Olaniyi Sobomehin from Imnotyou.com

You might be surprised that a middle-aged mother of 4 teenagers completely agrees with this advice by Niyi Sobo, former running back for the New Orleans Saints, who trains elite young athletes to dominate their sport.

Before you get all up in arms….of course, he doesn’t mean kids should disobey their parents or disregard their rules and values.

He’s suggesting that most people surrounding a young athlete trying to reach the highest level of his sport haven’t been there. Or worse, people-even coaches- inadvertently discourage and limit an athlete’s potential by being “honest” (“you’re not big, fast, strong, skilled, smart enough“).

Let’s face it, most coaches are barely qualified to coach a sport. Many programs rely on parent volunteers or choose a coach based on availability only. Others in travel programs know how to run a business but may not have the expertise to help a kid develop all the components required to compete at the highest level (conditioning, mental, emotional, logistical, strength, etc.)

When I told Mark (my husband and Luke’s tennis coach) that I agree with this, even as it relates to Luke’s goals for tennis, naturally he was offended because he misunderstood the statement.

Mark definitely has the expertise to train Luke technically and strategically to continue to improve his tennis game no matter how far he goes.

Even Mark had to admit that neither of us has navigated the path of national tennis tournaments to where it might lead Luke. Mark excelled in D-3 tennis but that’s not the same as D-1. Plus, the landscape has changed so much in the past 30 years, our experience in college recruiting, admissions, even visiting is hardly relevant. Moreover, while Mark emphasizes the importance of conditioning, nutrition, visualization, discipline and internal motivation to all of his students, none of those is his area of expertise.

So, what should we do? Mark will still coach Luke but we also have to keep an eye out for (or stalk) people who HAVE been there and hope that they’re willing to mentor Luke.

In addition to some one-on-one coaching, we’ll be checking out a course that Niyi Sobo’s creating to expose young athletes all over the world to his principals and method of goal-setting, discipline and visualization to get results. (I’m not training for anything, but I’m interested in learning this stuff, myself)

Other than that, I’ll just keep buying cereal, enjoy watching Luke play and make him mow the lawn every now and again.