What Parents Should Know About their Kids Becoming Professional Athletes

I thought I’d take a break from talking about tennis just for a moment to talk about Landon Donovan. Some of you might be asking, who is Landon Donovan? Landon led the Earthquakes to two M.L.S. championships, and as a 20-year-old he had a breakout performance for the United States during its quarterfinal run at the 2002 World Cup, landing on the cover of Sports Illustrated ( Witz, B., 2014. New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/23/sports/soccer/landon-donovan-is-retiring-from-soccer-with-no-regrets.html?_r=0) but now he is retiring. Why? For someone who can make playing soccer look so easy, Landon Donovan has never been shy about conveying how hard the sport can be for him. He has made no secret that the responsibility and the trappings that came with being the standard-bearer of American soccer for more than a decade had long ago become a burden, and that in recent years he had begun to view his talent not so much as a gift, but as an obligation ( Witz, B., 2014. New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/23/sports/soccer/landon-donovan-is-retiring-from-soccer-with-no-regrets.html?_r=0).

Professional sports can be really difficult! Some people ignore it! Some people use it to their advantage! Others get torn apart by it! “After the ’06 World Cup was the first time I realized, clearly, that it was a business,” Donovan said. “And that it was fickle” ( Witz, B., 2014. New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/23/sports/soccer/landon-donovan-is-retiring-from-soccer-with-no-regrets.html?_r=0). Professional sports are a business. Make no mistake. It is all about winning and losing and some professional athletes lose themselves in the process. “The way we see athletes — coaches see us this way, fans see us this way, the media sees us this way, owners see us this way — they want us to live, breathe, eat and die the sport,” Donovan said. “Every game they want you to go out and do everything you can to make the fans feel good, make the coach feel successful, make the owners successful.” But what about the athletes?

In the article Landon’s Mom talked about how she pushed Donovan to take violin lessons and to learn Spanish — his ability to conduct Spanish-language interviews has been a boon to his popularity with Latinos — and was proud that he was an A student in high school.“I just didn’t want him to put all his eggs in one basket and live and breathe the game, because there’s so much more to life than that,” Kenney-Cash said ( Witz, B., 2014. New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/23/sports/soccer/landon-donovan-is-retiring-from-soccer-with-no-regrets.html?_r=0).This is an important role for a parents: kids should be involved with a variety of activities particularly when they are young. Why? There is more to life than just sports. All things support sports and sports supports all things and when your sporting career ends and all you have it your sport, then what?

Donovan, 32, has sought counseling, struggled with depression, watched his celebrity marriage disintegrate, reconnected with his father and even taken a four-month break from soccer in 2012-13 — laying out his vulnerabilities for all to see. If other widely recognized athletes build fences around themselves and their thoughts, Donovan, more often than not, has laid out a welcome mat to his mind ( Witz, B., 2014. New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/23/sports/soccer/landon-donovan-is-retiring-from-soccer-with-no-regrets.html?_r=0). Although Landon seems pretty set on retiring I sent him a tweet yesterday asking him if he had worked with a sports psychologist. Besides not putting all your eggs in one basket the other side of this conversation is the support you garner to be a professional athlete. Dealing with depression is absolutely important but it’s also important to have a mental game plan for dealing with mental states and emotions that come up specifically around sport.

There was a lot about this article that stood out to me but this sentence about Landon’s counseling really struck me: that self-awareness, and his willingness to express it, have made him appear more human, which is not always a desired quality in star athletes ( Witz, B., 2014. New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/23/sports/soccer/landon-donovan-is-retiring-from-soccer-with-no-regrets.html?_r=0).

I would love to hear your thoughts about any of this but particularly this last point.

I held my free online tennis master class last night! 60+ people registered! If you are interested in obtaining the information from last nights master class, it’s not too late: https://drmichellecleere.com/free-online-master-class/ I will also be hosting a teleseminar series starting Monday, December 1st that will help you develop your system for beating the demons: https://drmichellecleere.com/btd/ Check it out!

I hope you and your family have the happiest Thanksgiving!

Dr. Michelle

Photo credit: it.wikipedia.org