Welcome to Beyond the Classroom on PBS, thirty nine, I'm your host, Joe Bassetti, and it's a pleasure to sit down with you this evening.

This year, eight million high school students across the United States are actively playing sports.

Only four hundred and ninety five thousand of them will play at the national collegiate level.

Put another way, that's six percent of current high school athletes from there, and this varies from sport to sport point zero.

Six to nine percent of those NCAA athletes will be drafted into a professional league.

The NFL, WNBA, NHL, MLB and so on.

And look, I'm not presenting this information to discourage anyone from playing sports.

My friends and I played different sports year round for over a decade, and we saw firsthand the benefits of being active on a team with a common objective.

Even though none of us went pro well, to be fair, I chose not to.

Student athletes learn how to empathize, how to collaborate, how to respect one another and their competitors.

And tonight we're going to talk to folks who have dedicated their lives to both scholarship and athletics and about the benefits that sports can offer kids of all ages.

Let's get started.

Thank you again for joining us this evening.

I'm very excited to have our conversation this evening with three outstanding individuals who have dedicated again their lives to athletics and developing student athletes in a variety of different contexts.

So I'm going to let them do the introductions this evening.

So Megan, would you want to go ahead and start?

Yes, my name is Megan Wright and I am currently the director of basketball operations for Lehigh Women's Basketball.

I am coming off of a year playing basketball overseas in France, and before that I played for Lehigh Women's Basketball for five years using all the eligibility I could.

And really, I've been playing basketball since I was five, so it's very much been a massive part of my life.

Excellent.

Thank you again for joining us.

We appreciate it.

Kim.

So thanks for having me, I'm Kim Fritz, the director of outpatient rehab for Lehigh Valley Health Network.

I have been a physical therapist for twenty one years, which I don't want to say that it's been that long.

And I'm really excited to be on this panel.

I get to represent you as a health care professional that's been managing athletes and weekend warriors from the time they're in the hospital through the outpatient world.

And I also get to represent it as a parent of athletes myself, so I can look at things from a couple of different perspectives.

That's excellent.

Thank you for.

And your perspective is so unbelievably valuable, valuable to us.

Rather, so thank you so much for joining us.

Jill, go ahead.

Well, thank you for having me and thank you to the panel.

It's been a great discussion so far.

My name is Jill Dorn.

I'm the head field hockey coach at Liberty High School.

I've been coaching for twenty one seasons and I'm also a special education teacher at Liberty as well.

And maybe my focus lately has been working primarily with joining and binding together our high school girls to be mentors and athletes to our youth program that we run between camps and clinics for grades K to six.

So we're just looking to matriculate that into our community here in Bethlehem.

So, Jill, as a follow up to that, I did want to ask a question that a lot of people at parents like myself ask about their kids participating in sports.

When should they start playing sports?

What sports should they play?

Should they be participating in a number of different kinds?

Should they be doing it year round, should they be taking a rest?

Can you give us a little bit of context, at least from your background of field hockey?

It's a lot when you think about having children, especially at a young age, because you want them to be involved.

You don't want them to be sedentary, you want them to be as active as possible.

When we drive around, often we see kids who are playing soccer, cheer football and you have the the the more popular sports and we have to be able to look around and as parents research and see what else is out there to get our kids as involved as possible.

And oftentimes when we think about the age, what we want to do this, I usually start my programs around the sixth grade level because you're not talking about school readiness and skill development and being able to marry all of those together.

Usually that's a that's a great time to start.

And then looking for, I would say, more high school programs that run local programs in the area because then the kids get to start to know each other and start to acclimate themselves at a young age to be together and understand what sports is about, not just the winning side of it that comes way, way later, but actually the development of what a student athlete is.

So for parents, I would say, you know, it's it's whatever age.

I think your child feels comfortable because if it were up to me, my child would have been playing long ago.

But we waited for a little bit longer and I'm OK with that because it's important for her to be ready as as with all of our children, it's excellent.

And so Kim, in terms of perspective, for kind of pressures associated with that because we all know that there's a lot of pressure and I'm sure that you see it on a daily basis for kids to get involved.

Can you give us a little perspective on that?

Yeah.

So I think that Jill just brought up a really good point about saying it's when your child is ready.

Organizations are starting to be able to have programs for children as young as four and five years old, and sports and teams are really good building blocks, not only physically but emotionally.

For children, it helps them develop a lot of social skills and skills that they'll need in order to move into school and to be able to work together as a team and to be able to work with other children, especially those who might not have other siblings at home.

But then it also helps with physical development that you know the best thing that we can do for our bodies in terms of growth or weight bearing activities and activities that make you have to move in space.

It helps with balance.

It helps with coordination, and it doesn't have to be the star athlete.

They don't have to be naturally gifted and that they're playing the sport like they're going to be playing it for the rest of their lives.

It's a really good opportunity to just move their body and start to learn how their bodies move in space, which will then set them up for success as they grow.

That's actually so playing Madden on my Xbox is not an effective use of that space.

Well, maybe not necessarily for your entire body, but it does help with eye hand coordination.

What if I get really animated and move around a lot while I'm playing?

Hmm.

Anything that's physical is therapy.

Thank you so much.

I'm taking that with me and keeping that in my back pocket.

That's wonderful.

Thank you so much.

So, Megan, from your perspective, so obviously growing up at a very young age, you were surrounded by basketball because of your family.

And it's something that is still very much obviously a part of your life.

Can you offer perspective from the student athlete side?

I mean, I like I said, I started playing basketball when I was five, and it was very good for me because I grew very tall, very early.

So like you said about coordination, and that really helped me to get steady on my feet and able to move.

And then it helped me with time management as I grew into middle school and into high school because every day after school, I had some sort of practice or somewhere to be.

So I had to learn how to manage my schoolwork and have this practice.

And it was a good way to kind of let the steam out from the school day, but be able to go home and do my work and kind of reset in that capacity and it really set.

Um, habits for me going into college, and that was a lot of when I was in college and playing at that level, we would have recruits come and ask about the transition from high school to college and the workload and balancing school and basketball.

But the reality of it is at that point in your life, you've been doing it for so long because you've been doing it since middle school and high school.

You know how to go to school and have practice in the same day.

So it really set me up well early.

Were there any challenges that you encountered?

Kind of going through that process.

The hardest part is finding.

What works for you, especially in college, because it's not as structured as.

The younger years where you have school and then home and then practice, but.

I think the difference is just knowing that you wouldn't be somewhere if you weren't capable of doing it, and the biggest struggle in that is just finding what works best for you.

And in terms of kind of digital, I'll ask this question to you in terms of like moving beyond what Athletics Canada.

So we talked about the empathy piece, we talked about the collaborative piece, the teamwork and all those other components.

What is the most compelling reason when you're looking at recruiting potential players for your field hockey program?

What's your cell?

What's the what's the thing that you're telling them is beneficial for them?

The number one thing we hang our hat on, especially as a program, but I know a lot of our athletes could could mirror.

This same philosophy is understanding what a student athlete is and being a student first in the classroom.

So when we look to bring young girls in at a middle school age, we talk about their responsibility first in the classroom and being able to uphold their end of the bargain and understand that what they're choosing to do beyond their studies and beyond their every day is simply for them and to be able to experience a culture of sisterhood and teamwork and all of the things that come along that are positive within the program, but also understanding that there's a lot of negatives in these young girls and boys.

Their their lives are adolescents are going through a tough time.

So what we like to do is always have the understanding that we are there for them, for those bad days to, nothing's going to change for me, going on the field and having your encounter.

But all of the other things can encompass where our mental state is at.

So when we bring the girls in, we talk to them about how this is more than just sports.

This is about their development.

This is about their maturity process, and this is about them growing into young women who are going to encounter a lot of the same situations that they deal with in sports, in the classroom and beyond.

And we try to really lead with that so that they understand it's a bigger picture.

And Kim, in your practice, are you seeing those kinds of challenges brought up as well?

So Jill had mentioned the mental health components of that as well.

Is that something that people bring when they're coming for rehab?

Absolutely.

So we have to treat the whole person and they're more than just their injury and everyone is more than a sum of just their parts.

And I think COVID has really brought a lot of that to light as we looked at the student athlete because they were suffering in a way as well as all the other children who weren't in school and weren't doing regular activities on a regular basis.

And for sports for many of these kids is an outlet.

It's an outlet for them to be able to grow socially, to grow emotionally, to be able to get support from their peers, from their coaching staff mentorship, as well as sometimes having an outlet for when things at home aren't real good.

And there's a place for them to go where they feel safe and they can feel that they can be successful.

So sports play a physical role.

Yeah, but from an emotional standpoint, it really is about comprehensive care and making sure that you're treating the whole person because sometimes the injury may be what's brought them there, but it's really not what's causing the injury.

And sometimes you may find that you have your your students who maybe are injury prone and you need to look at that a little bit deeper sometimes and find out, really, maybe what's the cause?

And you had mentioned, you know, COVID.

And again, we hate mentioning COVID on the show and talking about it because it again, it dominates a lot of conversation, but it is a major factor for your patients.

Are you seeing a shift in what they're bringing with them, so to speak, when they're looking for rehab, whether they may be, it may just be an injury, right?

But perhaps there is extra baggage.

What is it that they're coming to you with?

I think that we're we're starting to see that be less and less common.

We we are seeing a lot of people in the adult world who maybe have delayed care and are now coming in to see us.

But our our athletes really have done a really nice job of maintaining that self preservation throughout their COVID and as their coaching staff has really done a nice job.

But what you can find is, is that they may not have had as much structure.

So for pre-season work and for work that would normally have happened over the course of a whole year.

So the need to make sure that you are meeting both strength and flexibility because if there's imbalance, imbalance is what causes injury.

So when left to their own devices and not having structured care, sometimes they're not putting together a program for themselves that is managing both.

So them being back on the field and in organized teams is helping to cut down on injury prevention.

Well, that's excellent to hear, and I'm glad to hear also that you're starting to see less of that and that sports is really kind of functioned as that thing that's that's acting as an anchor for them.

Yeah, carrying them through.

It's wonderful to hear.

And Megan, you went through this firsthand, right?

It affected whether you were able to play, and I know that injury was something that you had dealt with at the college level as well.

What were the struggles like for you as a student athlete there?

Yeah, like.

Said I had my fair share of injuries ranging from ACL to ACL tears to arthritis and broken toes and all kinds of things in between, but the biggest struggle for me was finding my identity outside of just an athlete because at that point in my life, I had only been a basketball player.

I only saw myself as a basketball player.

So the injury, kind of like Kim said, my physical therapy became some other sort of therapy because it helped me to realize that I was a whole person outside of my sport, and it was a good reminder of that.

But it did have its fair share of ups and downs and days where I wasn't sure if I wanted to continue to do these rehabs or if it was going to work, or if I was going to be able to play the way that I wanted to.

But.

I had a really great team of athletic trainers at Lehigh who helped me see myself through it and get back and be better than before, so it was really helpful to have that aspect of it and it really did tell me work through a lot of.

Identity stuff, Too.

That's wonderful.

So, Jill, in terms of an athletic staff, right, because you're also managing a number of other pieces with players in addition to the staff on the sidelines who are the key players in that process?

You know, if I'm a parent, I'm seeing a bunch of adults on the sidelines who am I looking at?

Who are these folks Specifically for our staff?

I know one of the biggest unsung heroes that's on our staff is our strength and conditioning coordinator who works with our players in the off season.

That is the that that's where it all starts, and in the off season, he is working with them and teaching them and working on mindfulness activities as well.

So he brings that component in along with working on the physical strength.

And so he he doesn't get as much recognition as as we think he deserves because he is always at our games.

He's watching our girls, he's following them.

That is one person that as a staff, whether he's on the sideline or not, he is a huge part of that.

Our assistants are all in people as well.

So there are those that come when we do our clinics and we do our camps and understand the philosophy of what we're trying to build, what we're trying to do within the community, how we're trying to instill this, these qualities in our youth athletes as they matriculate through the program.

And they're just as supportive.

Having a group of women together also setting the tone for what we hope our young girls are able to accomplish.

See how a group of women can have the same ideas or disagree, but still work together for the common good, and that is creating the best possible team we can.

So we really try to scaffold that for our players on a daily basis.

So our assistants, my Laura Maria Ali, a former player of mine and and that is one of the best parts of coaching, is when your former players do come back to coach.

And I know you going back to Lehigh, that's it's one of the biggest honors because you know that something was done right to make them want to come back and instill those same beliefs onto the next generation of players.

Now that's amazing.

And it's almost, you know, it's a tradition, really, you know that you're both upholding for the institution that you're at and something that's like a deeply held belief reorganization, specifically as the father of two girls.

You know, I'm hoping that they could be so lucky to be on a, you know, program such as yours that they could be wonderful.

You know, one of the other things that we also hear a lot in terms of experience for high school athletes is what comes next.

So I'm playing sports and I know I've know many of these people personally, as I'm sure each of us here does the talk of getting drafted right.

This is I'm going to play and know I'm going to be in the MLB.

I'm going to be a wide receiver in the NFL.

The odds are stacked against you, obviously.

How do you temper expectations for students that may not have access to that information?

And do you find that information is now more readily available for them to make more informed choices that may be more pragmatic for them as players?

One of the things that I really enjoy that our girls do is they go beyond what they're doing at our high school level and they go to college ID clinics.

They actually hear from the head coaches who are there to not only use these tournaments as recruitment opportunities, but also to speak to young girls about what is it like at the at the next step?

One of my favorite coaches that I've ever got to see actually sit and talk to the girls.

Sandy Miller from Strasburg University always tells the girls the differences between Division one, two and three and the amount of money that's awarded and what the difference is between.

And it's it's it's so beneficial for the girls to hear this, but this is also something that I think parents need to understand at a very young age that the big picture is, of course, we would love to see our children play at the college level.

We would love to see him play Division One.

But for me, as a parent, as a parent of two young girls, I want to see my daughters be successful and professionals and whatever it is that they do, I want them to get a good education.

And if they want to be able to play a sport at the same time, I think that is wonderful because it teaches them that time management that the confidence that they need to be able to abstain from other activities that other people are doing to be a representative and a model of a mentor of an athlete.

But it is.

It is something that we see over time.

Obviously, Division One is a goal for a lot of our players and sometimes, yeah, they do have the qualities, but they're also very academic.

So you want to make sure you warn them of your life is really going to be centered around the sport and your academics.

While we don't ever want to say that they're secondary.

That's how rigorous this is going to be for you.

So we look at the division two and three level, and we're very honest about what that looks like, and everyone thinks it's always about money.

But that's why we preach the student athlete because if you're an academic within the classroom, there's a ton of money out there for you.

You just have to know how to tap into those resources.

And that's one of the things that I love being able to bring to the high school level and help with the recruitment process because there are a lot of questions and there's a lot of sources out there, but it's about doing the research and finding the knowledge and using the people that are knowledgeable to help you.

I think that Joe really just it triggered it while you were talking about it, that you talked about the parents.

And it's not professional athletes when you're talking about your children, especially when they're young and our parents, our grandparents.

Those are the fans.

Those are the people that are helped guiding and making the decisions at that point.

And I think that what we're seeing, at least in the health care world right now and our kids are seeing is that there is a huge push to be able to have that child be ready to go to college sooner and to change to being a one sport specialty very early in age.

Something that I don't support and I don't support for my sons.

I encourage them to use their bodies in all different ways and use their muscles in all different ways because it helps you grow.

And what can happen is, is that parents can get caught in a trap, myself included, of how do I push them to the next level?

How do I make sure that they are able to keep up with this person who's doing this, this and this or?

And a lot of times what we're doing is we're forcing them to play at a play up and to struggle and to to because it's going to make them better at their own age group.

But really, we put them at greater risk for injury, both overuse injury as well as just physical injury that comes from playing with people who are just physically more developed than some of our kids are are ready for.

And it's a social problem that we have right now that sports have become full year for every sport.

So it's making it more difficult for those students to be able to maintain their sense of identity and multiple different things.

Yeah, one of the things I coach my son's baseball team and one of the things that I found remarkable is when you get your handbook, it now has a pitch limit for the kids and it's by age and I'm looking at this going, OK, so 50 pitches has to be the maximum.

Otherwise they're at risk for Tommy John surgery later on and much sooner in life.

And it's just remarkable to me.

He's not even eight years old yet.

Yeah, I work with some remarkable orthopedic surgeons with Coordinated Health and Lehigh Valley Health Network, and I have sent three athletes that are between the ages of 13 and 15 for elbows.

My son being one of them who are pitchers, they're playing on multiple teams.

They're spreading themselves outrageously thin.

They're playing throughout the whole entire year.

And everyone has to take responsibility.

Coaches have to take responsibility for understanding what their players and listening to them.

But really, the players have to take responsibility because they're the common denominator on every team that they're there on in every place.

It's them and they need to be open and honest with their coaching staff and let them know if they're having pain when they're having pain and.

Be able to say, Hey, Coach, I pitched yesterday, know I need rest today, and it's not a sign of defeat.

It's actually a sign of success and maturity that you're able to say what your own limits are and be able to know to be successful, to be able to extend into being a college athlete and not being having surgery.

When you're a high school athlete because you've blown your elbow out or blown your knee out at an age that was probably well before it needed to happen.

Well, the thing I always wonder too, is is it where is that problem?

It's a social pressure problem primarily, I would imagine.

But then what is the messaging?

I'm hoping the messaging from coaching staffs generally is being self-reflective.

Understand your body, know when you have reached your limit, know when something you know might be injured.

Megan, I'm sure that you had that experience growing up right about understanding your own limits.

Oh, especially especially in college, because like I said, I had so many injuries.

By the time I reached my fifth year, my body was pretty much near the end of its capabilities because, like you said, Jill Division One Athletics is very rigorous and it's its year round.

We would we would come in the summer in June and we would go through.

We'd have some rest periods, but it was a week or two.

So it takes a lot out of you.

So by my fifth year, I was able to have those conversations with my coaches, like on what I needed to limit to be able to be successful for the entire season.

Because our season starts in September and ends in March, that's a long time to be on your feet and that physical.

So my coaches were very receptive to that conversation, and it helped because I knew that I couldn't push myself too far.

Otherwise, I was at risk for injury like I had done in the past, because growing up as an athlete, you think that pushing through.

A little bit of pain is going to make you look tougher and make you look stronger when in reality, the better option is to sit when something hurts a little bit so that it doesn't turn into something bigger.

Yeah, and I feel like that may be a problem that's also associated in addition to social pressure, the way that we portray sports, whether it's a film or something other.

And I won't pick specific movies, but we can all think about them in our heads, about pushing through pain and continuing to play regardless of how it feels.

Just so you can win, right?

And I know that that affected me as a young athlete.

You know, when I was very young watching certain films again, I won't name but like understanding like, Oh no, I can push through just like that guy on that team.

And I did injure myself repeatedly.

So that's a that's really edifying to know that coaches are encouraging that practice and players can then kind of actualize that when it comes to academics.

One of the questions that I had for you, Megan, was the academic experience as a team, right?

Because you're with each other all the time.

You said September all the way through March, and that's both in high school, middle school too, I would imagine in college.

How do you support each other when you're in that context?

In high school, it's nice because you're in a lot of the same classes and you have a lot of the same things to work for and the same tests to study for.

But in college, it was different because in Lehigh is a very high performing school academically as well as athletically.

So it was being in a room seven days a week with 14 like-minded girls who knew that they wanted to be successful academically really helped me to thrive academically at Lehigh, too, because we put so much value in our academics.

We had team study halls where we would go and spend a few hours a week studying together on our bus trips to and from games.

People would have laptops and books open and studying and doing homework, and there was never any pressure if you felt like taking an afternoon off.

But there was always support if you wanted someone to go to the library and study with you and work through that.

So having that community support you through academics and athletics was really, really valuable to my experience.

That's great.

So we only have about a minute left.

That's how quickly it goes.

Very briefly, what is something that you would want parents to know from each of your perspectives if they could take away anything from this conversation?

What's the one big takeaway?

Joe, we can start with you.

If parents could take anything away, I would just say just to make sure that they're always listening to their child's wants and their child's needs and go with that first.

It's great when you have other sources coming to you, hey, they can join this team.

They could do this.

We want them to move up.

We want them to do this.

That and the other thing.

And as a parent, you're very proud of that.

And it's probably a knee jerk reaction to say, Yeah, let's do it, let's go, but always have the honest conversation with your child first.

And I think that's one thing that they're going to respect, and they're going to actually value their coaches as they get older by having those conversations because we have those with them, and we hope that that's happening at home as well and that we're open and honest with them.

So thank you, Kim.

I think what I would want everybody to take away is is that hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard and that's what our parents something I tell every parent that I come through because those kids that have talent are the ones that have a tendency to not work as hard or don't put the work in because they're naturally good at what they do.

And we have to make sure that you, you realize that you have to always put the hard work in and hard work will help you not only in the thing that you're doing now, but will succeed as you move through both college athletics and life.

And that nothing comes easy.

So that's what I think we focus on.

That's excellent.

So I got the Madden thing from you and that and I'm taking both of those things and I'm walking away with them.

You're welcome.

I will give you credit every time it happens.

And Megan, I would just say as a reminder that sports aren't fun if you don't love it.

So if there's ever a moment where a kid isn't loving something that might be time to consider stepping away, maybe not forever, maybe taking a break.

But it's not fun if you don't love it anymore, so it's wonderful.

Thank you, Megan, and thank you, Jill Kim, Megan, all three of you for joining this conversation tonight.

I know it was really informative for me, and I know that parents ask these kinds of questions all the time, and it's really useful to hear this information, even though we kind of talk shop every day right in our own context.

But it's great for them.

So thank you so much.

As the proverb goes, it takes a village to raise a child, and we hope that you'll consider our program as part of your village.

Do you have any questions or comments?

We want to hear from you?

Go to PBS Thirty nine classroom or join the conversation on social media.

I'm your host, Joe Bassetti, and I'm going to go play some Madden when I go home.