Snowplow Parenting

Interesting article in Sports Illustrated about "snowplow" parents. It used to be helicopter parents hovering around making decisions for their kids. Now in sports parents will spend their lives coaching and grooming their young kids up through high school and college, through the draft and even attending pro practices and hiring special coaches for the professional athlete kids - during the season! Examples include Kyler Murray and Dwayne Haskins and LaVar Ball and to a lesser extent Tua Tagovailoa. College coaches are seeing parents move to town along with the players. Parents used to drop off their kids at summer sports camps. Now the parents are sticking around to "supervise."

College coaches are having to "re-recruit" their current players every year to keep them from transferring. All this involvement from parents is driving coaches and agents crazy. At some colleges they consider parents a problem they have to manage, and assistants are assigned to specific problem parents.

Positives include a lesser chance for a player to be hoodwinked by someone wanting to take advantage of him. Negatives include kids not being emotionally mature enough to withstand the rigors of a professional sport. Some don't know how to set an alarm clock. Parents are handling their child's problems instead of letting them work it out themselves. What the article didn't mention was the 99.9% of athletes who don't make it to the pros, or all the college players who leave school early then don't get drafted. Many never earn a college degree, and have to play overseas, then most have a career than only last three or four years at best.

Glad we didn't go off the deep end with baseball like that. Will played against elite competition and excelled, but didn't make it all consuming.

Ceil made turkey meatballs and spaghetti. Tossed salad. Not much else. Kept up with the game but went to bed long before it was over.

Can the Raptors repeat? Looks like the Warriors "dynasty" is over, unless no one rises up to challenge them. The Lakers are in shambles. Can the Rockets mount a run?