Taught before they're recruited.
Youth sports keep getting more competitive, earlier. More teams, more seasons and less downtime, often before kids have been taught how to move, fuel and handle pressure. It happens in travel and rec alike, and families and volunteer coaches are left to figure it out on their own.
I'm a former NCAA athlete, a youth coach and a mom of two boys who love sports. I built Rooted Academy to refocus youth sports on whole-athlete development: research-backed guidance for families, and a development-first program that helps clubs support athletes in their own communities.
Children should never feel like they are being recruited before they are taught.
Read my thesis
The more I watched my own kids develop, and the more I coached, read, and learned, the more curious I became. Why are kids specializing so young? How does nutrition affect growth, strength and recovery? What does healthy development actually look like? Are we pushing kids too hard, too young? What are they missing out on when we do this?
My own thesis: a lot of what looks like "overprogramming" isn't one travel team or one sport. It's kids on multiple travel teams across multiple sports at 8 and 9 years old. The pressure is real: skipping a season can mean falling behind, or missing development opportunities only available at the club level. It's especially hard for parents raising kids who are genuinely talented and want to compete.
Rec options don't always help. From my perspective, rec sports are deteriorating and under-resourced, and increasingly, they're chasing the same win- or record-driven outcomes that used to be travel's problem alone. Much of the rec experience depends on the luck of the draw: whether the coach you're placed with understands a development-first mentality, whether they're supported by the club's umbrella infrastructure (if one even exists), and whether that infrastructure is cohesive and intentional. In my experience, it's rare that those things align, and my kids learn more in my backyard than they do in a 24-practice, 12-game rec season.
In either model, travel or rec, kids risk losing the downtime that actually builds resilient, confident athletes when multiple sports are stacked together, season after season. This is a problem at every level, and it needs solving.
As a parent in this maddening dilemma myself, I've leaned into my own drive to learn and grow, for my kids' sake. What I've found feels like something that can help other families too. That's the health and nutrition guidance and age-appropriate development guardrails I think every young athlete deserves.
