents that are getting it going on the sideline and then maybe some of the distracting parents in the moment are kind of catching on. So the crazy soccer parents have ruined it, because referees are leaving the game because of them, coaches are leaving the game because of them, which are the level-headed parents, are feeling like they don't have a role, because the last thing they want to do is be perceived as a crazy parent. So they don't speak up, they don't have a voice, they don't get engaged, they don't seek education, because it's so confusing Like, oh wait, if I seek education and I'm curious about my child's experience, does that mean I'm a helicopter parent? I don't want to be that.
Speaker 2:So I'm curious about my child's experience. Does that mean I'm a helicopter parent? I don't want to be that, so I'm not going to receive some education. That actually is really foundational to me being a successful parent. And so we really look at the crazy soccer parent as like the adversary, if you will, in the whole storyline of the work that we're doing at Soccer Parenting. What we're trying to do is give the level-headed parents a voice so the majority of parents can rise up and take back the sidelines and give youth sports back to the children.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. I love that so much. I mean I can tell you, I mean I think everyone listening to this pod well, most people you know, if you've had kids, you've been on that sideline and maybe you've tried to be. You are that level-headed parent, but there's that crazy lunatic parent and they're on the same team. Literally their kid plays on your team.
Speaker 1:I will tell you, when we so I lived abroad for a few years, when we came back we were at like kind of super competitive usda at that time and now itLS, nac, and parents were very quiet there because obviously you don't want to ruin the opportunity for your kid to play on this very exclusive team. But as soon as we went to academy quote, unquote, right then like the crazy parents like were there, were present and we did one year on a team like that. And then we moved to another club and literally the first game and I've told the story so many times that the coach came to the parents after the game and like scolded us. It was like, if I ever hear you yell instructions at your kid or yell at the referee, your kid sits. That was like. It was like the greatest thing ever and it changed the dynamic of the team dramatically after that.
Speaker 1:But as a parent it feels really awkward to maybe talk to another parent. So having a training that everyone can go to be like hey, you remember what we talked about?
Speaker 2:We have a line Exactly.
Speaker 1:Exactly A big deal. So what would be one key habit or mindset shift that parents can adapt immediately to try and positively influence that sideline?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we have a course called the Sideline Project.
Speaker 2:It's a 15-minute course and so I would say what our feedback is from that course in.
Speaker 2:You would think for a course that's 15 minutes long, so we have limited amount of time and we're working with parents that's 15 minutes long, so we have a limited amount of time and we're working with parents you would imagine that a lot of the majority of the course would be around hostile behavior, but in fact it's around distracting behavior.
Speaker 2:So I would say the one key thing that parents could learn would be the difference between supportive and distracting behaviors. And if we can end the distracting behaviors, the sidelines immediately become quieter and then the hostile, crazy parent stand out and seem really crazy and we can get rid of them, because there's no space for those truly hostile parents that are verbally abusing referees, that are verbally abusing children, whether those be children, referees or the children on the field. There's no space for those, these people in youth sports, and we have to get them out of youth sports Clubs have to stand up. Referees have to start reporting this hostile behavior. We have to rid our sidelines of these hostile parents that are repeat hostile parents, and so that would be. The key thing that I would say is to learn the difference between supportive behaviors and distracting behaviors.
Speaker 1:Love that, love that. I will say. I do have a bit of a theory on some of the stuff as to why this happens.
Speaker 1:And so I know you talk a lot about the dynamic between the coach and the parent and I think we should get into that too, because I know a lot of coaches listen to this podcast as well.
Speaker 1:But I feel, especially at the younger age groups especially and this goes all age groups, the really younger age groups, smaller field, whatnot? Volunteer coaches often, you know, are not highly paid coaches or something of that nature that sometimes parents are speaking and yelling things because there's a vacuum right that they don't necessarily know that the referee is in control of the game or watching the game, and so they're calling out every potential foul. They don't know that the coach has given very specific instruction as to what they want to do. So the parent is trying to be a coach as well Maybe they've played growing up or something of the nature and so they yell into this vacuum and they're saying you know the pass, kick, shoot, thinking that's helpful, or they're yelling that's a foul, that's a pull, you know it's offside or whatever you know, just to kind of throw that out. I don't know, I haven't thought my theory all the way out.
Speaker 2:There's stress it.
Speaker 1:It's a. Thing.
Speaker 2:There's stress.
Speaker 2:It's parent stress, and so we ask parents a lot about stress, and we're actually seeing some emerging research around stress in parents and the sidelines in the German Bundesliga. Dr Travis Dorsch from Utah has done a recent article on this. So we're starting to have clarity that parents feel stress and they relieve that stress through distracting behaviors, and so we have to help parents catch themselves, acknowledge that this is happening in the moment. Oh yeah, my heart is racing. Oh yeah, I am feeling like a lot and I experienced this myself. A big off a moment for me was I went from watching my daughter play a game to on the field next to us. Our neighbor was playing and I went from watching her game to immediately watching our neighbor's game and I was like, wow, parent, watching my daughter is way different feeling through my heart, through I'm sweating, Like, even if I'm not speaking, I am internalizing a, and then I'm going to watch my neighbor next door and I don't feel the same. Or the field next door and my next door neighbor, I don't feel the same stress. So like there are these moments and I think personally and also small-sided games are really stressful. Kids are not aligned, they're just learning. There's some kids that are well ahead of other children from a movement perspective. We're still narrowing it down and placing kids, if you will, within appropriate training and participating, participation environments. So there might be some children that don't quite fit in to that environment. Or your child yesterday played three through balls and was like the most incredible player on the field and today they're horrible because they're 11 and they're not supposed to be consistent. You know, like we just need to have perspective and, I think, small-sided, until things narrow down and we get clarity like, okay, this kind of age and the or the level that my child is, and we kind of fall into those categories. There's stress Okay, we're going from 7v7 to 9v9. So half the kids aren't going to make the team next year because they're combining two teams. Is my child going to make it?
Speaker 2:That's stressful and that deals with structures. You know that stress for parents is unfortunate because a lot of our stress is structure driven and so until we can acknowledge and talk about the structures in ways that are conducive to moving past stress, I don't know that the structures will change. Hopefully you know they will. But the other thing you mentioned there and I don't want to keep going too much on this topic, but you talked about the culture. So you're overseas in the culture. You come back, you go to a bad culture. You then have a coach that is willing and able and educated and supported and confident, and a coach that trusts themselves enough to come over to the sidelines to advocate for the children and to set the standards around the knowledge, beliefs, values, behaviors, the culture of the team. So you know, these are all things that are when we're considering use.
Speaker 1:It's massive. It's huge. I do want to. So this is a little off script, scott, I do apologize, but I one other theory I have as well is the over, I don't know, called the academicization. Is that even a word? I would say professionalization.
Speaker 1:But I'm seeing, as a referee, that there used to be high-level academy play and that was very clearly the best of the best, and now everything seems to be some type of academy, whether it's EPL, dpl, ecnl, rl, national League, I mean, you name it. The remaining bastion of recreational actual recreation has gotten so unbelievably small. Every kid now seems to be put into an environment where they're expected to train four or five days a week, travel to tournaments all across the country, pay thousands upon thousands of dollars for these leagues, and then the coaching on the sideline dude, I have to imagine that has played into this situation we're dealing with, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, in many cases, youth soccer is not working and you know what you just amplified through. You know that's the explanation or is that. And we're starting to see pushback. We're starting to see parents that says that they're saying, no, I don't want to get sucked in to the whole ecosystem we are, our family is not going to travel and do that, but it's, it's hard, it's a challenge.
Speaker 2:My daughter's experiencing that right now. She's coaching in the pre-ECNL. She's coaching, I think, u12 next year, and all of a sudden she's having to go two hours and six hours she's playing. Her 11-year-old girls that are actually, you know, not even the top, top team in the club are traveling six hours to play a team from New York, like that's within their league for the ECNL Regional League. And you know what? Like we're getting better in terms of our structures and that we're getting more and more teams that are involved. So that happening is a fact that there aren't enough teams in some region that the kids are playing in, that they have to travel that far. I think if we can see some consolidation within youth sports, which I'm hopeful that we will see, then we'll see more teams that are falling in the same leagues. We just need less leagues, so that there's less travel.
Speaker 1:But if you have less leagues, then there's those people at the top aren't going to get the money. They create all these different offshoot breakout leagues because someone you know wants to build a league and be getting money from that. If there's less leagues there's less opportunities for that.
Speaker 2:But I dig digress it's soccer for children or our children for soccer, and that's how I start many of my talks.
Speaker 1:Wait, say that one more time is it soccer for children or children for soccer?
Speaker 2:that's really interesting yeah, what are we doing here? That's a quote from my friend, uh, dr marco sullivan, who is working in sweden now, but I got that from him and I start a lot of my speaking that I do my live speaking event with that promise or with that question, with that curiosity. I think that's where we need to start, that's so cool.
Speaker 1:I want to talk about how you work with parents and clubs. I think this is very interesting, sky, because honestly, it's so needed to have someone outside the club come in and help set boundaries and re, just reset. You know the what the right relationship is and right dynamics are. So talk to me about how clubs partner with you. Okay, and then also, what kind of changes in feedback do you hear when those partnerships are set up, and can you talk about how many clubs you guys partner with, because you guys are really big. I had no idea how much work you guys are doing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're getting where we are building. For sure, we have around 175 clubs, probably around 250 partners across the United States between different leagues and state associations and organizations on top of our club partnerships. Our club partnerships are growing weekly. We are hoping, you know, to have one to two clubs join us every single week across the United States and we have a sales staff that's out and trying to build those relationships, our club partnerships. What we do is we provide the clubs with a parent education platform so every parent within the club and coach and administrator and team manager has access to the soccer parenting membership site and when you have access, you then have all this education at your fingertips.
Speaker 2:Many clubs, as I mentioned, are requiring parents take the sideline Project course, take Winning on Game Day course that we have. So that's our primary means of partnering with clubs. What it is for clubs is it's a tool for engagement. So we believe that parent engagement is an essential step to establishing trust and obviously the club department with us, are seeking to engage their parents.
Speaker 2:When clubs engage parents, the research is very clear that there will be kids that stick with sport longer, that are more motivated, the coaches will be more satisfied, the parents will be more empathetic. So we're providing clubs a tool to say parents, we value you, you have autonomy in our space. Here's an education platform and then, from a parent side, they're receiving education around these key topics that then ultimately, we believe, will make you sports better. So a lot of you would think that the majority of my work is around parent education, but in fact, the majority of my work is around coach education, related to effective parent engagement or related to establishing trust, setting boundaries. Parent engagement like best practices of parent engagement. So our parent engagement for coaches course right now, obviously this time of year, just as the seasons are largely kicking off across the United States, is our most popular course.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I bet, can you define that a little bit more? You say parent engagement, right, so we're not saying you know, hey, live through your kid on the field parent engagement. There's other parts of parent engagement. What does a positively engaged parent look like?
Speaker 2:Yeah, they are a guiding force of perspective and patience. They understand pathways and have some education around even the confusing nature of what a pathway for a child might look like in the United States. The parent has a little bit of a grip on what that looks like in their region of the country. A level-headed, improperly engaged parent, you know, doesn't give power away to the crazy soccer parent. They see and are clear on what a crazy soccer parent is and that they're not that. So they feel like they belong to a group of these level-headed parents. They are acknowledging their stress that they're feeling and they're finding a group of these level-headed parents. They are acknowledging their stress that they're feeling and they're finding a way to mitigate, to deal with, to work through that stress that they might be feeling.
Speaker 2:So an engaged parent is a parent that is curious and is respecting the boundaries of the coach-parent relationship. So the coach-parent relationship is so confusing and has been so undefined because historically what we've done is just like I'm the coach, you're over there and there's no engagement. So we really have to go in and teach coaches how to set boundaries and when the door is open and when the door is closed to parents and when the door is open and when the door is closed to parents, and so then the coach is clear on what parent engagement looks like too. I mean parent engagement, to answer your question, is bidirectional, multidirectional. Clubs engage parents with certain strategies, coaches engage parents with certain strategies, and parents engage themselves and one another with certain strategies.
Speaker 1:It's amazing. I have to be honest, I think it's really challenging, like there's a lot of maybe people who get into ref like becoming a referee who didn't think about.
Speaker 1:I need to be a leader, I need to be a communicator, you know I need to be a facilitator, and the same thing for coaches, like they might think, oh, I can work with little kids who are six years old, 10 years old, 13 years old, right, and feel comfortable in that dynamic, but they also need to be leaders to adults who might be 40, 40 years old, who might be executives themselves or run their own businesses, and they're expecting communication communication too and they're expecting to be led, or need to be led through this experience. These are key skills that you're providing that people probably didn't know they needed until they got into it and to rise up or to build a club or anything. This is such critical information, oh my god. Absolutely, Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I know, I know it does. It's funny. I love seeing you like kind of your chuckle laugh like wow, what are we doing here? But also like we have to acknowledge, when we charge parents three, five, six $10,000 to play for a year, like we're setting the stage for for us to have to deliver, and what that looks like doesn't have to be that hard. It doesn't necessarily have to be too rigorous in terms of three or four practices, I mean it doesn't have to be too rigorous, but it has to be quality and I think that's what our children deserve. We deserve quality parents, quality referees, quality sidelines, people that are seeking to do their best.
Speaker 1:I thousand percent, a thousand percent agree. I do want to talk about. So what would be some things that coaches can do to connect positively with parents, because I think it's so important. I love this. I honestly I feel like, if there is and the reason why I'm so interested in this guy, because I feel like if there's a coach who has a good relationship with the parents in this, you know, creating this positive environment with parents, that you would have less issues from parents to referees, right, like I see this, it's all like one big ecosystem. So what's some advice that you would give to coaches to help set this positive relationship with the parents and a positive environment overall?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a great question and I think you're spot on with the inevitability of coaches that have good relationships with parents and have established trust. Their parent will create a sideline that's more trust filled and therefore there's less stress and there'll be less parent referee interactions and that are negative interactions parent-referee interactions and that are negative interactions, and that, I think, is related to a coach's skill level. So I would say that some strategies that we're having with coaches I mean it has to start I kind of alluded to this earlier with coaches trusting themselves. And what does self-trust look like? And does a coach believe in their ability to impact the lives of children and to teach them to become a better soccer player? Does a coach feel confident in their ability to interact with parents with the appropriate boundaries? And I think coaches setting a framework early for what the team culture look like is essential.
Speaker 2:I do believe to be clear that clubs are the ones that need to be leading here. Clubs need to be educating the coaches on these topics and I don't call these a lot of people call these things like soft skills. These are the essential skills of coaching and they don't do not get addressed enough, especially in a youth sports space. That is stressful. It requires all the more coaches be educated on these types of topics around establishing appropriate relationships, connections, moments, those moments with parents. So, yeah, I mean our course. Parent Engagement for Coaches, like I said, is a 60-minute deep dive into best practices related to how to establish those types of relationships with parents. I think every coach needs to have a parent meeting and run that parent meeting really effectively. There need to be follow-up interactions and moments of connection throughout the season, whichever, not necessarily like long emails from coaches every week.
Speaker 2:It doesn't have to be that. Whatever the coach is up for, they need to come up with a communication plan, and then we need to have a plan for what are we going to do when this gets tough? What are we going to do when we lose three games? What are we going to do when we just traveled to a tournament and we got put in the wrong bracket and we lost every game by more than five goals? How are we going to show up in those moments? And so we need to have some training and education, because if you talk about a 22-year-old who's new to coaching and coaching at a tournament and their team falls into that bracket, that coach needs skills and support in those moments. And just like refereeing is lonely which is why your community is so important coaching is lonely too, so you know we need to provide support and more guidance and education to coaches around these essentials.
Speaker 1:I love it, love it. Can you tell us about the Sideline Project Pledge? So I've seen as I go to games you'll see some like signs on the side of the field, sometimes not everywhere you know. It's like, hey, the kids are kids, the refs are human, all that kind of stuff, everything. But what is the Sideline Project Pledge for the Soccer Parenting Project? How can parents and clubs get involved?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So the Sideline Project Pledge is a free movement that we have. You go to Soccer soccerparentingcom, you go to the Sideline Project. The Sideline Project itself is a program that sits under soccer parenting. It's under our soon to launch sports parenting brand and it's our sideline behavior intervention, if you will. So it's a 15 minute course, coach education as well, team manager education, signage, and the pledge is a part of this. So, whereas the pledge is open and accessible to anyone, you watch a two and a half minute video and you add your name to the pledge wall or your first initial, last name to the pledge wall and the state or country where you're from. We've had over 40,000 people take the pledge so far. Our aim is to have 100,000 people by the end of this year and it is an initiative around honoring referees, honoring players, honoring the game and what that looks like from a real tactical level of how we're deciding and choosing and committing to showing up as a dollar.
Speaker 1:I'll owe you a beer, that's for sure I'll take it we work together. You know, whatever your drink of choice could be water you know soda.
Speaker 2:It's so funny. You said that because when I started soccer parenting and I go to like the United Soccer Coaches Convention, I would have so many coaches come up to me and say, just that, I am buying you and it was sort of this me versus this coach, kind of not versus, but it's like you're doing your work and now it's let's go get a beer and talk about parents together. Now there's such a change in the narrative of the conversation that I'm having with people I have to show people what you want to have happen.
Speaker 1:You know, like, create the world you want to live in, for that world to be like. You can't just say no, no, no, what you're doing is wrong, shame on you. And then not provide a vision for the future. And I think that's what you're doing is you're providing, you know, not only vision, but you're also providing framework. You're providing like activities. You're you're providing like actual things, concrete things that you can do, you know, on a periodic basis that will lead to that place. You're trying to bring people to, which is unbelievably important, and it just doesn't exist. Like. For anyone who thinks that even though a soccer club may have 10,000 kids in their program is all of a sudden like a professional elite, you know, like fortune 500 company with all of the training and programs that goes into it, they're kidding themselves. It's so. Not like at all.
Speaker 2:You know, oftentimes, oftentimes, I mean, some clubs are knocking it out of the park.
Speaker 1:So we got to give them some credit.
Speaker 2:I would say the overwhelming majority Oftentimes I mean some clubs are knocking it out of the park, so we got to give them some credit. I would say the overwhelming majority no-transcript parent engagement. When coaches do it at a team level, when organizations do it at a broader club level, it's establishing a sense of community, and that's all what we're seeking. That's what you've done with Raps Need Love. You've established a community, a place where people feel like they belong, where they have a sense of solidarity amongst one another, and we've lost that in youth sports. That's one of the big reasons youth sports is not working. We've lost it for a number of reasons, but we have to bring it back. That's what we're aiming to do.
Speaker 1:I love that. You once shared some words and I'd love for you to talk about it and it really goes to what you were just saying. But bringing the world together through football, okay, I love that bringing the world together through football which, by the way, it is a global game it is the thing that connects everyone. But I want to understand from you what that looks like in 2025, 2026, as we move into this really important year World Cup here in the United States. What does that look like to you? Through the soccer parenting project? What do you envision?
Speaker 2:I just got this beautiful amount of chills just took over my whole body as I thought about the World Cup in 2026, the men's World Cup being here and the capacity for that. So I said I want to bring. So I was on a. I was on a radio show in Europe talking about a program that I was launching I'm doing some projects right now in Northern Ireland and the man on the show said so what are you trying to do? He really didn't do no research on me and on this live show and so it's like well. So he asked me that and I said, without thinking, I just blurted out I'm trying to bring the world together through football. And I said that and went oh wow, that's exactly what I'm trying to do, and so I love that you found that quote for me so that I can talk about that.
Speaker 2:Some of my greatest experiences have been in football globally, have been living in Italy and playing and the interactions that people I met. I just took my son back to Udine where I played and we sat and had coffee, you know, in El Centro, with my coach, and a couple of the teammates took him out to lunch and you know, like this is the world. My experience is so many experiences in England and coaching and connecting with people through Europe have been transformational for my understanding personally of how I show up to the world and where I belong within the world itself. So in one sense it's a very broad statement around that and that's what I just imagine the World Cup coming, having these watch parties in areas where there are not games necessarily, and having communities come together of all different types. There's this connection to football to watch a World Cup game in the center of a town where they put up a live screen TV.
Speaker 2:I love that idea. And then I love the fact that the World Cup coming to the US, we know will be a moment of inspiration for so many young children who will be new to the game. And we need to be ready and prepared with an ecosystem that supports and meets the needs of those emerging players and families that will become part of the community, that truly can be an anchor for these families of how they belong within the community. What we're doing is so important and so essential to the fabric of what we consider to be how we as individuals and families show up. This is well beyond what seems like. There's this great quote like what seems like this is actually can actually be this, and you know, what seems like parent engagement is actually bringing community together in a really powerful way, is giving families a sense of identity that they're lacking today in society. These things really, really matter.
Speaker 1:I would tell you, I think you could literally create a college course on bringing the world together through football, because you could talk about global history and wars between countries. You could talk about economics.
Speaker 2:You could talk about what's going on in england right now, after these women won the euros for the second time in a row. And, like the beautiful, I was at wembley when uh, at the finals three years ago, when the England won and it was just incredible. It's a life moment for me. I will never forget. I will always be like I cannot believe. I was right there and and it's just really powerful. So you're right, absolutely. It could be a college course, that's a really good idea.
Speaker 2:I don't think I'm going to teach it, but somebody listening is we can. We can come up with the curriculum together. It's a big deal.
Speaker 1:I mean it's a big deal. I think what's going on in England is unbelievable. I mean I said to my daughter I was watching the game on Sunday I think it was for the final and I said I really hope the England women win Again, just for what it will do for football all around the world. Because, you know, a lot of the center of gravity seems to be in England with Premier League and now the center of gravity seems to be in England with Premier League and now the Women's Super League which is booming as well.
Speaker 1:I mean it's just, and these women you know, who are on this team, are just unbelievable, not only just, obviously, in the way they play. I mean they're fantastic and fierce and courageous and just resilient. They are fun Like, they are personable and you know just having a great time and so authentic and what an amazing connection with the fans that they've had. And it is a wonderful thing that we're seeing and it's kind of like, you know, again, our American women. We're almost like we're spoiled by the success that we've had here in the United States and their wins back in 96 and, you know, subsequent World Cups and stuff. But what's going on in England right now is it's really tremendous yeah.
Speaker 2:Across all of Europe to be, fair.
Speaker 2:I mean I was a part of the very first ODP trip that everyone oversees. We went to Holland, in Italy, my junior year in high school and there were no girls to play. We played like we play grown women because there just wasn't that infrastructure of a youth league. I mean we didn't always play grown women but you know, in Holland we played one or two games against women that were four or five years older than us. And so to see the growth, and then for me, from my experiences playing in Italy, I mean when I arrived I got out of the car with the manager of the team and picked me up in the airport and I opened the door and I walked out. My team is sitting there meeting us. We're at a training camp in Berlin and they're like standing on these stairs and they all look at each other and go, hey, muscadet, she's so muscular.
Speaker 2:And I learned so much from my short time in Italy tactically about the game, like zone defense. I had never played anything other than like straight up man-to-man with a sweeper defense before, so it was so eyeopening. So I learned so much from them and they learned so much from me. And and now look at the Italy, the Italian team and the Euros, and how incredibly they played and the league now compared to the league when I was there, it's just, it's phenomenal.
Speaker 2:It's so exciting for me to see the just the arc that's existed from me and, yes, a lot of that is related to women in America and the framework that we set for what it looks like to be an athlete as a female but the way that the different cultures have accepted it, I will say it's sad. Nowhere in Italy did the Gazzetta del Sport, the Italian they had no press around the women's Euros in Italy. When the Gazette d'Ausport, the Italian, they had no press around the women's rows in Italy when their team was winning. So there's still a lot of way to go, but this is how sports changes cultures and it will continue to do so and it's been phenomenal.
Speaker 1:I love that. Let's come back a little bit to the sports parenting project. So I mean you're now in this seven years coming into eight years for sports parents, parenting. You faced a lot of skepticism, I'm sure, early on. I'm sure there's a lot of people like, hey, this is not going to work. Like, how have you stayed in it? I mean, how I've gotten to this place? I mean you went, you know nothing eight years ago. Now you've got you know 40,000 people signing up on a pledge goal for a hundred thousand. I mean, you went, you know nothing eight years ago.
Speaker 2:Now you've got, you know 40,000 people signing up on a pledge goal for 100,000. I mean, what keeps you motivated? Today? That's given to me, to be fair, that I get to be connected to so many clubs and leaders that are trying to do great things, that are under-resourced and under-supported themselves, and we're able to help and give them some support and guidance. So it's truly been a gift for me.
Speaker 2:I'm motivated by seeing the changes that we're starting to see within the ecosystem. I'm motivated by the parents and the coaches that reach out to me after taking our courses or being part of our movement and seeing that things are different. My coaching this season was so much more enjoyable. Or I faced these challenges as a coach and this is how we overcame them and it was so much easier I didn't realize I've been thinking about this the wrong way and thank you for changing things. Or parents that 32% of parents that take the 15 minutes out of that project course, 32% of parents say their relationship with their child improved as a result of taking that course. So that's impact, that's driving change. Those things keep me.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. All right, so now let's take to our own vision, vision board. Now you know three, five, seven years from now, you know what does success look like for soccer parenting and the soccer parent resource center. What's going on in the world? Where are you and where's youth soccer in America, or youth sports?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I love that you're asking that question. I'm actually in the middle of like this one three, five year kind of project, so I've got some good answers for you. We're launching, seeking funding. I'm in an equity raise right now seeking funding to launch into sports parenting. Sports parenting will be will have launched. I see a space for that to grow globally.
Speaker 2:As I mentioned, I'm doing work in Europe. I'm doing a big project right now in Northern Ireland for the Irish FA, which is the Northern Ireland Federation. I was in Australia last year speaking with New South Wales and their FA and there's some incredible stuff going on there, and so we're starting to have a little movement building through that and have. I'm doing a project right now with continuing education for the, the German Federation, so there's just a lot of exciting things going on. I see this building globally.
Speaker 2:Sports is something that brings everyone together, and so I'm really excited to see where we are. I think I hope at that point, five years from now, that parents are required to take a course upon signing their child up for youth sports. I want that course to be one that is quick and easy for parents to digest but sets the standard, and I think that coaches will be certified, so we'll be building into these certification programs of what it means to be a sports parenting certified coach or sports parenting certified that coaches will be certified, so we'll be building into these certification programs of what it means to be sports parenting certified coach or sports parenting certified parent, so that we can then put the bumpers on our behaviors and be a part of a group. That's a powerful movement to make you sports better.
Speaker 1:I love it. Skye, it's been fantastic. I mean, as again another person who participates in the game in the world of football, I wish you success, Because if you are successful, we will be successful as referees speaking collectively here. Coaches will be successful, Parents will have a better experience, their relationship with their shot will improve and, I think honestly, we will see better performance on the pitch because everyone's having that positive experience.
Speaker 1:Sky, thank you so much for being on today's pod. Thank you so much for doing what you are doing. It is so incredibly important. I want you to just take a quick moment now. Tell people how they can get in touch with you, how they can learn more and how they can sign up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks. So our soccer parentingcom is our website and go into the contact us page to reach out. I'm on LinkedIn. Sky heady on LinkedIn. E D D Y, s, k, y, e E D D Y on LinkedIn. Certainly reach out to me there. We're on Twitter and the DMs are open there, or X, whatever it's called now and certainly appreciate people being curious seeing how they can help.
Speaker 2:I just feel like I could have talked this entire hour around referees specifically, and how important you all are to the ecosystem and what a transformational moment you're consistently involved in, and so how you manage and handle them is so important, and so just a huge shout out to the referees that are listening here of gratitude and of acknowledgement on the hard work you're doing. That does not get acknowledged enough. I do believe that we need more collaboration with referees. We didn't even talk about my return to good standing course, so I'm here. I got your back, you report hostile behavior and we've created a course that parents and coaches have to take in order to get back to the sidelines, and so we're here trying to help, and I welcome any ideas and thoughts that anyone listening has to how we can continue to improve. Our kids deserve it. Our communities need it, our coaches and referees, of course need it as well.
Speaker 1:I love it. Well, we will have to maybe have you back just to talk about return to good standing, because I've heard about that. I know how important it is. Well, sky, again, thank you so much. I really appreciate your time. All right, guys, thank you so much for listening in today and your engagement, your involvement, your feedback, and it's what makes this community so wonderful. I really appreciate you.
Speaker 1:Guys, definitely go check out SoccerParentingcom. You will not be disappointed. I'm sure you're connected with a local club in your area, you know. Send them the link to the website. Talk to them about Sky. Have them listen to this podcast, because I've got to tell you, if the clubs are healthy and the relationship between the club and the coaches and parents are healthy, it is going to be a better experience for us referees on the pitch. Last thing, guys, of course, always a reminder go check out the refsneedlove2.com store. The season is approaching. Go get yourself some new red and yellow cards with the pregame checklist on the back, maybe some swag, you name it. Go check it out Again. Everything gets poured back into making this channel possible. I love you all and I hope your next match is red card free. We'll see you next time you.