"How to Parent Your Student Athlete" - Transcript

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K: Hey everybody, I am Kim Caifano, aka The Middle School Mommer. I am here to help you connect with your child and get equipped to parent them well during this season. I'm happy to have Clark VerHulst here today as my guest. Clark is the director of college campus ministries with Fellowship of Christian Athletes and he is a former teacher and coach. He coached football, baseball, and basketball. He also has sons who are college coaches. So, I thought it would be a fantastic opportunity to talk about sports to all of you parents who have student athletes. This will help to kind of get into the mind of what their world is like.

They are juggling a lot today, and I think their world looks a lot different than when you were playing sports or when I was playing sports. They're juggling a lot more and dealing with a lot more things. Even a second ago, we were just talking about what you do when you get up from the team and how you move forward with life. I'm excited just to see where Clark is going to take us today. So, welcome!

C: Thank you for having me, I appreciate that.

K: I just want to share really quickly that part of my heart is a little bit of what I just shared. I think that middle schoolers today are not only juggling a lot more stress and pressure, they're getting used to this whole new schedule. But, if you are then adding sports on top of it, I had one friend whose son was running cross country and he would leave in the morning and he would not walk back in the door until almost 7:30 at night. And I'm like, that's a pretty big transition to make.

I think one of the first questions I have for you is: what do you have to share in regard to everything that they're juggling? They're trying to keep their studies up, their coaches want them to do certain things, they of course have friendships. So if you can speak into that and if you have any recommendations for what they're going through and everything that they're juggling.

C: Well, first let me just say sports are awesome. I think sports are really a great life application. In academics, you can get A's on every test, but in sports you're not going to make every shot. You're not going to get a hit every time. You're not going to complete every pass. So, one of the big advantages of athletics is that it helps you learn to deal with adversity.

I actually have a sports bit I taught for 33 years, coached for a number of years, and have a sports business. But one of the things that I'm looking for when I hire people and really strongly prefer is that they have an athletic background. I think that helps them learn to deal with failure. In life we're going to have failures, whether it's going to be with our family members, with our job, wherever we go, wherever we end up. You learn to deal with that in sports: you miss a shot and you just have to go back down the court, you strike out in baseball and you've got to get up and bat again. I think sports are awesome.

As far as your question with juggling, let me just say another big example with sports. I was a really naughty little boy, so sports were great because it kept me out of trouble. So, I would strongly encourage parents to find your son or daughter’s bend, whatever it is. If it's not sports, maybe it's music, maybe it's drama, maybe it's hunting, maybe it's fishing. Just find some kind of extracurricular thing where they can just really find that interest or what they were created to be.

One other thing, getting back to that whole scheduling thing, is when you find that it's not really a job it's kind of fun. Like I said, sports kept me out of trouble, and I'm glad for the structure. Without that structure, I would have gotten in a lot more trouble. I would encourage you too as parents to get your kids involved in something they want to be involved in. Maybe you played basketball but basketball is not your son's or daughter's interest. Maybe tennis is. So, let them go toward their bend. Let them go to whatever their bend is, not what you want their bend to be.

K: Yeah, that's so good. I love what you just said because I think it's very true in terms of how sports teaches them to deal with failure because it will happen. It also teaches them a host of other things. One of them that I think that I took away from growing up playing sports was perseverance. That stays with you for the rest of your life.

I remember especially thinking of it once I became a mom. I was up--oh my goodness--until the wee hours in the morning and I just wanted to go to bed. But, in track I wanted to give up. Like in that 800 meter race, by 600 meters I was done. But, you don't have a choice but to push through. So it teaches you that there's a lot to be said for the role of athletics.

I think you have to pay attention to how your child is wired in terms of their interests. Also, some parents I observe that they do they push sports and sometimes that isn't your child's nature. 

C: Yeah, let them find what it is. And you know what, we were talking a little bit about this before this interview, and my boys are both involved in college basketball coaching. But Kim's question was that they must have played in college. Actually, one of them got cut in seventh grade, got cut in eighth grade, but still had a passion for basketball. He actually played in my recreation basketball leagues, coached on recreation levels, and then ended up working at the University of Memphis, University of Auburn with the Grand Rapids Drive which is the Detroit Pistons minor league team as an assistant coach. So, even though he got cut and never even played junior high basketball, he ended up coaching in the G League for the Detroit Pistons affiliate team. Just because your son or daughter may have a passion and maybe they get cut, they can still find something else where they can fulfill that passion.

K: I think that's a wise word and so parents, these interviews are all for you primarily and not for the middle school students. But, if you have a child that just got cut from a sport, have them listen to just that little 15 seconds.

C: Let me just tell you two other real quick things about getting cut. When I played basketball in ninth grade, the worst player on our team should have been cut but his older brother was an all-conference, all-state basketball player so they kept him on the team. By the time he was in 10th grade, he was a starter and by the time he was 11th grade, he was all-state and he ended up getting a full-ride scholarship to the University of Detroit. That kind of touches on what Kim said about perseverance. If it's your passion and you like to play, even if you're the last person on the team, keep working at it because who knows: especially if you are a middle school student. That was the situation for my boys and for middle school students.

Boys develop at different times and they should just stay in the game and play as long as you can if that's what you're interested in. Another real quick story is my brother who wanted to play football because I played football. They ended up putting him on the line even when he didn't want to play the line and wanted to play quarterback because I played quarterback. So, he quit football but ended up being an all-state golfer and now he's an exceptional golfer.

Let people find their bend and gravitate but they're going to have some failures along the way. But hey, there are failures along the way in life and it helps you deal with them.

K: Speaking of that, what do you have to say to the parents who are parenting their child who just failed? I know I'm throwing you a curveball.

C: Oh that's a great question because you're going to fail in life. One of the things as a teacher, especially toward the end of my career, we started saying, “let them fail”. As a parent, you don't want them to fail and you want them to have everything just right. But as adults, we have to learn to fail. We make mistakes as parents. We make mistakes as husbands and as wives. It's important to be able to admit you're wrong and to look at yourself and evaluate. Like “hey, I failed. Is this something that I want to work at and go out for the team again next year or do I want to choose another sport?” But failure does happen and it's important that you, just like Christ does with us, love us unconditionally even when we fail.

I think as parents, that's what we want to do: still love our kids unconditionally even when they get cut from the team because that's really when they need our love the most.

K: Yeah, I think one of the best things that my parents did with me, they did many excellent things, but one of the best things was that I played basketball. That was my favorite sport growing up and when I would have a bad game, I feel so bad for my parents, because girls are a little more emotional. I would just keep them up until midnight just crying and saying, “why didn't I make that shot and then I had a second chance for a layup and then I missed that one.” They just listened. Then, of course, I'd come out of it and then within a little bit of time, I was ready to get back at it.

But, I think part of the thing too is to not expect them to turn it around just like that the next day. They're probably going to have a little bit of a grieving and mourning period and just just be there for them.

C: I was the same way and I think your parents were very wise just being there to listen. When we have hardships in life, I think we just need people to listen to us. So many people are willing to tell us and we need somebody just to listen to us more than we need somebody to tell us.

My parents were awesome too. But, my dad would always want to tell me after the game all the points on all the mistakes. It's like, “okay Dad, I'm already beating myself up over these mistakes and I don't need anybody else to beat me up over these mistakes.” I think some of that is because we want the best for our kids and we want them to succeed whether they just scored 25 points or whether they were 0 for 25. 

K: Yes, that's so good I love it. Okay, well we're taking this on to interview number two. So, thank you for your time today. I really appreciate it. I think there was a lot of great wisdom. For all of you parents who maybe grew up playing sports, some of this is very familiar to you, but I have a lot of friends who themselves did not grow up playing sports. They just kind of don't know how to respond when their daughter ends the soccer game crying.

Hopefully we gave a little bit of insight and Clark gave a little bit of insight into how to parent your student athlete well especially during the middle school years.Thank you for joining us today and we'll see you again next time! Thank you!