“When sportsmanship prevails, we all SCORE.”

Kids are trying to tell us they don’t like being treated like a commodity anymore. Putting a first grader on a traveling team so they can begin preparing for their varsity season twelve years down the road is absurd. Does everything have to be organized? Does everything have to be tournament-related? What happened to the driveway time? What happened to good old-fashioned 1-on-1 or 2-on-2 games on the playground? Where have all the pick-up baseball games gone that used to be played in the back field or schoolyard with no adults present?

We must stop putting unrealistic expectations on our kids and let them enjoy the journey. We have to end the anointing of our children as being the next 5-star prospect or prodigy. Our children want stability, consistency and loyalty – exactly what a dog provides. They want coaches who care enough to catch them smoking on a bridge and help them get involved in something productive. They want parents, not just their pets, who will love them unconditionally. They want a stress-free environment they can trust, like sports used to be until parents and adults, in general, goofed it up. The best part is we can fix it too, and we won’t have to pretend to wag our tail like a dog.

The SCORE book series can help us regain what we’ve lost… 

BOOK ONE NOW AVAILABLE!

SCORE: A Guide to Supporting and Instilling Exceptional Sportsmanship

Parent/Grandparent/Adult Influencer

My father introduced me to sports at a young age. He wasn’t trying to groom the next Lew Alcindor or Jerry West. He was simply trying to provide me with a fun activity to experience. This quality time evolved into a love for the purity of sports, as I was taught sportsmanship and fair play, qualities that aren’t always present in today’s me-first world of tremendous salaries and intense competition.

For today’s parents of young athletes, there are some simple principles that will help smooth out the sports parent journey. Especially at a younger age, our goal should be for the kids to have enough fun to want to come back the next year. Kids will develop confidence through wins and will be challenged through losses – if they’re having fun.

Book one in the SCORE series walks through these principles for parents in detail. Order yours now!

ABOUT BILL

Bill has had the unique blessing of seeing good (and bad) sportsmanship from virtually every perspective.

Bill Gosse is a NCAA Division 1 walk-on in basketball; father of five; coach for several youth teams; and a WIAA registered official. He has seen all sides of sports, and still appreciates the great things it offers. He is passionate about improving the participant—and fan— environment in sports today.

Bill fell in love with sports at an early age, in an earlier era. A nine-Letter winner in football, basketball, golf and baseball at Sheboygan Falls High School (Wisconsin), he took his passion to a new level following high school. He landed a spot on the Marquette University Warriors basketball team as a walk-on while earning a B.A. in Liberal Arts. Currently executive director at St. Vincent de Paul in Green Bay, he’s spoken to tens of thousands of people traveling as far as Palm Springs, California.

Bill’s sportsmanship column for Gannett Wisconsin ran for 10 years, reaching a quarter million households weekly.

His love of sports—combined with a passion for improving today’s sports climate—burns in Bill. He resides in Green Bay, Wisconsin with his wife Debbie, where they are proud parents of five grown boys.