Youth Sports Need a Place For Every Kid (with Amanda Carey, multi-time Pro MTB Champion)

Youth sports have become increasingly all-or-nothing. Make the team. Commit more time. Play at a higher level. Keep up, or eventually there may not be a place for you anymore.

Amanda Carey believes there’s another way.

Amanda is the President of the National Interscholastic Cycling Association (NICA) and a multi-time professional mountain biking champion. In this conversation, she talks with Jonathan Carone about what happens when youth sports make belonging the starting point instead of something kids have to earn.

They get into why kids need safe chances to make bad decisions, how sports can build independence, the value of letting kids choose their own level of competition, why teenagers need opportunities to play just for fun, and how competitive kids can learn to use that drive to make the people around them better.

They also talk about exercise and ADHD, the unique benefits of repetitive sports like mountain biking, swimming and running, and why giving kids ownership over their sports experience can help them build a relationship with movement that lasts long after their competitive years are over.

This episode uses mountain biking as the example, but the bigger question applies to every sport:

How do we create more places where kids of different abilities, interests and goals can play, grow and belong?

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