MOLI VIEW™

Whether you fell on your face or made the All-Star team, Little League, Pop Warner, youth soccer, and other organized youth sports are no longer what you remember from childhood. At their most extreme, these games have become about hopping a plane from California to Tennessee for a baseball match-up, just like the grown-ups do.

San Francisco writer Regan McMahon's Revolution in the Bleachers: How Parents Can Take Back Family in a World Gone Crazy Over Youth Sports confirms this change. McMahon, who trained as a figure skater as a child, uncovered a world of impossible schedules, star-system schisms, and unrealistic expectations, all of which are driven at least as much by parents as coaches.



I talked to McMahon about the fallout from an athletics platform that's become capable of sending players and their families careening over the edge.

What are the book's origins?

As the mother of athletic kids, I noted how much we were running around from place to place, particularly when both kids were playing games in different parts of the city. My husband would be taking one child to one game and I'd be taking the other. He'd leave the field and then transfer to a different car when we went from his soccer field to her volleyball game and she changed clothes in the car. It was just nuts, and it struck me that this was a crazy way that many, many people are living. I had to stand back and ask, "How did childhood change so much from when I was growing up?"

I was also aware that while my kids were playing on school teams and rec leagues, many of the parents around me had their kids on elite club teams. So whatever craziness I was experiencing, theirs was doubled or tripled. They were staying in hotels every weekend and playing on year-round travel teams.

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