Healthy Sports Parents

Two-time MLB All-Star Carlos Quentin joins Healthy Sports Parents for a conversation about youth sports parenting, athlete development and why kids don’t need to be great at sports right now.

After nine seasons in Major League Baseball, Carlos is now experiencing youth sports as a parent and coach. He shares how being an elite athlete affected the way he initially approached coaching his own kids, why he learned to give them more space to develop, and why parents shouldn’t be in such a hurry to find out how good their young athlete can be.

Carlos and Jonathan also talk about failure and rejection in sports, handling pressure and expectations, helping young athletes build mental skills, allowing kids to struggle, and how parents can support their child’s development without taking ownership of their sports experience.

Carlos Quentin is a two-time MLB All-Star who played for the Arizona Diamondbacks, Chicago White Sox and San Diego Padres. He is also the founder of Before The Field, which helps athletes develop the mental skills needed to navigate competition, pressure and adversity.

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HEALTHY SPORTS PARENTING COURSE

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MORE FROM CARLOS:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beforethefield
Website: https://www.beforethefield.com/
PROMO CODE: BTFHEALTHY3 - Free 3 months

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New episodes every Wednesday.

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Youth sports are getting more expensive, more competitive, and more structured at younger ages. So what happens to the kids and families who simply want a chance to play?

In this episode, Healthy Sports Parents founder Jonathan Carone talks with retired professional hockey player and Swift Hockey founder Zechariah Thomas about the growing barriers to youth sports. They discuss kids entering travel hockey as early as kindergarten, why taking a summer off can make it harder to make a winter team, the difference between formal training and simply playing, the rising cost of ice time, and why accessibility has become such an important part of Zechariah’s work.

Zechariah also shares what his own parents did to make hockey possible for him, why roller hockey could help more kids discover the sport, and the lesson he believes every sports parent needs to hear: let your kid be the one pulling you toward the game.

If youth sports are supposed to give kids opportunities to grow, learn, compete, and belong, we have to ask whether the system we’ve built is making those opportunities harder to reach.

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HEALTHY SPORTS PARENTING COURSE

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MORE FROM ZECHARIAH:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zechthomass/
Website: https://swifthockey.com/

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In this episode of Healthy Sports Parents, Jonathan Carone sits down with psychiatrist and author Dr. Curt Thompson to explore why sports parenting can feel so personal and why a child’s performance can bring out emotions parents never expected.

Dr. Thompson explains how parents carry their own family history, insecurities, shame, and unfinished business into their children’s sports experiences, often without realizing it. They discuss why parents can deeply love their kids and still respond in unhealthy ways, how generational patterns show up on the sidelines, why praising effort matters, and how curiosity can help parents stay connected to their children regardless of what happens on the scoreboard.

This conversation goes deeper than sideline behavior and serves as an invitation for sports parents to understand their own stories, recognize the patterns they’ve inherited, and consider who they are becoming while helping their kids grow through sports.

In this episode:

Why a child’s sports performance can feel so personal to a parent
How family-of-origin patterns influence sports parenting
Why parents sometimes repeat behaviors they experienced as kids
Breaking generational cycles without simply blaming previous generations
The difference between praising effort and praising results
Why curiosity can be more valuable than evaluation after a game
How shame and performance can become connected
Why connection with a child matters more than the scoreboard
What parents can learn about themselves through youth sports

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HEALTHY SPORTS PARENTING COURSE

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MORE FROM DR. THOMPSON:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/curtthompsonmd/
Website: https://curtthompsonmd.com/
Podcast: https://www.thebeingknownpodcast.com/

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FROM OUR SPONSORS:

Interested in sponsoring an episode?
Hello@HealthySportsParents.com

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New episodes every Wednesday.

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Youth sports have become increasingly all-or-nothing. Make the team. Commit more time. Play at a higher level. Keep up, or eventually there may not be a place for you anymore.

Amanda Carey believes there’s another way.

Amanda is the President of the National Interscholastic Cycling Association (NICA) and a multi-time professional mountain biking champion. In this conversation, she talks with Jonathan Carone about what happens when youth sports make belonging the starting point instead of something kids have to earn.

They get into why kids need safe chances to make bad decisions, how sports can build independence, the value of letting kids choose their own level of competition, why teenagers need opportunities to play just for fun, and how competitive kids can learn to use that drive to make the people around them better.

They also talk about exercise and ADHD, the unique benefits of repetitive sports like mountain biking, swimming and running, and why giving kids ownership over their sports experience can help them build a relationship with movement that lasts long after their competitive years are over.

This episode uses mountain biking as the example, but the bigger question applies to every sport:

How do we create more places where kids of different abilities, interests and goals can play, grow and belong?

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HEALTHY SPORTS PARENTING COURSE

Get access at HealthySportsParenting.com.

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More from NICA:

Website: https://nationalmtb.org/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nationalmtb/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NationalMTB/

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Sportball Franchising
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Get your Weekend Playbook:
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New episodes every Wednesday.

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Get your Healthy Sports Parents gear:
https://www.healthysportsparents.com/shop

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Get your Weekend Playbook:
https://www.healthysportsparents.com/playbook

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Coach Travis Hudson has spent 32 years building Western Kentucky volleyball into one of the best mid-major programs in the country. Along the way, he’s learned a lot about what actually matters in developing athletes and raising kids through sports.

In this episode, Coach Hudson and Jonathan Carone talk about why parents feel so much pressure to rush their kids to the next team or level, why development matters more than tournaments, how to know when to push your kid and when to back off, and why every child needs a different path. Coach Hudson also shares what he learned while watching his own son go from never playing a high school volleyball match to becoming the starting libero at Ohio State.

More than anything, this conversation is a reminder that your kid’s sports journey doesn’t need to end with a college roster spot to be successful. There’s a lot of good happening right now if we’re willing to stop chasing what’s next long enough to see it.

--------

HEALTHY SPORTS PARENTING COURSE

Get access at HealthySportsParenting.com.

--------

FROM OUR SPONSORS:

Interested in sponsoring an episode?
Hello@HealthySportsParents.com

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Get your Healthy Sports Parents shirts:
https://www.healthysportsparents.com/shop

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Get your Weekend Playbook:
https://www.healthysportsparents.com/playbook

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New episodes every Wednesday.

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Get your Healthy Sports Parents gear:
https://www.healthysportsparents.com/shop

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Get your Weekend Playbook:
https://www.healthysportsparents.com/playbook

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Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.