Youth sports is full of challenges: playing time battles, coaching conflicts, teammate clashes and performance slumps. These are without a doubt big hurdles for your young athlete.

But believe it or not, they are not the biggest obstacles to your child’s success. There are bigger tests that have nothing to do with the team, coach or even playing time. These challenges I am going to share with you — in no particular order — go deeper than that.

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Obstacle No. 1: Mental frailty

The mental game can sabotage your child’s success every single time. It doesn’t matter if your young athlete is the best player on the team, in the league, or even in the state. If your child does not know how to deal with the mental battles that always come in sports, then all the skill in the world cannot guarantee success.

Experts have argued: which is more important, the mental game or the physical talent? An article in Youth Sports Psychology states that the mental game likely accounts for about 50 percent of a child’s performance. As young athletes start competing at elite levels, about 90 percent of the game is mental.

The reason for this is that athletes must learn how to handle mistakes in order to succeed. There are mistakes in every game in youth sports. Mistakes are just part of competition, and if your children don’t know how to mentally deal with them, there is no way they can push forward and achieve success.

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Obstacle No. 2: A weak work ethic

Although sports are supposed to be fun, they’re also supposed to be work.

For little ones, of course, it’s mostly all about fun. But the fun factor lessens the older your kids get. In my opinion, the fun shouldn’t totally disappear, but it will compete heavily with hard work as your kids grow up in sports. 

• Great athletes are dedicated and make sacrifices to play.
• Great athletes persistently seek to achieve excellence.
• Great athletes don’t let obstacles hold them back.

If your children want success on the next level, be it middle school, high school or college, they must not run from hard work; in fact, they must be committed to it.

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Obstacle No. 3: You

Before you skip over this obstacle and assert there is no way you, as a sports mom or dad, are standing in the way to your child’s success, let me ask you a few questions …

Do you try to fight your child’s battles?

Do you ever bail your children out of a difficult situation or attempt to make things easy for them?

Are you more invested in your children’s youth sports experience than they are?

It’s hard for us as parents to admit that we might be the reason our kids are not succeeding. In fact, you may think you are trying to help your child have success, but in fact you are doing the opposite because you are way too involved in the journey.

Parents, these obstacles don’t have to stand in the way of your children’s success. There is a way over, around and through each one of these hurdles. You are a huge key to your children’s success. Help them work on building mental toughness, encourage a hardy work ethic, and then, encourage them as you back off and let them take the journey.

Janis B. Meredith is a parenting coach. She provides resources to help parents raise champions. Learn more about how she can help parents Raise Champions.