Michelle's Substack

Why Kids Are Quitting and What the Data Says We Should Do About It

Michelle Mullman — Fri, 22 May 2026 13:02:36 GMT

CONVERSATIONS IN YOUTH SPORTS | PART 2 OF 2

This is the second half of my conversation with Adam, founder of Satori. In the first part of our chat, we covered how the feedback loop got built.
In this section, we go to the harder questions: why are kids walking away at the exact moment programs need them most? And what would it actually take to fix it?
Personally, I use the PSAT framework to evaluate opportunities at the coach, club, program, and team levels. While my business is not about selling the survey, I help organizations understand what their data is telling them and act on it. The survey is part of my process.
For Adam, the survey is the product and allows his clients to focus on team performance management. For his clients, they understand the power of the survey information and it is part of their process.
We collectively agree that there is tremendous alignment between both of our approaches which is refreshing and exciting, as we are both centered on service excellence.

We’re Winning-Obsessed. Europe Is Development-Obsessed. The Results Show It.

I think that youth sports in the US is too focused on winning and not enough focus is on the joy of playing. I asked Adam his perspective on this common complaint about US attitudes towards winning over development.

Adam:

I coached a player who was very good and then they moved back to the Netherlands and played at a top academy there, one of the top clubs for his age. He said one of the differences is that people are just as intense and passionate, but the difference is they're intense and passionate about the quality of play. They have a vision for how they want their team to play and it's all in on doing that the best they can. There's frustrations, there is cheering, but they rarely prioritize whether they won or lost. In a lot of these leagues, they literally don't even track the score.

Meanwhile here we have eight and nine year olds tracking every game in a rankings app.

They're so improvement-focused and we're so winning-focused that not only does it affect our development of players, but it affects our enjoyment. We put too much emphasis on the things we can't control, and that's always going to result in more stress and uncertainty.

Michelle:

And do you not think it is ironic? As a nation we are entrepreneurs. We rely on innovation. Innovation comes from failure, from learning from failure, from not being afraid to try things. And yet in soccer we've created this environment where you have to get it perfect all the time. We're the opposite of what made us successful everywhere else.

Adam:

That’s exactly it. Kids’ goals when I meet with them are often “I want to get to the next team.” And I don’t want to say that is wrong, but consider this: how are you going to get there? You’re going to get there by loving the game more, by improving this aspect of your game, by studying, by finding professionals you want to mirror. Dreaming about getting to the next level. That is not the root. That’s not the work. That’s not the heart of what’s going to get you there.

FROM THE BOOK, THE CX OF YOUTH SPORTS

In my book I describe Problem #8 of youth sports as "the messaging is all wrong." Clubs focus relentlessly on college pathways and elite outcomes because it is what sells, but the data tells a different story. Of high school athletes playing a sport, roughly 5% go on to play at any collegiate level. Of those who do, many quit after their first year. What if competitive programs focused on the rainbow instead of the pot of gold? The organizations that honestly reframe success, keeping kids in the sport, building lifelong skills, connecting to community, are the ones that earn loyalty that actually lasts.

KEY TAKEAWAY

The winning obsession in American youth sports is not just philosophically wrong; it's strategically counterproductive. The countries producing the most world-class talent aren't the ones tracking scores at age 8. They're the ones obsessing over development, joy, and the quality of play. That shift in mindset is available to any program willing to make it.

The High School Cliff and Why We Built It Ourselves

The pressure for performance is driving kids to abandon the game as teenagers.

Michelle:

I know so many families where the pressure ramps up in middle school and then by high school, life gets in the way. And whoever's left over isn't necessarily the most talented, it's just who survived the pressure.

Adam:

Our research supports that. When you make it increasingly competitive and increasingly high commitment for these players as they age through middle school and high school, you're practically pushing people out. Some of the happiest, most satisfied players and families we see, especially at the high school level, are the people with the lowest commitments. The clubs that asked less from them.

You've got good players who decide they don't want soccer to be the only thing they do in high school. Maybe they want a job, a boyfriend or girlfriend, to play piano. They might be a skilled player, but they're starting to realize life has so many opportunities. If we just force every high school player to be the all-in soccer player, you are forcing them to quit, even though they would love to keep playing.

There are more choices for Adults to play sports, ironically.

It is like the adult recreational model. You can play in a top division or a lower division, over-30, two days a week or one, with a team that practices or one that just shows up. A full buffet. But that doesn't exist for a 16-year-old. Why?

There is nothing in the middle. And clubs cannot just create it overnight; they are also constrained by the system. The leagues, the structures, the commitments required just to field a team. It's a design failure at the systemic level.

FROM THE BOOK, THE CX OF YOUTH SPORTS

In my book I call this the diversified services problem. Forward-thinking organizations should think in tiers, each with different commitment levels, pricing models, and coaching resources. The Competitive+ tier, specifically, is designed for players ages 14 to 18 who do not want full league play but still want quality training alongside their high school season.
The goal is to keep players in the system at whatever level of investment they can sustain. A player who stays at 60% intensity is infinitely more valuable than a player who quits.

KEY TAKEAWAY

The high school dropout crisis isn't a mystery. We built it by designing systems that demand everything from teenagers at the exact moment their lives are expanding in every direction. The fix is not more pressure; it is more options. Organizations that create flexible pathways will keep players who would otherwise simply disappear.

League Fragmentation and the Blowout Problem Nobody Talks About

Adam

I grew up in the 80s and 90s playing in Colorado and I remember every team was in the same league structure. If you did well you got promoted. If you didn't you dropped. What it meant was almost every game was a good game. I remember feeling if we ever lost by three or four goals, it was devastating. Losing by five goals was unbelievable.

Adam

Today, the team I coach wins by five goals on about half our games, and that is considered a good result. The top five teams in Chicago don't play each other regularly because this team is in ECNL, that one is in MLS Next Homegrown, another is in MLS Next Academy Division. We're so scattered that we end up playing teams that are nowhere near the same level as us, whether too high or too far below. And there are more blowouts than ever before.

Competitive games are more fun. Competitive games keep us in it. But blowouts, especially on the losing end, take away from the experience tremendously. And I guarantee there are more kids leaving than otherwise would have if there weren't so many bad matchups.

Michelle:

This is such an important point. They all know this. All the organizations running these leagues They're actively trying to work on it. But it's going to take time, and there are so many obstacles. Money is a big one. But I do think what you and I both agree on is: despite what we can't control at the top, we can control at the bottom. Know your market. Focus on what you can control. Partner. Analyze. And know it is an ongoing process. You are not going to fix it once and be done.

FROM THE BOOK, THE CX OF YOUTH SPORTS

Competitive match quality appears directly in my PSAT survey; parents rate their satisfaction with “the team’s competition level (league play)” as one of the core program structure variables. When the data shows consistently low scores on this variable, it points to a league or scheduling problem that no amount of coaching improvement can fix alone. The CX Operating Plan identifies which problems are coach-level, team-level, or system-level, so leaders stop blaming the wrong thing.

KEY TAKEAWAY

League fragmentation has created an unintended consequence: more blowouts, less joy, and faster dropout. The organizations running these leagues know it and are working on it. In the meantime, clubs that understand their data can identify the match quality problem specifically and advocate for changes from a position of evidence rather than opinion.

Private Equity, Community Clubs, and Who the Beneficiary Should Be

Michelle:

Youth sports is a $40 billion market according to the Aspen Institute. Private equity and investors have taken note. I do not think everyone investing is evil, but from the surface it looks messy.

If you had to change the world around youth sports, what would you do differently?

Adam:

I see both sides. We do need innovation and innovation tends to happen where the money and emphasis go. But we've got to be clear on who should be the benefactor of this increased value. I don't think it should be investors trying to create a profit. When the benefactors are the kids and the families and the communities: that is a positive.

I know of a club that we used to work with. They've had so much leadership change, they've grown by merging or buying other clubs, but the player experience scores are nowhere near as high as a lot of these other community clubs, and the prices have gone up dramatically since the investment went in.

Michelle:

And what does your data show about the clubs that do it well?

Adam:

Some of the highest-performing clubs in terms of parent and player experience are actually community clubs, relatively small, maybe 500 players. They're truly in the community. They know these people. There's a partnership. It's not one or two people forcing their dream and vision onto families, but a club that genuinely is listening, trying their best, and continually just trying to run good soccer.

Most of these are nonprofits. I do not think it has to be that way, but as long as they're run like a business, they can be incredible.

Michelle:

I 100% agree. I think the solution should be back to communities. Partnerships with businesses, schools, and programs, not some corporate entity somewhere else with little clubs scattered around.

It should be community-based.
And the payback is real: healthcare costs go down, academics improve, kids have something to stay out of trouble for.
The sport brings us together. That's its most powerful feature and we keep burying it under rankings and scholarship pressure.

FROM THE BOOK, THE CX OF YOUTH SPORTS

Running a youth sports program “like a business” means: knowing your customer, measuring whether you’re delivering, holding coaches and leaders accountable to specific outcomes, and adjusting based on what the data tells you. In my book I describe the role of a Chief Customer Experience Officer (CCEO), a dedicated person (full or part-time) who owns the CX Operating Plan, leads surveys and focus groups, develops coach and parent education, and reviews scorecards monthly. This role isn’t corporate excess. In youth sports, it’s the missing piece.

KEY TAKEAWAY

The data consistently rewards the organizations that put community first. Satori's highest-performing clubs are community nonprofits that listen. My research shows that satisfaction predicts word-of-mouth, which drives growth. The investment thesis for youth sports that actually works is not extractive; it is relational.

From Conversation to System: What a CX-Centered Club Actually Looks Like

Michelle:

Where do you see yourself in the next five years? Do you ever think about being in a leadership role at a club, taking all of this and actually building something from the inside?

Adam:

In an alternate reality, yes. I think it would be fun. There’s been some instances where club leadership spots have opened up and people have come to me. But I think now is not quite the right time. We work with 47 active clubs and there’s still so much more we need to do on the Satori side. But after that, I am curious. What if we took some of these learnings and tried to help grow a community club, maybe one that’s fallen on difficult times, and tried to integrate all of this into that? Reinvent what it would mean to have a truly connected community club.

Michelle:

That's exactly the vision. Club leaders make decisions on strategy, but they are listening to everybody. Coaches make decisions on tactics and playing time, and they are listening to everybody. Parents decide how much to commit and pay, and they are also listening to everybody. It's a feedback-informed ecosystem where everyone has their role and everyone's voice matters.

Adam:

Exactly. And I would love to see a day where it's completely normal to measure player experience, care about wanting it to be as good as it can be, and keep improving. That's it. That's what I'm after.

FROM THE BOOK THE CX OF YOUTH SPORTS

This system doesn't require expensive software. It requires a spreadsheet, the PSAT survey (the full question set is in the book), and a leader who reviews results and acts on them.
The cycle is four steps: listen → measure → adjust → measure again. That's the entire CX strategy. What makes it transformative is doing it consistently, season after season, and letting the data guide which problems are worth solving first.

KEY TAKEAWAY

The community club of the future isn't a top-down command structure, and it isn't the chaos of every parent having a vote. It's a feedback-informed organization where everyone has their role, everyone's voice is measured, and decisions are made by those accountable for them, grounded in what stakeholders actually experience.

Youth Sports is Fun

The game brings us together. Measuring that, understanding it, protecting it: that is the work. And the organizations that do that work are the ones that keep kids in the game. That is the outcome that matters most.

“Youth sports is fun. We need to remember that too. When we get so serious about this, that, the next thing: wait a minute. This is a game. This is fun.”

Adam, Satori

About the Author

Dr. Michelle Mullman | Author of The CX of Youth Sports: Strategies to Move Youth Sports Towards Joy, Learning and Community. Her research and consulting work uses the PSAT methodology to evaluate opportunities at the coach, club, program, and team levels.

Learn More about Kuriositee Consulting:

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About Adam Kuhn

Adam Kuhn is the founder and owner of Satori which provides a survey process for soccer programs. Adam is also a youth soccer coach with Chicago Fire and previously worked in Management Consulting and Finance before his full shift into the world of youth soccer.

Go Satori

Youth Sports Is a Business. It’s Time to Start Treating It Like One.

Michelle Mullman — Thu, 21 May 2026 13:03:18 GMT

CONVERSATIONS IN YOUTH SPORTS | PART 1 OF 2

What do a former finance consultant and a former management consultant have in common? More than you’d think.

I sat down with Adam, founder of Satori (the only nonprofit in the country systematically measuring player, parent, and coach experience across youth soccer clubs), and we found ourselves finishing each other’s sentences. He’s been building the data system I’ve been arguing for. This is the conversation.

TWO BUSINESS MINDS WHO ENDED UP ON THE SOCCER FIELD

Michelle:

“Adam, tell us about yourself. You didn’t grow up wanting to be a youth soccer coach. So how did you end up here?”

Adam:

“My background is finance and management consulting. I spent about 12 years in a combination of those things plus people analytics in the corporate world. Pretty quickly you get used to solving every problem with data. We’re working with executives of really big companies and a big part of the solution is to measure what’s happening. So once you know what’s important, you figure out how to measure that and all the subcomponents.

I always had this gut feeling I would enjoy coaching. I finally made time to start, and within a year or two I found myself spending more time thinking about what I was going to do at training than preparing for my next corporate meeting. So eventually I made a decision to go full-time youth soccer, without a specific objective in mind. Eight years later, here we are.”

Michelle:

“That’s so interesting because that’s exactly why I reached out to you. I came from corporate America too: American Express, call centers, customer experience strategy, and I kept sitting on sidelines thinking the same thing I’d thought in every business context: who is asking the customer how this is going? In youth sports, the answer was almost nobody. So I went back to school and wrote my dissertation on it. When I saw what you were building with Satori, I thought: this guy gets it.”

Adam:

“And that’s the fun part that maybe not everybody is clear on with data: I don’t live in it. To me, the point of good data is to learn faster. It’s still about humans. It’s still about people playing together on a team and a coach interacting with them. The data is just a way to learn faster what’s working and what’s not. That’s it.”

FROM THE BOOK, THE CX OF YOUTH SPORTS

In my book, I describe the youth sports world the same way I saw call centers at American Express: athletes and parents are the customers, coaches are the agents delivering the experience, and leaders are the process owners. The call center agent is not a free agent; coaches are guided by their organization’s ethos and their own limitations. And just like in any service business, the customer is often not at the center of the discussion. That has to change.

KEY TAKEAWAY

Both Adam and Michelle came to youth sports through business, and that lens is exactly what the industry is missing. The skills developed in data-driven corporate environments aren’t just useful in youth sports. They’re urgently needed. Measuring what matters isn’t a luxury. It’s the whole game.

SATORI: BUILDING THE FEEDBACK LOOP NOBODY ELSE BUILT

Michelle:

“We didn’t really introduce Satori. Tell us what it is and how it started.”

Adam:

“It started almost by accident. A club I was working with wanted to do a parent survey and asked if I had any insight. I’d worked at Pfizer: 85,000 employees, an engagement survey with a 91% response rate. I’d seen that done really well at massive scale. So I just took the extreme simplified version of that and applied it to this youth soccer club to help them get better insight from their parents.

That kept going. Some other clubs found out. US Youth Soccer found out. And next thing I knew I had people wanting this for their organizations. Satori didn’t exist yet. But the decision point came: do I go strictly down the coaching path, or do I also help youth soccer in a way nobody else is doing?”

Michelle:

“And there’s literally nobody else doing it, right? That’s actually what struck me when I was doing my dissertation in 2021. I started researching the customer experience of youth sports academically and found almost nothing. What little existed was outdated and simplistic. The world has changed dramatically and the research hadn’t kept up.”

Adam:

“We have a monopoly, though not because we want to. Because there’s literally nobody else measuring parent, player, and coach feedback to find insights on the player, parent, coach experience. There’s a lot of data out there on on-field performance (touches, passes, goals, shots), but what about the qualitative, experiential things? How can we help quantify that so we can learn from it?

Last year we had more than 65,000 parent survey responses across 40 clubs. On the travel side it’s probably a 50% response rate. So half of parents respond. These are very different than the typical survey with low response rates.”

BY THE NUMBERS: SATORI

65K+
parent survey responses collected by Satori last year across 40 clubs, with approximately 50% response rate on the competitive travel side.
That’s not a survey. That’s a listening system.

2 DIFFERENT APPROACHES WITH 1 SAME RESULT - RETENTION

Michelle’s PSAT research model (Parent Satisfaction) identifies four core drivers that map directly to what Satori measures:

Coach-driven experience: Is the coach creating joy, developing players, and communicating well?
Club-driven experience: Does the organization communicate its values and listen?
Program structure: Is the schedule and commitment level appropriate?
Team management: Is there belonging, fair playing time, and cohesion?

These aren’t soft questions. When measured and addressed, they predict word-of-mouth behavior, player retention, and team reputation. Parent Satisfaction is not a feel-good metric. It is a business metric.

SATORI’S APPROACH

Satori exists because no one else built the feedback loop. High response rates only happen when people believe someone is actually listening and acting on what they hear. The methodology works because it’s grounded in the same rigor that corporate engagement programs use, just applied to the youth sports context where it was always needed and never deployed.

Focus on high survey participation rates across parent, coach and players
Focus on team level indicators to support coach feedback loop

THE BIGGEST RESEARCH FINDING: HAPPY KID, HAPPY PARENT

When I look at the PSAT research, the single biggest driver of parent satisfaction is deceptively simple: the parent’s perception of their child’s happiness.

Happy child, happy parent.

Which is why everything in my framework comes back to three anchors:

Joy-Making
Learning and Development
Community.

Not as marketing words. As measurable outcomes.

Adam reiterates this in his approach to performance management at Satori.

“That’s what our surveys measure too. Is the coach creating a fun environment? Is there a sense of belonging on this team? Is there real improvement happening on the field? When I look at my own coaching scores. I track my results season to season, and those three dimensions basically tell you everything. Where are the relative strengths? Where are the gaps? And once you know, you can actually do something about it. “Let’s say I wanted to improve my belonging score. If it didn’t change, okay: what else can I try? Who else can I talk to?””

Michelle:

“And that’s the CX mindset applied at the coach level. Every action, every decision, every evaluation should trace back to one of those three anchors. If it cannot connect to Joy, Learning, or Community, you should be asking whether it’s actually serving the program.”

KEY TAKEAWAY

The data confirms what any good coach already senses: when a child is happy on the team, the parent is satisfied with the program. Joy is not a soft outcome; it is the most powerful predictor of retention, word-of-mouth, and long-term commitment. Building a program around Joy, Learning, and Community is not idealism. It’s strategy.

NONPROFIT IS A BUSINESS. SO IS YOUTH SPORTS.

Michelle:

“This is something I say that makes people uncomfortable: whether a youth sports program is nonprofit or for-profit doesn’t determine how well it’s run. What determines that is whether leadership treats it like a real organization with real customers.”

“Nonprofit is a business. I don’t know why people think it’s not. You go to business school and get an MBA with a specialization in nonprofit, because it’s a different accounting method, but it’s the same idea. Create as much value as possible. The difference is where the value goes. Who’s the beneficiary. That’s the only real difference. But how you run it, the innovation, the learning, the data, the strategy: it’s nearly identical.”

Michelle:

“Exactly. And what you’re doing with Satori is the professional version of what I lay out in my book as the CX Operating Plan, a cascading measurement and accountability structure from the total organization down to each individual coach and team. The metrics aren’t complicated: parent satisfaction scores, player happiness scores, retention rates, word-of-mouth scores. You don’t need expensive software. You need a spreadsheet, a survey, and leadership that actually reviews the results and acts on them.”

Adam:

“And you can feel the quality degrade when it’s not being managed well. Just to drop a research nugget: there’s a pretty significant difference in player experience for a coach who has one team versus two. Coaching two teams tends to have significantly lower scores across all the questions. The idea is just being spread thin. If you’ve already got a full-time job and you have two teams, you can feel it.”

FROM THE BOOK, THE CX OF YOUTH SPORTS

Running a youth sports program “like a business” means: knowing your customer, measuring whether you’re delivering, holding coaches and leaders accountable to specific outcomes, and adjusting based on what the data tells you. In my book I describe the role of a Chief Customer Experience Officer (CCEO), a dedicated person (full or part-time) who owns the CX Operating Plan, leads surveys and focus groups, develops coach and parent education, and reviews scorecards monthly. This role isn’t corporate excess. In youth sports, it’s the missing piece.

KEY TAKEAWAY

Youth sports organizations that treat themselves like real businesses, measuring performance, managing coaching quality, listening to customers, are the ones that thrive. The data doesn’t make youth sports less human. It makes it more accountable to the humans inside it.

THE PARENT IS THE CUSTOMER AND THE MOST UNDERUSED ASSET

Michelle:

“I think nowadays parents have way too much information and it’s not being used in an efficient way. So how do you manage the chaos of the parents? A kid should be dreaming, but the parents should be the balance. What does that look like in practice?”

Adam:

“There’s a limit to how much influence we have over families. But me personally, and this is something I’ve learned from top coaches I’ve interviewed through the Satori process: connection with the parents, connection with the family, seeing the team as more than just players and coach but also parents. That’s not to say parents are decision makers on what we do on the field. But a parent’s support can go a long ways. Nobody cares about their kid or spends more time with their kid than they do. So if we all care about the development of this player, we should be working together.”

Michelle:

“My research shows this exactly. Parents who feel engaged, informed, and respected show higher satisfaction, are more likely to recommend the program, and are more likely to return next season. But parents who feel ignored or left out of communication become detractors. In youth sports, where peer networks drive enrollment, a detractor is expensive. It’s not about giving parents power over tactics. It’s about aligning them with what actually develops players.”

Adam:

“Helping parents be aligned around what’s probably the most valuable things for us to focus on. It first starts with having that trust and relationship with the parent. If we don’t trust each other, if we don’t understand each other, there’s not going to be any impact.”

FROM THE BOOK THE CX OF YOUTH SPORTS

The research found that parent engagement has four levels: under-involved, moderately involved, appropriately involved, and over-involved. The sweet spot is appropriate involvement, which is what organizations should design for.
The strategies to get there: strong communication, parental learning opportunities, and programs centered on development rather than results. When parents understand and believe in the developmental philosophy, they become the program’s greatest advocates. An educated parent is an asset, not a liability.

KEY TAKEAWAY

Parent education and communication are not soft add-ons to a CX strategy; they are the foundation. The most satisfied families aren’t the ones left alone. They’re the ones who understand what the program is trying to do and feel like partners in making it happen.

READ MORE: Part 2 of this conversation

Why kids are quitting in high school and what the data says we should do about it. The fragmentation of youth soccer leagues, the blowout crisis, private equity versus community clubs, and what a truly CX-centered program could look like in your community.

About the Author

Learn More about Kuriositee Consulting:

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About Adam Kuhn

Go Satori

Finding the Field

Michelle Mullman — Tue, 12 May 2026 13:49:15 GMT

Schyler and Trenton who are co-founders of JoinYouthSports.com, sat down with me over Zoom to talk about their two-month-old startup, the pain points that sparked it, and their vision for making youth sports more accessible for every family in America. What emerged was a picture of two motivated entrepreneurs less interested in disrupting an industry than in simply fixing something that has quietly frustrated parents, coaches, and young athletes for years: finding each other.

The youth sports landscape is a $40 billion ecosystem that touches tens of millions of families nationwide, yet for all its size and energy, it remains surprisingly fragmented at the ground level. Tournaments are scattered across dozens of websites, social media pages, and word-of-mouth networks. Independent programs without the backing of major clubs are often left out of the conversation entirely. JoinYouthSports.com is betting that a single, accessible discovery platform can change that.

FROM THE BENCH TO THE BOARDROOM

Schyler and Trenton met as camp counselors during college, bonding over a shared love of sport. Their friendship endured after graduation, anchored by a passion for keeping kids active and engaged. But it was lived experience, one as a young athlete, the other as a working coach, that turned a friendship into a business.

What was the moment that made you say, “someone needs to build this”?

SCHYLER

I grew up playing baseball and I wanted to guest play wherever I could. I watched my parents go through this whole process just trying to find out what was out there for me. Checking flyers at the rec center, digging through specific club websites, asking other baseball parents. There was no single place to go. It was a patchwork of local advertising and word of mouth, and if you didn’t already know the right people, you missed things. That stuck with me.

TRENTON

My experience was similar but from the coaching side. I coach a U16 hockey team and finding camps and events means hunting through a dozen different websites and program pages. There is no directory. Every sport has its own silos, its own leagues, its own networks. A lot of great pickup events and recreational opportunities never reach the families who would love them because they only get advertised locally or through social media if you happen to follow the right page.

SCHYLER

The thing that really crystallized it was thinking about a family that just moved to a new town. They don’t know anyone yet. They’re not part of the community network. How do they find out what’s available for their kid? Right now, they’d have to go on social media and basically ask strangers. That information gap between families who are in the know and families who are not, that’s exactly what we are trying to close.

“There is an information gap between families who are in the know and those who are not. That is exactly what we are trying to close.”

SCHYLER, CO-FOUNDER, JOINYOUTHSPORTS.COM

THE VISION: BEYOND A DIRECTORY

JoinYouthSports.com launched as an event discovery platform, but the founders are already thinking well past that. Their five-year vision is a comprehensive national database of every youth sports program in the country, with tools that address some of the most underserved corners of the youth sports world, including the college identification camp process, a high-stakes, often opaque pathway that many families navigate with little guidance.

Are you building a directory, or something bigger?

SCHYLER

The directory of events is the entry point, but the real vision is a complete database of every youth sports program in the country. Not just events, but the programs themselves, coaches, clubs, recreational leagues, travel teams. We want families to understand the entire landscape, not just find the next tournament.

TRENTON

The college ID camp space is one we are really excited about. ID camps are where college coaches go to evaluate prospects, and right now the information about which camps exist, which programs are running them, which coaches will be there, it is scattered everywhere. We want to make that as accessible to a family in rural Alabama as it is to a family who has been navigating the recruiting world for years.

SCHYLER

When you democratize information about youth sports, you encourage financial transparency. You can shine a light on free play events and recreational opportunities that never get the visibility they deserve. And critically, you can start to promote organized sporting events in underrepresented communities that have historically been left out of the broader conversation.

TRENTON

There are kids in communities across this country with real talent and real drive who simply do not have access to the same information that kids in more affluent communities take for granted. If our platform can help close that gap, even incrementally, that is a meaningful thing to have built.

THE REAL MOTIVATION: KIDS, NOT CAPITAL

It would be easy to frame JoinYouthSports.com as a play on a booming market. But ask Schyler and Trenton about what drives them, and the answer is not market share.

A lot of entrepreneurs talk about not wanting a boss. Is that the drive here?

TRENTON

That’s not really it for us. What motivates us is the kid who doesn’t get to compete because his coach couldn’t find the right tournament. Or the family that wants to get involved but doesn’t know where to start. That’s the thing we want to fix.

SCHYLER

We keep coming back to the word “democratize.” Youth sports has become increasingly expensive and concentrated among families who already have access, already know the right people, already belong to the right clubs. Information is one of the most powerful levers you can pull to start changing that.

PARTNERS IN ACCESS: ADDRESSING THE COST CRISIS

According to the Aspen Institute’s 2025 National Youth Sports Parent Survey, the average U.S. family spent $1,016 on their child’s primary sport in 2024, a 46 percent increase since 2019. Factor in secondary sports and the figure climbs to nearly $1,500 per child annually. Nearly 20 percent of parents report going into debt to afford participation, and 21 percent have considered pulling their kids out entirely because of cost.

BY THE NUMBERS | ASPEN INSTITUTE PROJECT PLAY, 2025

46% increase in youth sports costs since 2019
~$1,500 average annual spend per child across all sports in 2024
21% of parents have considered pulling their child out of sports due to cost
20% of parents report going into debt to afford youth sports participation

Does your platform risk driving costs higher by making it easier for families to find even more events?

SCHYLER

The answer to a cost problem is not less information, it is better information. Right now, families default to the events they already know about, which tend to be the expensive ones. What they often don’t know is what is available locally, at a fraction of the cost. That’s the visibility gap we want to close.

TRENTON

The Aspen Institute research consistently shows that community-anchored organizations, including the YMCAs, the Boys and Girls Clubs, and the rec center leagues, are where affordable, accessible youth sports actually lives. Those organizations are a staple in virtually every market in the country. But their events are among the least visible online.

SCHYLER

Building partnerships with organizations like the YMCA and Boys and Girls Clubs is one of our most important strategic priorities. If we can bring their programming onto our platform, a family that has never heard of a specific rec league suddenly sees it sitting right next to a travel tournament in their search results. That changes the decision they make.

TRENTON

The Aspen Institute flagged that participation drops hit hardest in lower-income families and communities of color. Partnering with organizations that already have a physical presence and a trust relationship in those communities is how you actually move that needle. We provide the digital reach. They provide the on-the-ground credibility. That combination is powerful.

BUILDING IN THE WHITE SPACE

Before writing a single line of code, Schyler and Trenton looked hard at what already existed. What they did not find became the clearest validation of their idea.

What did your research into the competitive landscape tell you?

SCHYLER

There is no online destination that has solved the problem of access in the way we are defining it. No single place a parent can go and find youth sports events across all sports, all formats, all levels, nationwide. That white space is real and surprisingly wide open.

TRENTON

We kept waiting to find the thing that already existed. We never found it.

You built the platform using AI. What are its current limitations?

SCHYLER

Everything on the site right now, the design, the build, the initial population of events, was executed using AI tools. For a two-person startup, that is a genuine competitive advantage. It allowed us to move fast and build something real.

TRENTON

But AI has legal constraints around what it can surface and share when it comes to youth events specifically. Privacy considerations, data ownership, the sensitivity around content involving minors, these put a ceiling on how much our event database can grow through automated sourcing alone. What we have right now is a fraction of what is actually out there. That is a big part of why the organizer relationship is so central to our model.

THE REAL CUSTOMER: EVENT ORGANIZERS

While families are ultimately who they serve, Schyler and Trenton are clear that the event organizer is who they are building for first, specifically the organizers who are not large, well-resourced, or nationally affiliated.

Who is your primary customer?

TRENTON

Think about the coach who runs a summer camp out of a local facility, or the club director organizing a regional showcase with no marketing budget. Those people are doing incredibly valuable work for kids and families, but they have almost no digital reach. They need a place where they can be discovered. That is exactly what we are building.

SCHYLER

When organizers come onto our platform, they are not just posting an event. They are becoming part of a community of youth sports event leaders. The more organizers who join, the richer that community becomes. We want them to feel connected to something bigger than a simple event listing.

TRENTON

In collaboration with those organizers, we see opportunities to do a lot more than list their events. Better advertising, connecting them with local families and those willing to travel, helping them create a richer and more meaningful event experience for the kids who attend.

How does this community of organizers shape the industry long-term?

SCHYLER

When you bring together a critical mass of organizers, you can start to share best practices. What makes a well-run tournament? How do you price events fairly? How do you make your event welcoming to families from underrepresented communities? Those conversations need to happen, and right now there is no real forum for them at the grassroots level.

TRENTON

We genuinely believe we have the opportunity to help raise the standard of youth sports events across the country. That is a long-term goal, and we are two months old, so we are realistic about the timeline. But the opportunity is real.

THE POWER OF SHOWING UP

As the conversation wound down, the topic shifted from business strategy to something more personal: the power of community and connection in a space that, for all its size and noise, is still driven by people who care about kids.

SCHYLER

This space runs on relationships. Coaches trust other coaches. Parents listen to other parents. Whether it is showing up at events, being active on social media, writing about the issues, the audience is there and they are willing to listen and willing to help each other. We want JoinYouthSports to be part of that conversation, not just a tool sitting on the sidelines.

TRENTON

Youth sports is a forty billion dollar industry. But the people inside it, the coaches, the parents, the organizers, most of them are not in it for the money. They are in it because they believe in what sport does for kids. That is the community we are joining. And it is a pretty great one to be part of.

Youth sports may be a $40 billion industry, but it is the up-and-coming entrepreneur who sees not just financial opportunity, but the opportunity to do good.

There is an audience out there, in social media feeds, in bleacher conversations, in late-night parent group chats, that is hungry for exactly what Schyler and Trenton are building. Not just a better search tool, but a better system. One that recognizes that the child on the field is more important than the economics surrounding her, and that access to sport should not be determined by who your parents happen to know.

JoinYouthSports.com is two months old. The founders are motivated, the problem is real, and the white space is wide open. That is usually how the most important companies begin.

GET INVOLVED

Event organizers can list events at joinyouthsports.com for a minimal fee.

Families can search all events by sport, age group, and location at no cost.

Follow JoinYouthSports on social media for new events in your area.

Visit Joinyouthsports

How to Choose the Right Club Team This Tryout Season

Michelle Mullman — Tue, 05 May 2026 19:10:52 GMT

With tryout season underway and seasons running nearly a year long, selecting the right club is one of the most consequential decisions a sports family can make. Here are the five factors that should guide every family through the process.

Start With Logistics Before Anything Else

Before evaluating a single coach or roster, eliminate options that simply do not work for your family. Practicality matters more than people admit. Assess the following before falling in love with a program:

Drive time to practices and games
Tournament travel expectations
How often air travel is involved in travel
How practice scheduling interacts with other activities

Distance affects practice attendance, game-day energy, and overall family balance.

Clubs do not always volunteer the full cost picture proactively, so ask directly.

Cost deserves honest scrutiny. There are two layers families need to understand:

Club fees: the upfront organizational cost
Team fees: tournament entry, coach travel, video platforms, and event add-ons that accumulate throughout the season, often adding $1,000–$2,000 or more on top of the base

Ask for a full-season cost estimate, not just the sticker price. If cost is a constraint, raise it early.

Many organizations will work with families, and some teams actively fundraise to offset expenses.

Evaluate the Coach for Your Child’s Stage of Development

The coaching decision shifts with your child’s age and goals. The right environment at ten may be exactly wrong at fifteen. For younger players, two things matter most:

Coaching style: does the approach match your child’s personality? Some kids need structure; others need energy and fun.
Age-group experience: every developmental stage has its own challenges, and not every coach is equipped for all of them.

A good test: is this organization built to maximize development, and can this coach genuinely inspire the kids in their care?

For older players whose goal is college recruitment, I look for something beyond tactical ability. I need a coach who:

Understands the recruiting process intimately
Can provide guidance and open doors
Knows how to create showcase opportunities where players get seen
Supports a player’s development in ways specific to that pathway

A coach who wins games is not automatically equipped to navigate the college landscape.

Ask directly: how many players have you placed at the collegiate level, and what does that support actually look like?

I also believe that experiencing different coaching styles across seasons is healthy. Players who have only ever known one type of coach are underprepared for the variety they will encounter throughout their athletic lives. Some seasons will feature coaches who are less than ideal. That is part of the process, and families benefit from accepting it rather than resisting it.

Consider the Peer Group Beyond Just Talent Level

There is a common assumption that placing a child on the most competitive roster guarantees the best development. That can be very true. Strong players push each other, and the technical level of training rises. But families often overlook the value of a less dominant team.

An above-average player on a struggling team gains something a star-studded roster cannot provide: leadership and less pressure.

Research and experienced coaches support the idea that when a player is counted on to lead, to own outcomes, and to stand out rather than blend in, they develop differently. The social environment on that team may also be warmer and more connected than on a highly competitive squad where individual ambition can overshadow team chemistry.

How much weight to give the peer group depends on where you and your child are:

Elementary age: Socialization comes first. Focus on team energy, how the kids behave, and whether your child will genuinely enjoy being around them
Middle school: Look for kids forming more serious habits. You want a team where commitment is the norm, not the exception if this is going to be a major focus for your child. If not, stick with where they are comfortable with their peer group.
High school: Goal alignment becomes the deciding factor. At this level, families stop choosing teams out of convenience. Coaching quality comes first, peer group second.

In soccer, for example, high school age players generally fall into a few distinct types:

Players who play club because they enjoy it and want extra training alongside their high school season
Players who are actively targeting college recruitment and need a platform to be seen
Players exploring a path beyond college, who need coaches with professional-level insight

I encourage families to ask two questions about any peer group they are evaluating:

Where will my child develop the most?
Where will my child have the most fun?

For younger players, that second question is not secondary. It is primary. Joy is what keeps young athletes coming back to practice. It is what sustains a decade-long relationship with a sport.

Trust Your Gut, and Teach Your Child to Trust Theirs

After working through all of the above, gut instinct still matters. When something feels right, there is usually a reason rooted in real observation.

Also worth remembering: this decision does not need to match last year’s. Sometimes stability is right. Other times, change is what growth requires. Use the factors above as your framework rather than letting passion or inertia make the call.

For younger kids, parents carry most of the weight here. But as players reach high school, let them into the process. Walk through the reasoning together, then let them decide. It is developmentally appropriate, and it prepares them for every consequential decision ahead.

In competitive sports, seasons runs long. It is worth getting this right.

Follow along on @thecxofyouthsports

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Why Girls Are Leaving Sport and What Organizations Must Do About It

Michelle Mullman — Fri, 01 May 2026 12:03:46 GMT

The Problem Organizations Keep Ignoring

I approach the youth sports industry from a customer’s perspective with the idea that youth sports leaders have the ability to make significant shifts in large scale problems at a grassroots level. My approach is to view any organization through a customer experience lens. Right now, as soccer tryout season unfolds, I am watching organizations produce marketing content that completely misses the point. We know there are serious retention issues in girls sports. We know the reasons. And yet, organizations continue to ignore the most critical factors that would actually solve the problem.

In my book, I outline three foundational priorities for any youth sports organization: joymaking, learning and development, and community. Joymaking is number one. It must come first. If the joy component is not figured out, the rest simply does not matter. Development is a marketable word, but without joy as the foundation, development means nothing to the child experiencing your program.

PICK UP THE BOOK
The Customer Experience of Youth Sports: Strategies to Move Youth Sports Towards Joy, Learning and Community by Dr. Michelle Mullman is available now.
View on Amazon ↗

What Girls Actually Need

Girls are not the same as boys when it comes to their emotional needs, what inspires them, how they problem solve, and how they build confidence. That is not a controversial statement. It is a business reality that youth sports organizations must design around.

Girls feel confident when they feel included. Girls feel confident when they experience some measure of success. This is true regardless of whether your program is elite or recreational. Creating a joyous environment is not optional. It is the foundation of a successful girls program. No child is going to remain in a program where she does not feel confident, and no parent is going to keep paying for an experience that does not serve their daughter emotionally.

“The differentiator in girls sports is emotional connection. It is the thing most people cannot see and cannot measure until a child begins to articulate it.”

Organizations that figure out how to deliver that emotional connection will have a winning program.

The Coaching Standard Must Change

If we know that girls are more emotionally driven in how they experience sport, then the coaching model must reflect that. Two non-negotiables:

Organizations need female coaches, particularly at the middle school level and increasingly at the high school level. This is not a preference — it is a programming necessity.
Coaching standards and leadership qualities for girls programming must be differentiated from boys programming.
A coach who is fun, inspiring, joyful, and understands the complexity of coaching girls well will attract more engaged families than any elite-focused marketing campaign.

Marketing to the Right Parent

There is a widespread assumption in youth sports that all parents of girls are focused on elite level play and college recruitment pathways. That assumption is wrong. Most parents want their children to be active, to be in a social environment, and to feel confident and valued.

The rise of professional women athletes in mainstream culture is exciting, but it does not mean every girl in a youth program wants to follow that path. Kids are still kids. Research consistently shows that children want to have fun and spend time with their friends. That has not changed.

“What needs to change is how organizations build business practices and coaching models that actually honor that research rather than simply citing it.”

If you market your girls program around joy, confidence, and genuine emotional connection, you will see more families choose your program. Elite positioning alone is no longer enough.

What has your organization done to improve the experience for girls in your programs? I would love to hear from practitioners in the field.

Youth Sports Is a Business Study Worth Taking Seriously

Michelle Mullman — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 18:06:11 GMT

What the wild west of youth sports can teach us about customer experience, differentiation, and the future of how families spend their time and money.

From a customer experience and business strategy perspective, not everything fits the same mold. Products and services require differentiation, and that is by design.

In education, we have different levels of classes.
In youth sports, we have different levels of competition.
The goal is to maximize the number of customers you can serve based on what they are willing to pay and what kind of experience they are looking for.

That is basic business thinking. Youth sports, though, is where things get genuinely interesting. It is complicated in a way that most industries are not.

It is high on emotion.
It involves children.
It touches on deeply held values around hard work, achievement, and what we call Americana.
These are the qualities we reward in the real world, and youth sports sits right at the intersection of all of them.

Further reading

The Customer Experience of Youth Sports

Strategies to move youth sports towards joy, learning and community

The wild west problem

The youth sports industry has so many layers, and it is, to put it plainly, a mess. It is the wild west. There is a significant amount of research that tells us what is going wrong and why it is going wrong. And yet there is a real absence of new, innovative ideas about how to actually implement change.

As I explore in my book, the theory and the practice are not meeting each other. What I believe in is not adopting someone else’s methodology and calling it done. The starting point has to be your customer.

Know your customer and know your market.
Know who has been loyal to you and understand the reasons why.
Design the right experiences to maintain that loyalty and attract new customers for those same reasons.
That is how you differentiate yourself.

If you think you already know your customer, make sure you are backing that up with data and with sources you do not normally pay attention to.

Bias in our thinking is one of the most common fragility points in product and service design.
Be willing to look outside of your traditional scope.
It is uncomfortable, and that discomfort is the point.

How family behavior is shifting

There is a broader change happening in this country around how we approach education and what children do with their time. We have moved from the free play of previous generations to very disciplined, organized activity. That shift did not happen overnight.

The value that families assign to time and money spent on after school activities is constantly being weighed against other options.
Some families choose to go wide: multiple sports, multiple activities, multiple commitments.
Others decide to go all in on one thing.

These are the kinds of customer decisions that are fascinating to study. The questions around how to create new customers, improve the experience, and define new business models are still largely unanswered. That represents real opportunity, and it is a central theme in my book.

Who should be paying attention

There are a lot of eyes on youth sports right now, and for good reason. CX enthusiasts should be paying close attention to this space.

If you are right out of college, this is your opportunity to transform something.
If you are retired, go back and look at what is happening, because these organizations need your business thinking.
Parents who volunteer and support programs are doing valuable work.
Business professionals from the broader community bring real value when they serve on boards and offer strategic guidance to youth sports leaders.
You do not need to have a child on the team to make a meaningful contribution.

Youth sports is a great industry to pay attention to if you are a CX enthusiast. Much can be done.

Create a movement

Reading and thinking about these ideas is only the beginning. The real work happens when people from across the sports spectrum come together to share what they are seeing, challenge assumptions, and push toward something better.

I am leading an upcoming Zoom call to talk about the book and hear ideas from coaches, parents, administrators, business leaders, and anyone else who cares about where youth sports is headed. The conversation will be open, honest, and focused on what can actually change.

Interested in joining?

Subscribe now

PICK UP THE BOOK

The Customer Experience of Youth Sports: Strategies to Move Youth Sports Towards Joy, Learning and Community by Dr. Michelle Mullman is available now.

View on Amazon ↗

Three Questions Every Youth Sports Parent Should Ask This Tryout Season

Michelle Mullman — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 12:03:48 GMT

A few minutes read · tryout season edition

It is tryout season. Perhaps your child is auditioning for a new team, or re-auditioning for their current one. Either way, you are likely overwhelmed. Social media posts, club newsletters, parent group chats, and town halls are coming at you from every direction. Everyone has an opinion. If you are early in your child’s athletic journey, all of it can feel genuinely disorienting.

My son is heading into his senior year. This is his last official youth soccer tryout. Standing here, I can tell you clearly what I would have done differently and what I would have asked differently from the very beginning.

It all comes down to development. Specifically, there are three things every parent should be asking every club, coach, and organization they are considering. And if you are running one of those clubs, pay attention. You should have real, specific answers to all of this.

“If the organization does not formalize a development process, they are not really a competitive program. They are giving you a service, almost like a recreational league.”

01 Ask for the data

When your child goes to school, they receive a report card. You know where they stand and you can track their progress over time. There is absolutely no reason their athletic development should be treated any differently.

If your child is spending significant time at practice and games, and you are spending significant money and energy supporting their participation, then learning is happening. Or it should be. That learning needs to be documented.

Ask the club directly:

What does your formal development process look like?
How often do they provide structured, written feedback?

A casual word from a coach on the sideline does not qualify. A single parent-coach meeting once a year does not qualify. You need to know, specifically and on a regular basis, where your child stands in the coaching staff’s assessment.

One additional point worth raising: the evaluation should ideally involve more than one coach, particularly in larger programs. A single perspective, however experienced, will always carry blind spots.

02 Ask about the video

Technology has made this straightforward. Recording games is no longer expensive or complicated. Any club that is serious about competitive development should treat it as a standard component of what they offer, not an optional add-on.

Having access to video, however, is not sufficient. The more important question is what the club actually does with it.

Coaches should be providing genuine analysis. That means sitting down with teams, particularly older players, to walk through footage, highlight patterns, and point out what to look for. At a minimum, it means written breakdowns. Something that demonstrates thoughtful engagement with the material and shows that the video is being used as a teaching tool rather than simply archived.

Ask the club directly:

Do you provide game video?
How do your coaches use it as part of the development process?

03 Ask about playing time and do not apologize for it

This is the area I feel most strongly about. It is also the one I wish I had addressed more directly earlier in the process.

Playing time should not function as a reward. It should not be something children must compete against their teammates to earn. In a paid competitive program, your child has already demonstrated their worth by earning a spot at tryouts, attending practice, and showing up consistently. The notion that they must further earn the right to actually play is fundamentally backwards.

Development cannot occur on the bench. A scrimmage in practice and live game experience are not equivalent. Players need genuine minutes under real competitive pressure to apply what they have learned and to understand how their skills hold up in actual game situations. That is not a privilege. That is the purpose of the program.

This does not mean every child should be a starter. It means every child should receive adequate playing time. Enough to grow, enough to be assessed, and enough to make the investment meaningful.

“If your child is not receiving adequate playing time, that is not a motivation problem. It is a question of whether this is the right program for them.”

Ask every program you are considering:

What is your policy on playing time
How do you ensure all players receive meaningful minutes throughout the season?

To every club, coach, and organizational leader reading this: these are not unreasonable questions. They are basic expectations from parents who are investing real time, real money, and real trust in your program. If you cannot answer them clearly and specifically, that is worth reflecting on.

And to every parent navigating tryout season: you are permitted to ask these questions. You are expected to. Development does not happen by accident. It must be built into the structure of the program. Demand that structure. Your child’s growth depends on it.

— · —

Catch me on video

Why “Why” Is the Most Underused Strategy in Youth Sports

Michelle Mullman — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 12:02:41 GMT

This week, the topic is for all the adults in the room to understand the importance of defining the Why, in particular with regard to the Customer Experience system.

Each week I have started to upload a video on social media talking about the high level concepts from my book and I use this Substack platform to dig a little deeper. Truthfully, I am exploring the topic based on what I see on social media and with my new friend, Claude to help to bring the topic further along.

The goal for today’s topic is not to get into the weeds but to value a bigger question. Do we know the Why for youth sports?

I am sure we can rattle off the benefits for kids but it is time to get deeper than that. Each stakeholder has a reason. Each stakeholder has a motivation. Each stakeholder has a feeling and opinion on the matter.

Most organizations have a mission statement. Almost none have a real ethos statement. Here’s the difference and why it matters.

If you have spent any time in youth sports, either as a parent, a coach, or someone trying to build something meaningful, you may not have taken much stock on an ethos statement or what it means.

Most sports programs will tell you about their coaches’ credentials, the leagues they compete in, their shiny new uniforms, maybe a recent tournament win. However, if you ask them what they stand for, you will get a mission statement that sounds like it was written by a committee at 9pm on a Tuesday.

“We are committed to developing young athletes in a positive, supportive environment.”

Cool. So is everyone else.

This is the quiet problem hiding in plain sight across youth sports: organizations have marketing, but they don’t have a why. And without a genuine why, they are only competing on the basic elements; who has the better coach this season, which program happens to have the “right” group of kids, who is in the better league on paper and how many games and tournaments will the kids get to play.

It doesn’t have to be this way. This is not really differentiating the programs.

The Wild Wild West Problem

Here’s something worth saying plainly: youth sports, as an industry, is largely undifferentiated. There are a lot of programs, a lot of chaos and noise and not a clear leader in the bunch. Each market is of course different, but look across all the different sports and different types of programming. What sets everyone apart?

If we treated youth sports like the stock market, how would know what yields a positive ROI? Is it in churning out elite athletes? Or is it something else?

Two soccer programs in the same suburb. Two basketball clubs across town from each other. A handful of swim teams all pulling from the same zip codes. If you lined them up and stripped away the logos, could you actually tell them apart? In most cases, no.

That’s not an insult; it’s an observation. Most organizations haven’t been asked to think this way. They were started by someone passionate about a sport who wanted to give kids a great experience. That’s admirable. But passion isn’t a strategy. And in a crowded market, passion alone doesn’t help families figure out which program is right for their child.

When there’s no real differentiation in the product or the service experience, programs default to competing on surface-level things: new coaching hires, league affiliations, facilities, gear. These things aren’t meaningless, but they do not create lasting loyalty or community. They’re not what makes a kid look back fifteen years later and say that program changed my life.

What does that? Purpose. A genuine, articulated, lived-out ethos.

What an Ethos Actually Is (It’s Not What You Think)

Let’s distinguish between three things that often get confused: a vision, a mission, and an ethos.

A vision is aspirational and describes where you are going. A mission is functional and explains what you do and who you serve. Both of these are important, and most organizations have some version of them, even if they’re gathering dust on a website nobody reads.

An ethos is different. It’s not where you’re going or what you do bit it is who you are. It’s the set of values so core to your identity that everything else flows from them. It is what you would refuse to compromise on even when it is inconvenient. It is what parents should be able to feel when they watch practice for twenty minutes without talking to anyone.

Think of it less like a statement and more like a filter. Every decision, hiring a coach, designing a practice, responding to a parent complaint, structuring a tryout, runs through the ethos. Does this reflect who we are? Does this reinforce or undermine what we stand for?

Most organizations don’t have this. They have words on a wall. An ethos is something you can actually feel.

If you’re building or running a program, the challenge I put to you is this: Can you describe your ethos in three to five terms? Not paragraphs. Not bullet points. Terms. The things that, if someone asked you what you were really about, you could say in one breath.

If this poses a challenge then you don’t have an ethos yet. You have intentions. That is a starting point, not a destination.

The Three Terms Every Youth Sports Organization Should Own

Here’s where I’ll offer something concrete, because I think the youth sports space has been talking in abstractions for too long.

If you’re building a program ; recreational, developmental, competitive, elite, doesn’t matter, there are three core terms that should anchor your ethos. Everything else builds from here.

1. Joyfulness

Not happiness. Not fun. Joy.

There’s a meaningful distinction here. Happiness is reactive and it depends on outcomes, on winning, on whether things go your way. Joy is something deeper. It is a quality of engagement, a sense of aliveness, a feeling that what you’re doing matters and is worth doing even when it’s hard.

Youth sports needs joy at its center because without it, everything else falls apart. Kids quit. Coaches burn out. Parents turn toxic.

When joy is genuinely part of your ethos, it shows up in how practices are designed, how coaches talk to kids after a loss, how the organization responds when a nine-year-old is having a rough week. It’s not about making everything feel good all the time. It’s about building an environment where kids want to show up, where they feel something real, where sport gives them something they can’t get anywhere else.

Ask yourself honestly: does your program deliver joy? Not just to the best athletes. Not just when you’re winning. To everyone, most of the time?

2. Learning and Development

Here’s a word that’s been hollowed out in youth sports: development.

Every program claims it. Club websites are full of it. “Player development.” “Athlete development.” It’s become so overused it barely means anything anymore.

So let me add back the word that actually makes it meaningful: learning.

Development is an outcome. Learning is a process. And the process is where programs actually earn their keep.

What this means in practice is a fundamental shift in how you think about what youth sports is for. Games are not the product. Games are the test. Training is where the work happens. The game is where you find out what was absorbed, what broke down, what needs more attention.

Programs that understand this design practices differently. They think about what they’re trying to teach, not just what drills to run. They create environments where it’s safe to fail, because failure is where learning lives. They give coaches the language and the tools to explain not just what to do, but why.

The gap between recreational and elite isn’t primarily talent. It’s the quality of the learning environment. That’s the lever most programs aren’t pulling.

3. Community

The third term is the one that turns a good program into something that outlasts any single season or coach or team: community.

Community isn’t a byproduct of putting kids in the same uniform. It’s something that has to be intentionally built. And it has layers.

There’s the internal community which is the relationships between players, between coaches, between families. The sense that you’re part of something together, that people know your name, that there’s a culture you belong to.

And then there’s the external community, the way your organization connects to the neighborhood, the region, maybe even beyond. The local partnerships. The way you show up at events that have nothing to do with your sport. The reputation you build not just as a sports program but as a genuine community institution.

Programs that get this right become irreplaceable. They’re not just somewhere to play. They’re somewhere to belong. And in a world where kids and families are increasingly isolated and overscheduled, that matters enormously.

A Framework, Not a Formula

These three terms, joyfulness, learning and development, community , aren’t a magic formula. They’re a starting framework. Your version of each will look different from the program across town, and that’s exactly the point.

What “joyfulness” looks like in an elite competitive environment is different from what it looks like in a Saturday morning rec league. What “community” means for a nationally focused club is different from what it means for a neighborhood program serving fifty kids. The terms are the same; the expression is yours to define.

That definition process is itself valuable. Sitting down with your staff and asking what does learning actually look like in our program? or what would a visitor see that would tell them community is real here? They help you figure out what you’re actually delivering versus what you think you’re delivering.

Because here’s the hard truth: sometimes those two things are not the same.

A Note for Parents

If you’re a parent shopping for a program — and you should be shopping, not just defaulting to whatever is convenient — use these three terms as your filter.

Ask the organization directly: How do you create joy for kids who aren’t the most talented on the team? Watch how they answer. Ask about their approach to learning: What does a typical practice look like? How do coaches give feedback? Get a feel for their community: What happens when a family is struggling? How do you handle conflict?

And then, this is important, watch. Come to a practice. Talk to other parents. See if what the organization says it is matches what it actually is. Organizations often have a gap between their stated values and their lived culture. Your job as a parent is to evaluate both.

You are the customer. You have a voice. Use it, not just to complain when things go wrong, but to recognize and champion the organizations that are genuinely trying to do this right.

A Note for Coaches and Leaders

If you’re a coach or a program director reading this, I want to leave you with one provocation:

Stop leading with the things that are easy to advertise and start leading with the things that are hard to build.

New coaches, new leagues, new facilities, those things are real, and they matter. But they’re not why families stay. They’re not why coaches find meaning in their work. They’re not what kids remember.

What they remember is whether someone saw them. Whether the environment made them feel capable and connected. Whether sport taught them something about themselves that they carried into the rest of their life.

That’s your real product. And if you can articulate it, deliver it consistently, and build a culture around it then you won’t have to compete on logos and league affiliations.

You’ll have something most organizations never build: a genuine why.

There is so much more to discuss and I plan to host live events to learn more about your Whys.

Explore this topic and more in the book, The Customer Experience of Youth Sports

Check out the video I posted today about the “Why”

Welcome to The Customer Experience of Life Newsletter

Michelle Mullman — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 11:02:47 GMT

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The CX of Life is Real World

I had the opportunity to learn about world of Customer Experience over 20 years ago and back then it was considered transformative as it was unknown to the masses at that time. Fast forward to today and I still think it can be transformative if we think about it in a more practical way. In this newsletter, I want to explore my thoughts on CX not from the way that CX professionals might explain it, but from more of an Entrepreneurial viewpoint.

I recently wrote a book focused on Youth Sports because of a personal perspective, not because I am passionate about Sports. The more I read and pay attention to this space, the more I realize how this industry is a perfect place to start to have this very, practical conversation. It is a great use case of how CX is a great framework to use in having transformative conversations for all organizations and industries.

AI seems to be taking over everything and I am on a quest to learn. That said, AI can not take over the human life experiences, so the CX of Life is a framework I am developing that incorporates CX life lessons with the tools that are emerging in this new AI world.

As a parent of teenagers & a wife (I am the CEO of this family), I am in a constant battle with my at home team and it means, I am forever learning, adapting, investigating and inventing. The CX of Life is personal and not just for business.

And finally, the CX of Life is spiritual, physical and creative. It is here that we yearn to escape and find our inner selves.

What can you expect in my weekly musings:

Business Framework and Application / Use / Research
Youth Sports Discussion and Workshop / Book Club Meetings
Careering Experiences for a Portfolio Careerist - Wanna Be
Parenting and Family Thoughts
Glimpse into my Art Journey
Discussion on Spiritual Musings
Wellness Aha Moments

1. CX of Life

Let’s face it. We all have amazing ideas and thoughts about how we can change the world. Scroll social media, and we are inundated with influencers demanding of our attention and auditioning their ideas. It informs us but guides us. When we are offline, we find like-minded people to share in our thought process. This was not a process curated by our parents but by our society, community and culture.

The CX of Life is something we can all relate to as humans but as business people, we forget often that the purpose of products and services is not about selling more stuff, but it is to make people’s lives, better. However you want to think about it. The CX approach is a reminder of the humanity of it all.

I offer my viewpoint and share my thoughts. I am also exploring opportunities to collaborate, work with organizations in support of this mission and connect with anyone who is looking for that spark too.

We can create impact in the little everyday changes. Supporting those around us.

2. Let’s Connect

As business leaders, whether your organization is small or gigantic, I hope to connect and share and learn from you. We are all more than our careers and the sparks are one person’s thought process. As we connect, more sparks create new ideas and support an ever-defining CX of Life framework.

Calling all business leaders, careerists looking to pivot or re-enter the workforce and humans looking to help their communities.

3. What can you expect

1 weekly newsletter with content from above
Invitations to Workshop events
Join a Book Club meeting
2-3 Posts per week

4. Book Club Meeting in May: Info coming soon!

I will be hosting our first book club meeting in May which will be online and free to anyone who is interested. More information to come with a discount code to purchase the book.

Subscribe to the newsletter and be in the know

5. I am learning

If you are like me, I joined Substack to learn and be enlightened. I am tired of all the other social media providers and quite frankly, I am bored. These newsletters have given me something to get excited about and as I join the many others in the process of writing, I am sure my process will emerge and grow.

The goal is to share and connect.

I wake up every morning and chill out for the first 30 minutes of the day with fresh ideas brewing in my head and a cup of coffee in my hand. Now it is time to document that energy into a full exploration of the the possibilities.