The Way To Good Sports

Dave Jenkins has put together some valuable information for any coach. The seasoned veteran can value the reminders within of why coaches do what they do and the importance of conducting ourselves as professionals. For the young coach it gives insight into the rigors of coaching, what is to expected along the way and how deal with the challenges coaching presents. It's an easy read full of anecdotal references and real life experiences Dave shares with us to make our transition to coaching "The Way to Good Sports". Dave Brown Head Football Coach and Strength and Conditioning Coordinator at Archbishop Mitty High School in San Jose, CA, and the 49ers High School Football Coach of the Year for 2001

In this provocative exploration of what draws us to sport as participants and spectators, Tom Murray argues that the values and meanings embedded within our games provide the guidance we need to make difficult decisions about fairness and performance-enhancing technologies. Simply saying that using performance-enhancing drugs is against the rules begs essential questions. The people who play and govern sport create the rules; rules can be changed. Technologies such as fiberglass vaulting poles and hinged skates enhance athletes' performance, not just drugs. Why are some technologies accepted in sport while performance-enhancing drugs are forbidden? Would athletes' health be protected better if at least some performance-enhancing drugs were permitted under doctors' supervision? 'Good Sport' reveals what we really value in sport and how the reckless use of biomedical enhancements undermines those values.

American youth sports are in crisis: Parents are fighting with referees, coaches, their kids, and one another. Micromanaged kids are losing their passion to play. In Let Them Play, sports psychologist and team consultant Dr. Jerry Lynch provides an antidote to parental overinvolvement. Combining psychological insight with spiritual principles from Taoism and Buddhism, Lynch lays out core principles to help parents achieve equanimity and provide healthy direction for their kids. He gives parents strategies and tools taken from his work with national champions to help kids to perform at higher levels, become better team players, and most important, have more fun. Filled with easy-to-implement advice, Let Them Play will empower your athletic child to be mentally strong for sports and life.

A fundamental reevaluation of how to be a sports fan by an acclaimed baseball writer. Sports fandom isn't what it used to be. Owners and executives increasingly count on the blind loyalty of their fans and too often act agai

This “hair-raising look at everything that is wrong with youth sports today”—its perils, its history, its key drivers—is a powerful call for positive change (Buzz Bissinger, author of Friday Night Lights) Over the last seventy-five years, adults have staged a hostile takeover of kids’ sports. In one year alone, more than 3.5 million children under age fifteen required medical treatment for sports injuries—nearly half of which were the result of simple overuse. The quest to turn children into tomorrow's superstar athletes has often led adults to push them beyond physical and emotional limits. In Until It Hurts, journalist, coach, and sports dad Mark Hyman explores how youth sports reached this problematic state. His investigation takes him from the Little League World Series in Pennsylvania to a prestigious Chicago soccer club, from adolescent golf and tennis superstars in Atlanta to California volleyball players. He interviews dozens of children, parents, coaches, psychologists, surgeons, sports medicine specialists, and former professional athletes. He speaks at length with Whitney Phelps, Michael's older sister; retraces the story of A Very Young Gymnast, and its subject, Torrance York; and tells the saga of the Castle High School girls’ basketball team of Evansville, Indiana, which lost three-fifths of its lineup to ACL injuries in 2005. Along the way, Hyman hears numerous stories: about a mother who left her fifteen-year-old daughter at an interstate exit after a heated exchange over her performance during a soccer game, about a coach who ordered preteens to swim laps in three-hour shifts for twenty-four hours. Hyman’s exploration leads him to examine the history of youth sports in our country and how it has evolved, particularly with the increasing involvement of girls and much more proactive participation of parents. With its unique multiple perspective—of history, of reporting, and of personal experience—Until It Hurts delves into the complicated issue of sports for children, opening up a much-needed discussion about the perils of youth sports culture and offering insight into how positive change can be made.