Sports, Psychology, and Parents

Derek Maltz Jr. signing to play Syracuse Lacrosse next year. I played with his Dad at Syracuse a member of the first championship team in 1983. I came in the fall after that season and I was apart of what cuse guys call the “dry years.” Every successful team has a Derek Maltz on it to keep morale up and balance on long bus rides and in the locker room.

For the next few days I am going to talk about sports, psychology, and parents using my beloved sport of lacrosse and my own experiences as a case study. Psychologists say that inside every adult there is a child, and a child in need of healing some unresolved hurt. I talked about the emotional ups and down I felt when I was an absolute failure when I arrive at Syracuse back in the fall of 1983. But I clearly arrived on campus out of shape and unprepared for big time lacrosse following knee surgery. In contrast to today, my parents never called coach Desko, my position coach at the time, and demanded an explanation of why I wasn’t starting close defense. Boy have parent’s attitudes and relationships with both their children and the folks that volunteer and get paid to coach them. You can see it in youth lacrosse, high school, travel teams (that topic deserves a series of post on its own) and the college level; more on this tomorrow.