🥎 Youth Sports Coaches Are Struggling With Parents

This is Buying Sandlot — the only newsletter that focuses solely on the business of youth sports.

There is only 1 day left to get early bird pricing for the Buying Sandlot Summit. 10 new speakers announced today, including some BIG DAWGS.

Let’s get to it.

U.S. Center for SafeSport’s first-ever National Coaches Survey Report generated a good amount of media buzz yesterday.

The full report can be found here. The main focus is athlete safety and abuse prevention — SafeSport was established by Congress to protect against emotional, physical and sexual abuse in Olympic and Paralympic sports. But the data regarding parents was very headline-friendly for ESPN and other outlets:

* — percentages reflect coaches who have suffered verbal excuse, etc., not all coaches surveyed

Another big topic: Coaching burnout. A whopping 85% of all coaches surveyed said they have felt burnt out at some point in the last five years.

The survey did find 88% of coaches believe they can raise concerns about athlete welfare to their organizations; 84% believe athletes who report abuse would be believed and supported and 76% are confident orgs will address concerns appropriately.

But female coaches were roughly 10 points less confident than male coaches on the above questions.

Quick Take: Close to 3.5K coaches participated in the survey across 66 sports. Soccer was by far the most represented sport with 37% of respondents, but it is worth noting many of the other sports with high coach participation skewed individual and/or less prominent — e.g. skiing had the second-most coaches participate at just over 9%.

That makes sense for an organization that is heavily involved in Olympic sports and NSOs, but those are also sports prone to more frequent (and more intense?) coach/parent interactions.

That’s how Focus On The Field Founder and CEO Tyler Kreitz described his company to me when I (Kyle) met him at NextUp in October. The easy button for youth sports operators.

What does that mean?

Well, the professionalization of youth sports is leading to inefficiency, burnout, and turnover among youth sports organization. Part-time administrators, coaches and volunteers are loaded with full-time responsibilities. Current solutions only add to the administration glut.

That’s where Focus On The Field comes in.

They offer fully-outsourced, affordable, turn-key support for operators, including:

Or, more fun:

This includes tasks like coach onboarding, schedule building, legal entity tasks, compliance, email communications, website maintenance, and tech integration, among many other things.

Most youth sports operators got involved because they love the game, not managing back-office tasks. FOTF quite literally wants you to keep your focus on the field and let them handle increasingly-complex administrative tasks.

Find out how Focus On The Field can help you right here.

*Sponsor

Sprowls Horizon Sports Park and The Sports Facilities Companies have launched a multi-year partnership with Floridacentral Credit Union.

The SFC-managed youth sports complex, located in Pinellas Park, will open late next month. Financial terms were not disclosed.

The official name of the facility will be Sprowls Horizon Sports Park presented by Floridacentral Credit Union; the bank also has naming rights to Floridacentral Championship Field, which will host all tournament games. More on the partnership can be found here.

New rule of thumb: When a project includes roughly as many parking spaces as there are residents of the town it will be built in, expect some public pushback.

Agenda items regarding a proposed mega-complex in Big Bend were tabled last night after hundreds of people spoke out at a planning commission meeting. Officials said they need more information and did not set a new date for votes.

We wrote about the Breck Athletic Complex earlier this month, but a quick recap:

Big Bend is a village of about 1.5K about a half-hour from Milwaukee and 90 minutes from Chicago and Madison. A big sticking point here is the complex would need several dozen acres of farmland to be rezoned.

There is also a major indoor facility project underway in nearby Brown Deer, but 1) organizers have said there will be enough differentiation for both to thrive and 2) that project is also in a pickle after the projected cost ballooned.

The streaming tech platform made official what CEO Doron Gerstel said back in November — it has added $15M in funding and $20M in debt financing from existing investor PSG Equity.

The fresh round will go toward global growth strategy and expanding the AI-as-a-Service business model it launched when it renewed its deal with PlayOn Sports.

Pixellot also launched a nationwide partnership with GameChanger last month.

Some updated stats from Pixellot:

The performance technology firm’s work with GPS-enabled soccer balls will not be exclusive to its previously announced Mitre partnership — PlayerData announced it will now also collaborate with Puma.

The capabilities will be the same with both brands — GPS tech inside the ball, no external LPS or optical tracking, access barriers to analytics removed, ready to go out of the package.

Mitre will being pre-orders in March and plans to deliver the product this summer; Puma only said the product will be available this year.

Arizona Athletic Grounds cannot catch a break.

First it was a 100-person melee during a flag football tournament.

Now? Measles.

Maricopa County health officials said people in the baseball/softball spectator areas may have been exposed to a person infected with the contagious disease on Jan. 23-24. The initial patient is not from the area, officials said.

We’re new— help us build up our social media accounts by following along:

Follow BS on X

Follow BS on LinkedIn

Follow Kyle on X

Follow Kyle on LinkedIn

Follow James on X

Follow James on LinkedIn

Good game.