Chris Mance II - Mental Skills Coach

There is a simple fact about youth sports that I think is necessary to reiterate over and over. Youth sports does NOT build character in children. Youth sports reveals character in children. It’s the parents and coaches who build character using youth sports as the classroom.

With that said, here are 10 character building lessons parents should make sure their children learn while playing youth sports.

1. The harder you work for something, the better you will feel when you achieve it
2. Life is fair because it’s unfair to everyone
3. What comes easy won’t last, what last won’t come easy
4. Life is 10% of what happens to you and 90% of how you react to it
5. Suffer the pain of discipline or suffer the pain of regret
6. Challenges are what makes life interesting, overcoming them is what makes life meaningful
7. Always choose what’s right over what’s convenient
8. Courage is not the absence of fear, it’s the ability to be your best self in the presence of fear
9. Falling down is part of life, getting back up is living
10. The fear of failure is the greatest failure of all