More than 70 former athletes and my mentor showed up to watch our current team beat our biggest rival as well.  It was great to see them and know that we did a lot of things right while building good people.

Thank you everyone.  It was great to see you.

For a growing number of children lack of exercise leads to poor health.   The onslaught of video games and computers robs exercise time. Coaches with poor skills and worse attitudes complete the concern and need for a new solution.  I never found a book on how to raise responsible children while they were playing little league games so I wrote one.

We have six children of our own.  At this writing our youngest is a senior in high school.  During their growing years we have done three things to focus them into who they have become:

1. Teach them how to serve others
2. Always be involved in everything they do.
3. Work beside them until they know the value of hard work.

Teach Service.

Our children learned how to serve others because we first served them and included them in that process.  Linda’s mother lived with us for the last five years of her life.  My children watched their mother care for their grandmother.  They learned to do that themselves.  Holiday traditions include feeding the needy and hosting Santa parties for special needs children.

Always be Involved.

If our children are in it, we are at it.  I cannot take any credit for the level of involvement that we have had with children.  It is a Linda thing.  She loves to know who our children’s friends, what they are doing, and where they are going.  She lead the PTA, volunteered for field trips, holiday parties and everything else.  We are at the school plays.  I cannot remember a child’s event that she has not supported and attended.  I believe it has made a huge difference in who our children are today because they knew that whatever they were doing was important to their mother.

Work beside them.

The little league part of the learning to work equation came easily for me.  I would rather be engaged than observing.  So when we were doing sports, if I was not coaching, I was at practice helping.  While engaged in this activity my children learned to see that nothing happens without effort.  We had to be to practice early, had to get the equipment ready, had to make calls when rain delayed games, had to think about everyone on the roster and rotate them into the activities.  I never “phoned my parenting in” I was there as often as I could.  I was there at whatever level I could be.

Because of our commitment to these three concepts, we are not rich and famous, but we have great kids.

In the process I wrote a book, more of a journal really, of what I saw, what I learned, and what I did to create a difference from the existing order of youth sports.  You can own a copy and learn for yourself what I discovered here.