Dusty Baker to sports parents: Less is more

Now and then, we salute pro athletes doing something needed, important and too rare: calling out overly invested sports parents.

The list grows by one today. Here's Reds manager Dusty Baker, speaking at an event sponsored by the Positive Coaching Alliance, reminding parents that it's not a great idea to pull your child aside to offer a batting tip or pitching secret during a game.

Others pro athletes, coaches, executives who've recently offered similarly sage advice: Wayne Gretzky, Phil Jackson and Joe Dumars.

A very special "Twelve Days of Christmas"

Have a great day.

All my best, Mark

New - and recommended - youth sports Web sites

Two new kids' sports Web sites to point out and, if you're like me, to bookmark. Both provide excellent information about sports safety and injury prevention.

Just launched by the American Academy of Pediatrics, Healthychildren.org. Many topics covered, from Body Checking in Hockey - it causes 86 percent of all hockey injuries in kids nine and 15 - to Common Finger Injuries in Athletes to Exercise-Induced Asthma. The site also links to short AAP-produced audio pieces such as this one on how parents can avoid being lousy sports.

Next month, the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine launches its Stop Sports Injuries Web site. For now, the url is a static page with a few facts about AOSSM, headed this year by the surgeon for about every pro athlete you can think of, Dr. James Andrews. I'll be checking back soon for the official site unveiling.

Ten Myths of Youth Sports, by someone very wise

I received this from a friend who wasn't able to tell me the source. Clearly, someone with much wisdom.

TEN MYTHS OF YOUTH SPORTS

1. The earlier the participation in sports the more likely to be an elite athlete and/or to earn a scholarship.

2. Specializing in one sport early on will increase chance of a scholarship or Olympic level achievements.

3. If a parent loves a specific sport and/or excels at a certain sport, his/her child will have similar genetics and should be directed to that same sport.

4. If a parent was not a good athlete and wishes s/he was, then living that dream through his child is a winning prescription.

5. Children have unlimited energy and can play forever, including multiple teams at once without getting tired.

6. Children are very flexible and bounce back quickly so they are not at risk for overuse injuries like tendonitis, stress fractures, etc.

7. Kids would rather sit on the bench and let the star players win the game rather than playing and losing.

8. Playing time is not important to kids.

9. Kids learn from being yelled at by coaches like a professional or collegiate coach.

10. Negative feedback on mistakes is a better teacher in kids than positive feedback for effort, for doing best, and for achieving a new skill, no matter how small it may seem.

Anyone care to add to the list?

A contender for "Youth Sports Quote of the Year"

This is definitely in the running for the most inspired youth sports line of 2009. It comes from an article about a woman just taking over as coach of a boys' high school basketball team in Minnesota. Women coaching men's teams at any level is highly unusual. And the job picture for women seeking to coach women's teams isn't even that great. Surprisingly, less than half of women's teams at the college level are led by women.

Kelly Anderson, coach of the Ulen-Hitterdal High School boys' team in Ulen, Minnesota, was speaking with the Forum of Fargo-Moorhead about her first months on the job. And she said this:

“When I first got up here, one student said basketball was ‘a man’s game,’ So I played him one-on-one, even though I was five or six months pregnant at the time. Let’s just say it hasn’t been a problem since.”

Thanks Nicole LaVoi

How a pinstripe changed cross-country history

This story just posted to the New York Times Web site, and [this just in] appeared in the newspaper December 13.

I got interested in this after reading in the Baltimore Sun about a weird ending to a high school cross-country meet here in Maryland. The runner who'd finished fourth (out of 120 in the meet) was disqualified 15 minutes or so after the race. In turn, his team, which had been the apparent winner, dropped to third place.

The trangression of the runner, a nice young man named John Riemer? The compression shorts he had worn under his running pants were adorned with a thin white pinstripe. (Click on the image for a better view of the nonconforming shorts. John is wearing number 23). That violated a new and somewhat obscure high school rule that prohibits undershorts with "contrasting" stitching. I spent a morning at Hereford High School interviewing John and the Hereford cross-country coach, Jason Bowman.

It turns out that wardrobe malfunctions of this type crop up a few times each year.

A (mostly) favorable review of The Blind Side

Movie reviews aren't the specialty here. But Beacon Broadside asked for a post about "The Blind Side" and I complied.

Am I too hard on Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy and Hugh Freeze?

Basketball seasons that end early, it's an epidemic

Just when I was beginning to think I knew it all.

From Jessie Bennett comes word that the College of Notre Dame is not the first women's basketball team ever to cancel a season for lack of players. The same thing happened at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota six games into the 2004-2005 season. The Fighting Macalesters perservered, though. And today the program thrives. Last Wednesday, the Scots (real school nickname) broke a three-game losing streak, thumping St. Mary's 61-48.

A split decision on kids sports and mouth guards

Generally speaking, doctors agree on all things youth sports. Stay hydrated. Avoid pitching both ends of a doubleheader. At the hint of a concussion, head for the sidelines.

Then there are dentists who all of a sudden seem not to agree on very much. They're split on the biggest issue I can think of pertaining to kids sports and teeth: whether to wear mouth guards.

For a long time, the consensus was to wear them in team sports, as protection against getting smacked in the mouth with an errant knee or a fastball that got away. In Connecticut, apparently that hasn't changed. Dr. Bruce Tandy, president of the Connecticut State Dental Association, recently said: "A misdirected elbow in a volleyball match or misplayed header in a soccer game can leave you with chipped or broken teeth, nerve damage to a tooth or even tooth loss. A mouth protector can limit the risk of such injuries as well as protect the soft tissues of your tongue, lips and cheek lining."

That sounds like the cautionary speech my dentist used to give at least once a week. (Footnote: My dad was a dentist).

Now there's a competing view. A study published this fall in Sports Health found that mouth guards can increase the number and intensity of mouth cuts and abrasions, "exposing an athlete to an increased chance of infection due to the bacteria, yeast, and fungi that mouth guards routinely collect."

Sobering choice, broken teeth or fungi.