35. How to help kids love sports with Coach Peter Verhoef

If you play sports or know a child who plays sports, you MUST listen to this podcast!  
Our guest is Coach Peter Verhoef, who has decades of experience preparing kids and teens for national and world competitions.  We discuss ways that parents can keep kids involved in sports and prevent burnout.  Key Points include:
** Sports can be Transformational  

** Tips for How WE can Keep kids ENGAGED in Sports

·      Help children to experience achievement (apart from wins/losses)

·      Recognize and manage emotional/physical exhaustion

 ** Crying in Waffles: The Hardest time for a Student Athlete

** Benefits and Risks of taking time off from sports

** When/If to Specialize in One sports vs. playing multiple sports

Coach  Peter Verhoef is the head coach and aquatics director at the Bolles School Swimming Program. He coaches athletes to regional, national,  and world competitions, including the Olympics over his career, which has spanned decades.

Coach Peter himself is a former youth athlete, having been a finalist at the Olympic swimming trials in 2004 and 2008. He has competed at the world level and was USA team captain representing the United States at the world championships of swimming.

Check out our website PsychEd4Peds.com for more resources.
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Transcript

Dr. Elise Fallucco: 0:21

Welcome back to PsychEd4Peds the child mental health podcast for pediatric clinicians and for everybody who takes care of kids. We're helping you help kids. I'm your host, Dr. Elise Fallucco, child psychiatrist and mom Today on the pod, we're talking about what we can do to keep kids engaged in youth sports and prevent burnout. And we're also going to talk about what to do about the American Academy of Pediatrics recommendations regarding taking time off in sports and delaying specialization in one sport until mid to late adolescence. And we have this great opportunity to be able to talk about all of these issues within youth sports with somebody who is a professional coach himself. Coach Peter Verhoff is the head coach and aquatics director at the Bolles School Swimming Program, which is a nationally recognized program. He's had the opportunity to coach youth athletes to regional, National, international world, and even Olympic competitions over his career, which has spanned decades. Coach Peter himself is a former youth athlete, having been a finalist at the Olympic swimming trials in 2004 and 2008. In addition, he competed at the world level and was USA team captain representing the United States at the world championships of swimming. So please join me in giving a warm welcome to coach Peter Verhoef.

Coach Peter Verhoef: 1:46

Thanks for having me. You can also add in, I am your Friday master's coach. You forgot to add that. Oh,

Dr. Elise Fallucco: 1:52

I really should have led with that.

Coach Peter Verhoef: 1:53

I know. I feel like there was a, there's a hierarchy that you were going to go. And I was like, where is this? How is she going to end with this? So no I am also your Friday Bolles Masters coach. When I'm available. So add that to my resume, if you will.

Dr. Elise Fallucco: 2:04

That's very sweet. Okay so thinking about the positive aspects of youth sports, from your experience as an athlete, but more relevantly as a coach, what do you see are the major benefits to participating in youth sports?

Coach Peter Verhoef: 2:18

Yeah. I think of two things there's the benefits of that experience, and it's an experience, I think that's really important to clarify, it's an experience in sports, it's not who we are it's an experience that somebody has, it's is it's either transactional or it's transformation, right? And so it's really easy to get really focused on the benefits we get from sports. So a college scholarship or winning something, or even as parents for us to get focused on how. Our child's achievements elevate us. So there's these transactional kind of components that we really can't ignore either But the value of youth sports is transformational. If we think about what we want to create in our society, adults that are high functioning, that are productive, that are good members of our communities. You need people that are hardworking, that have good emotional intelligence, that have grit and resilience and dedication, and they understand delayed gratification, and they understand how to serve and work with each other and teamwork and all these kind of things, right? And all of those things are the things we learn in sports. Youth sports is so valuable because sports combine all of those intangibles with a physical element to it, right? In sports, we get this really concrete physical experience where if I work hard, I feel like this. If I do my practice swing, my baseball swing 10 times, and then it starts to look like this. And so you get this kind of concrete experience that you can teach all of those really important, valuable life skills and characteristics and attributes in our youth sport system. And I think that's that's to me is the most valuable piece. We're developing a whole human and there's no better way to do that than the physical experience of going through a sports journey, whatever that is for that individual.

Dr. Elise Fallucco: 4:03

It's so interesting to hear you conceptualize it as, both transactional and transformational. So transactional, yes. Sports may help you achieve certain things or get scholarships or, be recognized as a varsity athlete But the transformational is sports is helping you, as you put it so beautifully, become a whole human. Working through hard things helps you in generalizes across other areas of life. It's this incredible training tool in addition to having all the other physical and mental health benefits. So with all of the potential benefits of participating in youth sports, it's so sad to learn that, in the United States, 70% of kids. Drop out of organized sports. By the time they turned 13. So they miss out on all these benefits. And while there are many reasons that kids drop out of sports, probably the most common ones are that they stop having fun or becomes too much of a time commitment and keeps them from other things that they enjoy better. A lot of fantastic athletes. I end up over-training and then burning out. So reflecting on your years, coaching, what do you think helps prevent burnout and helps keeps kids engaged with sports?

Coach Peter Verhoef: 5:14

Yeah, that's a great question. Burnout is emotional and physical exhaustion with the lack of achievement. So you can really break it down to those three things really clearly and my job as a coach is to push a kid as hard as they can keeping those pieces in check. I think the lack of achievement is the easiest one to start with. Cause it's easy to think of it as like wins and losses. It's Oh, you just, you've lost every game this season. Like you must not be feeling achievement. But really what we're talking about is that personal achievement. Like I'm getting better And also understanding as a coach, I need to give them some achievement. Like I have to create success from time to time in certain parts of the season, I have to find little things to make it successful for them

Dr. Elise Fallucco: 5:48

Achievement is not wins or losses. And it's so easy in all sports to compare your performance to everybody around you. And the hardest part is to tune that out and say, I can't control how fast or how slow or how good everybody else around me is I can only control myself and trying to keep the athlete focused on just getting better,

Coach Peter Verhoef: 6:07

yeah. And I think that, comparison will steal every bit of joy and fun you have out of something when you start just doing everything in a comparison to somebody else. The idea of comparison is moving the motivation to compete from intrinsic to extrinsic. I want to be good because of somebody else. I'm going to be better than them instead of, I just want to be as good as I can be. I'm going to see how far I can push myself. And again, it can exist together. Competition is not bad, right? We don't want to, we don't want to paint competition as the enemy. Comparison is where you want to be careful. So to your point, identifying what the appropriate amount of achievement is is so important for coaches and parents. you ask any good coach in any sport how do you create success for your players? And they're going to start talking about little things that they do. And sometimes you got to make some stuff up. If you're honest, like you just got to be really creative with you know what? We're going to play a silly game today. Whoever wins is, we're going to show everybody that they can get better. And it's just, it just, it sounds dumb, but it's little bits of achievement they can hang on to and carry forward.

Dr. Elise Fallucco: 7:04

I loved hearing what you said too, about creating opportunities for achievement even outside of competitions, knowing that's a really important factor that helps keep people motivated. And I interrupted you before you got to talk about physical and emotionally exhaustion.

Coach Peter Verhoef: 7:17

Yeah. And that can be tricky, especially with young athlete, because, they're still learning their bodies. So really, what you need is like a coach and a parent to be able to work together and for each to trust each other. If I get a call. From a parent and said, my kid is exhausted. Every day I see the kid here, he's fine. They're laughing with their friends or hanging out, and the parent calls like they're getting home. They're in tears. They're emotional about stuff. They're barely able to sleep. they're on edge all the time. I want my kid to take a break. I need my kid to have a day off. I need to trust them that's what they need. And I'd be okay with it. right? Even if I can't see it. And it's a little bit of trial and error, right? Everybody's trying to push their limit and you're going to bump up against your limits. The most times I've heard of a kid breakdown is about a month after they get their driver's license. And it's for this sole reason that their parent has been driving them to practice. For years, and they get in the car and maybe they don't say a lot, but they just, there's a little check in that happens at that point. Mom, Hey, you look really tired. Yeah, practice was really hard. Maybe they tell them what happened that day and it was really stressful or whatever it is, but they're having this little check in place to process emotions, process, physical fatigue, things like that. And all of a sudden kid gets their license, boom, they're driving to practice every day. And about a month later, they've got about a month worth of not processing any of that. And I've literally, I've had a mom call me, at five in the morning, we had a practice, Jack's not coming, he's crying about the waffles like he's in tears about his waffles and sure enough, we backed it up and it was about a month, they had a really close family relationship, she talked to him every day in the car for 20 minutes, then came home from practice, and all of a sudden that went away, and that, he didn't know how to process what was going on, on. And so they had to find a new way to sit down and have those conversations over dinner or somewhere else. I've not been the first one and it won't be the last. I've had at least a dozen. Once kids start driving and they don't have that time with their mom and dad anymore in the car, it changes how they process their physical and emotional exhaustion when it comes to burnout and fatigue.

Dr. Elise Fallucco: 9:08

That's such an amazing clinical pearl. I think I underestimated how important it is for the kid. Cause it's not like their friends are saying like, let's process how swim practice was or, how did that lacrosse game go? That's not what you're talking about with your peers. And sometimes it is helpful to be able to vent.

Coach Peter Verhoef: 9:25

And it doesn't mean that you get in the car and you have to unpack everything. It just means there's a space where they can say, I'm tired. And okay. I've said it about it's out there. No, it was really hard. It's a space that, that I think exists for a lot of kids and parents, especially when you've got multiple siblings, you're doing multiple sports, that period of life where, yeah, that might be the only time where you really connect for a few minutes before you run home, you throw dinner on the table, they run to do homework, they get to bed, right? It's just a busy part of their lives. So I think that's a really important thought to have is like, where is that processing happening? I think it's it's really at the end of the day, I think it comes down to us as coaches and parents to lead the way there's a lot of responsibility here on the parent and the coach to help this process and a kid stay engaged.

Dr. Elise Fallucco: 10:09

I love that. One of the takeaway points being make sure that the parents are creating a space for their kids to be able to reflect and process on a regular basis or just touch base about how are they doing. Because sports can be physically and emotionally exhausting because life can be physically and emotionally exhausting

Coach Peter Verhoef: 10:25

if you're doing it Yeah, It's a big myth out there that we're trying to make it easier. No, we're trying to get better at doing it, right? We're not trying to make it easier. It's not going to get any easier. Just taking away stress is not the goal. It's being able to navigate stress appropriately. And that's again, where sports come into play over and over again.

Dr. Elise Fallucco: 10:42

So tying in with, this idea of creating space so that you can help kids process, what do you think parents can do or say to make sure that were not inadvertently putting pressure on them or taking away some of their joy. For example, in the basketball league that one of my kids play in, They had a mandatory parent meeting at the start of the season and they said here is what you were supposed to say after each game. You are not supposed to tell them what they did wrong and how they can fix their free throws. Here is your script, write it down. I loved watching you play. That's it. Full stop.

Coach Peter Verhoef: 11:16

I think that's spot on My boys are nine and seven. So I'm in that phase where I'm we're getting into sports. We're navigating that a little bit. And my wife and I, we got pretty good at, Hey, we really love watching that too. That was a lot of fun. And five minutes later, I'm like, so do you think you could do a little bit better? You it is, it's really hard to do. I know. And I think there's a little nuance there. I think, there's because really what we're saying is the main reason we say that is that the home and the parent. needs to be a absolutely be a safe place for the value of that individual within the family, right? My job as a parent is to to to provide a safe space around the house and that value of that child to me, like that has to be protected And so when we say Hey, I think you could have done a little bit better. I want to see you try a little bit harder or the worst is I am really disappointed in how you did that. I can't believe you've messed up that shot. All of a sudden what that's doing is eroding that safe place for them to be in. When you're talking about things that parents need to say to kids the, I love to watch you compete is number one. But also make sure you're creating a space for them that if sports stop tomorrow, They're still loved and valued and all that kind of stuff. And then, making sure that we keep those extrinsic factors from becoming too big of a deal. And if you have a coach that's really big into winning like we can win a championship this year. So we're going to try really hard over and over again. And every day we come to practice, we're going to talk about this championship and he's doing his best to motivate them. But they may start hearing if we don't win this, then we're not valuable. And so being able to protect them from that is super important.

Dr. Elise Fallucco: 12:48

I love your point that the role of the parent is to create a loving accepting space where the child exists separate from their performance, where they are loved unconditionally regardless of how well they play, how poorly they play, And That we as parents need to be really careful about what we tell our kids after their games or their meets or competitions. And we should just focus on, we loved watching you play. We love you, whether you won, you lost, you scored high, poorly. And the hard part is really going to be holding our tongues and not trying to jump in and coach them and tell them the ways that they could have improved or how they need to work on their free throws or whatever it is.

13:33

And to your point about intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation, we should really try to shift our kids emphasis and focus on doing the best that they can do, improving themselves individually and not getting too caught up in external goals like winning or qualifying.

Coach Peter Verhoef: 13:51

And Bolles is a great example. I don't know how many state championships we have, and I'm probably going to be in trouble for not knowing that, but I think

Dr. Elise Fallucco: 13:58

it's at least 30. Oh, it's over 30,

Coach Peter Verhoef: 14:00

30, some 30 consecutive state championships in swimming. And again, I could start every season with Hey guys, here's the deal. We've got to win another one. Or I can say again, what happens if. The week before the state championships the flu goes through the whole team and 25 people can't go. And we lose the meeting. Is it not worth doing? Are we just, we're not valuable anymore? Are we not? You know what it's like who are we? We can't have our identity rooted in that. We've got to make sure we're setting things up so that it's not based on that. It's based on us striving to be the best we can.

Dr. Elise Fallucco: 14:32

So we've talked about emotional exhaustion, we've talked about burnout in sports. The American Academy of Peds recent clinical report recommends that kids take time off from organized sports in order to minimize and prevent burnout and overuse injuries. Specifically, their recommendation is to take a day off a week and up to two to three months off of organized sports per year. Now, as a coach of very elite athletes, I have to ask you, how do you feel about this? Do you think this is a reasonable ask?

Coach Peter Verhoef: 15:04

Yeah it's a great topic to wrestle with. And I, this is probably the thing I wrestle with at Bolles the most in terms of the coaching aspect of my job Because the easy answer is like, if I just get everybody in the water every day, for a year, they're going to get better. I know that they will. Now there's a point at which you won't, but. For how we train and what we do, the more we do, the better, and so there's this concept of Hey, what's the appropriate amount of time off and we've gotten a little bit better at managing that. Is it reasonable to take time off? Yes. We need to have healthy humans that learn how to take time off and reset. And oh, by the way, when. Kids take time off, they grow. Especially in swimming, we're stressing their bodies a lot. If we want them to grow and get bigger, we have to let them grow, right? And they need energy to do that. So every time we have taken a break, we've noticed growth spurts, things like that. It really it's a big difference.

Dr. Elise Fallucco: 15:51

You're decreasing your stress and you're allowing for growth spurts. And so there's actually positive physical growth that occurs during rest and recovery.

Coach Peter Verhoef: 15:59

I do believe in the one day a week. I think that's really important. I think that's probably rooted for me a little bit in, in faith and just having a day where you need to just rest and recharge. And of course, as a parent of two kids. Our Sunday is not anything restful. It's planning and sports and all the other stuff. But, specifically for swimming in high school here. We have Sundays are off and that's pretty important. We try to protect that as best we can. And then, the idea of 2 to 3 months off a year. I think that maybe means more spread out, you take two weeks off, start the next thing. the other benefit to that, that we see that we don't take advantage of often enough in swimming is it comes down to teaching and learning. So our brains, as we're trying to learn a new skill, like we're trying to create motor neural patterns that they're doing over and over again, especially in a sport like swimming or running where it's super repetitive. You do a freestyle stroke. How many thousands of times in a single practice, right? And we're trying to break that stroke down and improve it. It's really hard to do when you're doing it over and over and over and over again. But when we do take that two week break, you're letting that all of those neuro pathways, just settle and calm down I'll have a kid working on a technical change for eight months of the season, just every day, trying to do it over and over again and get it right. They get it wrong. Can't do it. it shows up just a little bit. They take two weeks off and the first week back in practice, they got it like that. Wow. There's some real value in that. And then again, it depends on the sport. Swimming is an aerobic based sport. Like our, the way that swimming works is, technical. Yes, but also based on these energy systems, there are some people, their body morphology is that they need to do more to be better.If they take three weeks off, they're actually going to go backwards, right? And again, the team sports, some skill based sports. Those are very different, right? They're not relying on an energy system per se to be, perform well, but I think that you need to

Dr. Elise Fallucco: 17:43

maintain aerobic a certain level of aerobic fitness to be able to keep going. And I think, I like what you said about two things. One, that, the two to three months off is not on block, that it's a total of two to three months spread out over the year. And so it could look like a couple weeks off here and there.

Coach Peter Verhoef: 18:01

If you can get two weeks off usually that first week is decompression, right? That first week is they're actually like not actually recovering. They're actually just recovering from what they were doing. The second week is when they start to normalize and that new kind of pattern of living or activity or whatever it is takes. And then what happens is at the end of that second week is when they start craving to come back. And I think those are the best break. That's somewhere in that two to three week range. And again, we don't get an opportunity to do that at Bolles. Last year. We got no more than a week off.

Dr. Elise Fallucco: 18:33

But again, the type of athletes you're coaching are very elite and competing at nationals and on the world stage. And so for them, maybe the idea of taking two to three months off per year may not make sense with their goals to be competing at that level. Whereas we know the majority of youth athletes that we're talking about are not training to be competing at the world level. And so for them their goals may be different. Their goal is to prevent burnout, prevent overuse injuries, maintain a healthy, positive relationship with sports for their life so that they continue to be active. think you and I've talked before about how, like one of your sons who plays baseball has some teammates who, maybe at age six are doing year round baseball and weekend competitions. And they're like, I am building the world's future baseball player. So the American Academy of Pediatrics is really trying to counter the pressure to specialize in sports early. And so they specifically have said, you really should be a multi sport athlete if you can, and delay choosing one or specializing in one sport until mid to late adolescence. How do you help the families of the student athletes that you coach navigate this pressure to just do swimming?

Coach Peter Verhoef: 19:49

Yeah, this is a tough one for some coaches because our sport is like the relationship with the water, like we're not fish, right? We're humans. We didn't like, we're not evolved to be in the water. So like you have to work on how you are in the water. Getting into swimming. You've got this kind of aerobic component that, you can't take a season off of swimming, not touch the water and only do like basketball, right? There's some benefit there, but you're going to lose ground and swimming for sure. So from your perspective, doing multiple sports in addition to swimming is not necessarily cross training you or preparing you to be a better swimmer. Whereas to your earlier point for some of the team based sports like basketball or lacrosse or football or soccer, that some of those skills that you practice on the field in one sport may translate to another sport and help you with overall and general athleticism. So it sounds like for swimming, it may be a little bit of a different story.

Dr. Elise Fallucco: 20:41

So final take home points that you would have, any tips or advice you'd want to share to try to promote healthy involvement in youth sports.

Coach Peter Verhoef: 20:50

Yeah, I think, most of what I see is people just lose sight of what's really important in sports Youth sports is about developing great people. It's not about the next generation athlete. You're going to get some great athletes out of it, but they're going to make that decision to do that probably beyond their high school years, right? Get clear with what you want. What does good look like? We got to think through what does good look like for my kid? And really what good should look like is a productive member of society, a great parent, a great sister, brother, friend, whatever it is, like, how are we creating those people business leader, entrepreneur, whatever it is, like, how are we setting them up for that?

Dr. Elise Fallucco: 21:30

What you've said throughout the entire podcast is it's really important that kids have a holistic focus on sports and that parents work to foster that. And the coaches work to foster that and to be able to see that, yes, sports is so important and it's a vehicle for a lot of great things. Not the least of which is, helping the athlete and the child develop. I think you've really brought up so many important points during this discussion. I just want to recap and highlight some of them We talked about how parents and coaches can foster engagement in youth sports by trying to find ways for kids to feel achievement, to feel success regardless of win or loss records. We talked about the importance of managing physical and emotional exhaustion and specifically that it is critical that parents and families create a space for kids where they feel loved and accepted regardless of their performance, regardless of whether they win or lose. And I think the hard lessons that I'm taking away from this conversation are that as a parent the best thing I can do to try to encourage my kids to stay involved in sports is to cheer them on, tell them how much I love watching them compete and play, and create a space. Where they know that they are loved and accepted regardless of how well they play or even if they choose to continue to play a certain sport. Well, I want to thank our incredible special guest, Coach Peter Verhoff and thank our listeners and friends and colleagues at Psyched for Peds. I'm really curious to hear your thoughts about this important subject and what we can continue to do to try to help support our kids. And help them get all of the physical health and mental health benefits from involvement in movement, in dance, in sports. So please drop a comment on our website, psyched4peds. com, find us on Instagram, social media at psyched4peds, and let us know what you think and also what you want to hear about. Thanks for listening. And I hope you'll join us next Tuesday as we continue this series on youth sports.