Speaker 1: Welcome to another Chicks on the Right podcast episode, where
we have our friend and sponsor of the show, Zach Abraham,
with us from Bulwart Capital Management, and we're going to
do things a little different today. We're not actually going
to talk about the money world or the economy or
anything like that. We want to talk because we've all
got kids, and we've all got kids that have participated
in sports. We want to talk about club sports. There's
an interesting article from last year from The Federalist talking
about how seventy percent of teenagers in youth are dropping
out of organized sports by age thirteen just because of
the burnout and the injuries. What's been your experience with
club sports.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I've kind of I've got some interesting experience
with this because you know, I played, I played in college,
so I grew up really you know, I was doing
sports year round.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Football, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, play football. And now I coach it. And so
my two sons, ten and twelve both play youth football,
and I recoil it. The way that club sports are
working right now, just because what you see as you
see a business coming into it. And I remember the
first year my wife and I were just married and
I was asked to help a friend who was coaching
a football team, a high school football team, and I
coached for a year to help him out. And I
remember a parent came up to ask me and said,
you know, what can my son do to get a
Division one scholarship? And I looked at him and I said,
he doesn't have to do anything. And they're like, oh,
you mean you think he's already there. And I go, no, no, no, No
matter what your son does, he's not going to get one.
And they kind of look at me, and I go,
you need to understand something. You guys. Division one athletes
are born, maybe they're not made, and people are going
to convince you to spend mountains of money to give
your And here's the deal. I can look at your
son at the age of seventeen and tell you whether
he has a snowballs chance in hell or not. And
it's just and like me, I didn't. I was an
excellent football player. Why didn't I Because I was five
to nine, two hundred pounds and ran a four eight
to forty and ain't gonna cut it right like it
didn't matter. And I worked my tail off so a
I would say and this whole year round stuff, it's nonsense.
I went to high school with a guy, and a
great guy. He was a couple of years younger than me.
His name's John Lester. Anybody that knows baseball probably knows him.
He made about two hundred and fifty million dollars playing
Major League Baseball. He won three World Series, was in
the All Star Game multiple times. I went to school
with him, and John played every sport. He didn't play
these sports year round. And the guy went on to,
you know, make two hundred and fifty million dollars in
professional sports. And he played basketball, he played football, he
played baseball. It rounds out. Then the other side of
it though, like you know, and we've talked about this
part of it about youth sports and why I think
they're so important, sage. They're so important because the kids
are getting candied everywhere they go, right. And the crazy
thing it is is, as a coach that coaches these kids,
their parents come up to me all the time and
tell me this is the favorite sport they've ever played,
this is the And yet we work them, I mean
we work them and we have a great little team.
We made the championship game this year, and what you see,
these kids have a hunger for it. They have a
thirst somebody that is kind to them and good to
them and encourages them, but also drives them. They're desperate
to be driven.
Speaker 3: But I think that the ones that don't have a
hunger and a thirst are usually gone by the age
of thirteen. Twelve or thirteen is like the breaking don't
you think that's a breaking point?
Speaker 2: I do, But I think there's so many of them
that leave because they've been so candied up to that point.
Not because not because they don't have the ability or
even the tenacity to do it. It's that they just
you know, some of these kids come out like me.
I put I was put on a football field and
fifth grade and I just started flying around hitting people.
I was a really aggressive kid, right. Some of these kids,
it takes a while, you know what I mean, It
takes them a while to wind their sea legs. And
I think what happens is we think we're doing them
a favor by soft playing them, right, and really we're not.
We're not doing them a favor. And it's just it's
amazing to me how we think kids are so much
more stupid and so much less perceptive than they are.
We were probably the harder on our team. They got
to do a lot of special stuff too. I mean
we'd have McDonald's nights on Thursday nights after practice, and
we did all kinds of special stuff. But we drove
them harder than any other team probably in the league.
And they loved it, right, And I just think that
that's everybody's trying to make them feel good rather than
get them to be good. And kids know a difference.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I will say because we have two older kids.
We have a thirty five year old and a thirty
year old that both did club sports. One did for
some and one did for lacrosse. And then our youngest
does swim, which by the way, isn't all year round sport.
Swim is all year round because if you don't swim
for two weeks, you'll lose a lot of your ability
to do stuff in the world. But the two older kids,
neither of them did anything. They didn't do their sport
in college. But they I will ask them today, you know,
was it worth it, and they will say, absolutely, it
was worth it. Because they both they get up at
five in the morning, sometimes earlier they have a work ethic.
They both are very successful in their careers, and they
attribute so much of that, so much of it to
club sports, to getting up in the morning, to the
work ethic to work in. I mean, they worked all
the time at their sport, and then that's where they
cultivated a lot of friendships. They learn how to talk
to adults, They learn how to deal with coaches, which
basically is like learning to deal with the boss. I mean,
there are skills in club sports that you gain that
are very what's the word, like it transfers over into life. Yeah,
do you guys.
Speaker 1: Worry at all that like now anymore to play any
sport in high school? It's like if you haven't had
club sports before that you're kind of screwed as a kid.
It's because now it's starting to seem like such a
business that and such a money maker that now you're
you're you can sometimes have kids left behind who might
be interested in playing something in high school, and then
if they didn't participate in those, maybe for financial reasons,
even yeah, then they're then they don't have the same
shot as other kids who've been you know, you mean,
you mean a shot at college. Mock no at high school,
at high school sports, even though because I know Gwen,
like my daughter, she swims with quite a few kids
that like on her high school team that do not
do club and they do just fine.
Speaker 3: They do just fine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think so if if it can sern,
I think it could certainly cost some kids that otherwise
would be able to play high school sports and would
be to participate. But at the same time, like like
I was saying, I don't think it changes the like
the end result, especially as it relates to like college,
you know, getting college scholarships and things of that nature.
But to go you know, to piggyback off what Daisy
was saying, it's the it's the it's the it's the
day to day skill. Like I tell people all the time,
you know, there's no way I would be where I'm
at today if it wasn't for the football programs that
I was a part of and the things that I
was taught and the grint that you learn, and the
early morning workouts and all that, you know, And like
you were saying, I still get up at five thirty
every single morning and workout because it was a habit
that was built through years of football and and embracing
that hardship, embracing the tough is it's it's you know,
I want to teach my kids that because that's where
all the good stuff is.
Speaker 3: That's it.
Speaker 2: We all avoid it. But all of that getting better
is take me to the deep end of the pool. Man,
Let's make it. Let's make it hard, and then let's
learn that that's good. Right, That failure constructive fai. Yeah,
that's how we get better, right, and taking and taking
the stigma out of it. But then the other thing
I'll say too, is that no matter what you do
for your kid, you can't make up for a love
or a passion for the sport. Meaning you know, the
way I was with football, I didn't do any club activities.
There were kids that did, but I was not. I
was determined to not let that have me fall behind.
And you know, you look at these kids like, hey,
can that sometimes be easier? Sure? But you might not
have a basketball court in your backyard, but you got pavement,
you got a driveway, you can work on things right
like that, you can always get better. That's the other
thing that kind of ticks me off too. On the
flip side of this argument, is we have to have
our kids on club teams or they won't make it. Nonse.
I think if the kids got the goods and he's
driven and wants to do it without club, he'll be
just fine.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And I think and the driven thing is a
huge thing too. I mean, like I look at the
girls that surround my daughter. Always pray that my daughter
is surrounded by good girls. Believe me. That's like a
huge part of like parenting. Like in the back end,
I'm like, please God, just let her be surrounded by
good people, because you are your friends.
Speaker 2: Right, I got a fourteen year old daughter. I'm especially
with girls, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you want you want them to be And so
she and being in you know, club swim, she is
surrounded by girls who are ambitious and they're driven, and
they have a good work ethic, and they're good. They
don't drink, they don't smoke, they don't do drugs. They're
not crazy boy crazy, you know what I mean. These
are good girls. And so I so I'm thankful for that.
So it really there is there are a lot of
really great benefits about.
Speaker 1: Well, especially if you're a kid. That's like, if you
have any kind of social anxiety whatsoever, and you are
put into a team setting right instantaneously, you have new
built in friends who are you share a common goal.
It's so helpful. I think for kids that are shy
or not particularly outgoing, that helps them feel like they
have a community.
Speaker 3: My gosh, it's fantastic.
Speaker 2: It's also it's also a big crutch and a big
identity and a big identity anchor if you will. During
that you know, one of the things that drives me
nuts about the teenage sex change, like they're like, oh,
these kids are confused about their sexuality. You're like, what
fifteen year old kid isn't freaking are you kidding me?
You don't know what ends up. You feel like the
biggest weirdo. And that's if you're per that's if you're
the star athlete in the class getting straight a's, you
feel that way, right. So the other thing about it is,
and it's so funny because we very much in our household,
we're academics first, right, at the same time we are
entertaining the idea of sending our boys to a different
high school than we're sending our daughter because of that
whole football game, the football program thing, meaning I don't
want to sacrifice academics, but I know that football was
one of the reasons that I was such a good
kid in high school. It was one of the reasons
I didn't get in trouble and didn't get DUIs and
you didn't do all this stuff because I had a purpose.
I had something else that I was responsible to that
was bigger than me, that was very important to me.
And so I think people look back and go, you
were a really good kid in high school. I was,
but I wouldn't have been nearly as good a kid
without that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I could see that too with a lot of
kids that that participate in clubs work. So when I
see people dissing it, I'm kind of like, you know,
I really like a lot of things. I think it
depends on the family, you know. I we spend a
lot of time in our car driving and going to places,
and people go, oh my gosh, that takes away from
family time.
Speaker 1: That is our family time.
Speaker 2: That family time.
Speaker 3: I've spent a lot of time being able to talk
to my daughter for hours in the car. I love
that time, like that is my time. And so and
if I didn't have that time, like if we didn't
have club sports, we didn't have this. If she wasn't
involved in that, I wonder what we would be doing.
We would be sitting on the couch at home on
a weekend. Like, would I be engaging as much with her?
Speaker 2: Probably not? Probably not. Yeah, we grove. I think we
drove about I think we drove about two hundred and
fifty miles this weekend doing doing basketball.
Speaker 3: Bonding time right there? Yeah, right, yeah, yeah, exactly like.
Speaker 2: The cost on the pair. Look as far as the
time goes, like, there's many times where you know, and
I coach your youth sport, there's times where I'm like,
good god, this is crazy, right, But the alternative, Yeah,
I just sure it's a.
Speaker 3: Short period of time and then it's it's over in
a flash, and you'll look back and you're be like, god,
I really wish I was in the car with them.
Speaker 2: Days are long, days are long, and the years are short.
It's the best, true, it's the best saying I've ever heard,
because isn't that the truth? Man?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: So true. This is such a nice diversion. I mean,
I know, we like to ask you about the things
that you are an expert at, and we will get
back to that when we talk to you next week.
But this was a nice diversion, it really was.
Speaker 2: I enjoy a break too. We've had a little bit
going on these last few weeks, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's hard to keep up with all the
constant changes that Trump is throwing at us, which are
all good, but man, it is tough to keep up
with it in the meantime. How do people keep up
with you? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Pretty easy? So do you just Google Know Your Risk
Radio podcast or go to Boardcapitalmanagement dot com. We'll have
another one of our webinars coming up and I want
to say in four or five weeks, so you can
sign up there. But yeah, just Google Know Your Risk
Radio podcast and got a bunch of great interviews coming up,
and we're recapping all this crazy stuff that happens in
the markets every single day and just to try to
keep our listeners up to date. So yeah, we'd love
to add more. So look us up.
Speaker 3: Awesome thany ba.
Speaker 2: All right, ladies, thank you so much, have a great day.
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