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Washington Post
12 hours ago
- Business
- Washington Post
Why youth sports is such a potent political target
A friend of mine has a daughter in high school and one in middle school, both much older than my own kids. So I was taken aback when he explained how competitive school sports had become. Students didn't have much choice but to join external programs and get additional coaching, he said, to be able to play on their high school teams. And this is in Silicon Valley, not exactly a place generally known for its focus on athletics. What Silicon Valley does have, of course, is a lot of money — and that makes a difference. Ohio State University researchers this year reported finding that success in ascending the competitive ladder of youth athletics is correlated with nonathletic factors. 'Success depends a lot on the advantages young people have when they grow up,' sociology professor Chris Knoester explained when the research came out. Wealthier parents, he added, 'can find the best coaches, help choose the sports that offer the best opportunities for their children, they can figure out the hidden rules and strategies that aren't available to everyone.' This raises the floor for everyone else even as the number of slots remains constant. Over time, Knoester explained in an email to me, the rate of participation in youth sports has increased, mostly thanks to increased participation from young women and girls. Here, too, nonathletic factors play a role. White, wealthy girls are more likely to progress through the ranks of youth sports, often driven by what a 2024 study from the Ohio State team tactfully referred to as 'intensive parenting.' This mix of cost, personal investment and escalating competitiveness is anecdotally obvious. Parents of my kids' elementary-school-aged peers have elected to have their kids start kindergarten later so that they'd consistently be older then their classmates until high school — and therefore bigger and more athletically adept. Surgeries once reserved for elite athletes are now performed on high school kids. The trend is also backed by data. The Aspen Institute's Project Play has surveyed parents and found that the cost of paying for their kids' primary sport has risen faster than the rate of inflation since 2019. Add in additional sports and parents reported paying an average of about $1,000 last year. That's just the average; some parents reported paying more than $20,000 for both primary and other sports. The group's 2023 report found that 'half of survey respondents who played youth sports or who have children who have played said they have struggled to afford the costs to participate.' Project Play data released last week illustrated what parents hope to get out of their investments. High school sports can facilitate college admissions (as several well-known Southern California parents can attest) or — as about a fifth of parents foresaw in the new survey — lead to college athletic careers. One in 9 parents is more ambitious, anticipating that their young athletes might end up playing professionally or in the Olympics. Needless to say, 1 in 9 young athletes does not end up playing professionally. If you make your high school girls' basketball team, for example, you have about a 1 in 71 chance of playing Division I college basketball. There are of course plenty of reasons for parents to encourage participation in sports besides dreams of World Series home runs or gold medals. There are myriad positive effects from participation in youth sports, including increases to self-confidence and the life lessons that accompany winning and losing. But let's step back now and consider all of this in the context of politics. We have a group of parents who've often invested heavily in their kids' athletic success and who often have outsize expectations for where that success might lead. Other parents simply want their kids to experience fair competition. And here comes Donald Trump Jr. — one of the earliest and loudest voices on the issue — warning that trans students were coming to relegate their daughters to second-place finishes. It's important to recognize that this concern is both exaggerated and selective. The most famous voice against having trans athletes participate in girls' or women's sports is Riley Gaines, who has built a career in conservative punditry on having competed against trans swimmer Lia Thomas in 2022. What's often left unmentioned is that Gaines and Tomas tied — for fifth. Even in the track meet in California last weekend that earned a social-media mention from President Donald Trump, trans athlete AB Hernandez won the triple jump — but tied for first in the high jump and came in second in the long jump. Trans athletes are not necessarily going to dominate simply because they are trans. More important, there have been scores of other sporting contests this year in which no trans athletes participated. The NCAA estimated last year that there were no more than a dozen trans athletes playing college sports, out of half a million in total. Instead, hundreds of thousands of youth athletes lost to competitors who were faster or stronger by virtue of their own biological advantages — or because their parents could afford better coaches. Analysis of (preliminary) 2024 American National Election Studies data suggests that parents of kids who still live at home are more supportive of the idea that there should be a ban on transgender girls participating in K-12 sports. There are other splits, too: Republicans are far more supportive of the idea than Democrats and older people without kids are more supportive than younger ones. But the divide among Democrats is a central reason that the issue has been a centerpiece of federal (and even lower-level) elections. In addition to playing to transphobia, the issue stokes concern among parents about the youth-sports playing field being tilted away from their kids. What's elided in this debate is that youth sports is inherently unfair anyway. Some kids are bigger or faster or stronger or have better reaction times. Some kids have parents who can afford coaches or afford to move to districts where their kids can get more playing time. Some kids are handed the best shoes or swimsuits or balls or bats. The unfairness is, in many ways, inextricable. But only one perceived unfairness — no matter how uncommon or exaggerated it is — is seen as a way to get more votes. Post Opinions wants to know: Should we redesign youth sports to make them less expensive and more accessible? Share your responses and they might be published as letters to the editor.
USA Today
26-05-2025
- Sport
- USA Today
'Sportsmanship is not sexy': Have we lost the purpose of high school sports?
'Sportsmanship is not sexy': Have we lost the purpose of high school sports? Show Caption Hide Caption Little leaguer hit by ball is quickest to console pitcher who hit him At a 2022 Little League World Series game in Texas, Tulsa player Isaiah Jarvis took a hit to the head and then consoled the pitcher who hit him. USA TODAY Elliot Hopkins has centered his career around a term he feels should embody high school sports. For more than a quarter-century, he has worked on initiatives around the country to promote it at games. Go to your local one, though, and you might not see it. "Sportsmanship is not sexy," says Hopkins, director of student services for the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS). "Strangely enough," he says, "this is why sportsmanship really matters: Some people just don't get it because of what they see at other levels or schools in their state or conference. Some parents are bad actors. And then the kids get the same vibe, and then they carry it out into the field. And then you mix in some coaches who don't understand that education-based sports is just that: Education-based." Witness a March basketball playoff game between two Pennsylvania schools – Meadville and Uniontown. A technical foul on the court led to a brawl in the stands among adults. It spilled onto the court. Arrests were made and fans were led off in handcuffs. As spring sports conclude their postseasons through the end of May and into June, state associations and administrators hold their breath. On-campus incidents like this not only occur with frightening regularity, but they sharply distort the deep-rooted message that is the backbone of high school sports. "People immediately think our role is to get students effective for the next level, which is college or major league baseball," Hopkins says. "It's quite the opposite. We believe what we do makes a young person a better human being and a better contributor to society." Instead, emotion, aggression and me-first aggrandizement can interlock into an ugly mess with so much seemingly on the line: NIL money, next-level participation, pay-for-play opportunities on travel teams and social media reputations. How can more kids and parents be better examples and better understand the core values of school-based sports? USA Sports shares perspective from Hopkins' decades-long career and from coaches and leaders who spoke at March's Project Play Summit in Berkeley, California, about the crossroads high school athletics faces. 'One of the last free options': High school sports connects communities and can save lives The goal of Project Play, a national initiative from the Aspen Institute, is to build healthy communities for kids of all ages, races and economic backgrounds through sports. We can think of high school athletics in a similar fashion. Studies have connected them with higher attendance and academic achievement. But prep sports also cuts to the core of our being and sense of belonging. It's a place where we band together to face our most intense rivals, but also one where we shake their hands afterward and where our parents cheerfully sell them and their supporters tickets and hot dogs. Go to rural Virginia, though, and you find moms and dads selling cupcakes and donuts to pay for referees jerseys and lining materials for the field. For every team with million dollar donors to help build fields, there are many others who play at city or regional parks. They depend on the experience. "School-based athletics is one of the last free options to participate," says Franky Navarro, California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) commissioner of Oakland, California. It's a city with a sharp divide in socioeconomic status between zip codes. "It provides opportunity for students," he says. "It builds community and depending on where you're at, it can also serve as violence prevention." According to the most recent survey results from the NFHS, high school sports have more than 8 million participants, a rise from 444,248 since the coronavirus pandemic, an especially dark period for children. During the first 10 months of COVID, 5,568 youth between the ages of 5 and 24 died by suicide, according to the National Institutes of Health. "We had kids taking their own lives because they can't see their teammates," Hopkins says. "We had kids not eating as well as they normally do because, in some cases, they get their best meals when they go to school (and) their best adult supervision is when they have coaches around them. "Ninety-five percent of our kids, if not a higher number, when they hang up their high school jersey, they're done. They're not going on to the next level. They're not going to play in college. They're just gonna be regular people. How have we impacted them for four years?" 'Where were the adults?' High school sports are a chance for us to set better examples We play in front of people we might run into at the grocery store, mall or post office. We see teachers and local Little Leaguers in the bleachers much more often than college coaches. It can be an opportunity to show how much we have grown, but also how far we have to go. "What's going on in high school is a microcosm of what's going on in society," Hopkins says. "We see people cheating. There are fights at games (at the) college and professional level. That's what our kids see, and that's what they want to mirror. A prominent basketball player pushes somebody because of a hard foul, that gives credence. It's like a dog whistle that tells some kids they can do the same thing – because he does it, it must be OK. And it's not OK. We don't do a good enough job to hone in on that." These games center around raw emotion that tests human sensibility. Taunts and gestures can begin on social media earlier in the week, heightening everyone's awareness of what's ahead, "so come Friday night football, there's gonna be a fight in the stands," Hopkins says. He says in recent years, students in Indianapolis have shown up for baseball games against a Jewish school with swastikas on their cheeks, while others in New Mexico have thrown tortillas at a team comprised of predominantly Native American players. A mostly white team in Coronado, California, was stripped of a regional championship when spectators behaved similarly against Latino players. "Where were the adults?" Hopkins say. "Who thought that'd be funny or would be a good idea? And you wonder why the first hard foul or that first pitch is up near the chin of somebody." A number of states, including Illinois, New Jersey, Hawaii and Virginia, have adopted zero tolerance policies, resulting in immediate ejection and further discipline against hate speech directed at sex, race, religion, creed, age, national origin, ancestry, pregnancy, marital or parental status, sexual orientation or disability. All 51 high school associations, including the District of Columbia, have policies for curbing poor spectator behavior in general. In California, two former NBA players, Robert Horry and Matt Barnes, were ejected from their sons' games for yelling at officials in the last two years. Video showed Horry shouting, "Hey ref … you suck!" while Barnes confronted a student broadcaster for the other team. The CIF recently instituted two bylaws: adult spectators must stay away for three games if ejected; and if you assault a game official you're done attending California high school sports. "It's sad that we had to put them in place," says Ron Nocetti, the CIF's executive director. "And we literally had people say, 'Well, that's not fair.' I mean, wait, you're telling me that you can go and physically assault someone in a parking lot, which we saw happen after a baseball game, and you think you have the right to then come back to our events?' "It's also why we talked about wanting to get more involved in sports at the younger ages. Just look at all the videos you see out there. There's referees literally been chased around basketball courts after games. I mean, that's how sad it has gotten." Coach Steve: Dan Hurley's words could improve parent, coach behavior at games 'Bigger than yourself': High school sports can help us discover who we are The CIF is only authorized to govern ninth through 12th grade athletics, but Nocetti wants to see sports played at every middle school in California. That way, affiliated high schools could partner with them and send their players in to mentor and coach. "Then these students are looking up to those students," he says. Seated with him on stage at Project Play was former University of California soccer player Ari Manrique, who has coached girls at Berkeley High. Manrique was a star who travelled as a member of the U.S. national team at the U-15, U-16 and U-17 levels. But at the end of her career at Cal, she had to medically retire and found herself using her psychology coursework to fully understand her younger athletes. Some days, she says, she went in with a full practice plan but needed to lighten it up after her players were dragging from, say, a chemistry test. "It's not always gonna be 'Go, go, go,' " she says. "It's hard to be a teenager and I think teenagers are feeling that in the ever-changing world that we have – with social media and everything else. Students who already have so much in the education space, now you're asked me to practice after class? Like, 'No, no way.' And they kind of can get lost in this. "I was able to find my love for the sport again in a tough time and see the girls go from maybe deciding to quit after freshman year to seeing them at senior day, they've made it all the way through. And they have no plans of playing in college, but they have a nice group of friends. They got something out of it. They learned. They became a better person because of it." She also has perhaps realized that along her own elite path, taking online courses away form the traditional high school setting, she had missed out. "I think there's something to be said about playing a high school sport, being a part of something bigger than yourself," she says. During an interview earlier this year, USA TODAY Sports asked Luis Robles, a former USMNT goalie and the technical director of MLS NEXT, if he encouraged teens within his youth soccer organization to play the sport in high school. MLS NEXT only recently added a tier to accommodate a prep schedule. "I would stop short of encourage; it's just allowed," Robles said. "I think what we encourage is them to identify the best environment possible for them to develop. And what we've identified as what would be the best environment is where are the best coaches? And if you're under that coach for as long as possible, and you're competing with the best possible competition that aids your development." Hopkins would argue that travel coaches who ask players to skip high school for their team have an educational obligation, too. "I'm not saying those opportunities aren't good for children," he says. "You've got to finish the sentence. They also have to mirror what we're trying to teach because if they never get to play at the high school level, and they just run their career in youth sports and travel ball and things like that, they have to make sure those kids are ready for life as well." Coach Steve: Is it worth it? 10 questions teen athletes need to ask if they play travel sports High school sports is now about NIL; what about sportsmanship? It has all suddenly become much more of a business. Navarro, the CIF Oakland section commissioner, has found himself asking former collegiate athletes in his office to help students figure out the landscape of Name, Image and Likeness. NIL has exploded into a money-making opportunity. High school athletes, depending on their state, can create their own brand and try to profit off of it. The chances increase when they get to college, especially if they are top recruits. "What happens if you get a deal, what do you do?" Navarro says. "I think for many of our students that never have had the opportunity to earn income, it becomes a challenge when they do arrive at a college level and are beginning to earn." Hopkins, 67, who played on the defensive line at Wake Forest from 1975 to 1979, doesn't see the system as sustainable. "You just can't keep doing this long term, because what happens is you and I are teammates and you get a bigger deal than I am, but I'm blocking for you," he says. "I'm like, 'What the heck? You wouldn't be getting any money if I didn't block for you. I need more money so you can do your job,' and the whole locker room becomes frazzled, and then no one trusts each other, no one wants to work for each other. They're out for themselves." To him, NIL is be another disruptive force to that magic "s" word he and NFHS are holding up these days like a placard. "Sportsmanship is a demonstration of fair play, respect and gracious behavior," he says. "We have not seen a lot of stories of that. And it's not a political thing. It's just where we are right now as a country, and we need to get back to the middle, because if you raise a bunch of kids who don't have fair play, respect or gracious behavior, we're going to end up raising and allowing those kids to grow up having kids with little bit of a different attitude, and that's gonna to kill the sport. "And you can fill in the blank of whatever sport it is." Steve Borelli, aka Coach Steve, has been an editor and writer with USA TODAY since 1999. He spent 10 years coaching his two sons' baseball and basketball teams. He and his wife, Colleen, are now sports parents for two high schoolers. His column is posted weekly. For his past columns, click here. Got a question for Coach Steve you want answered in a column? Email him at sborelli@
Boston Globe
23-05-2025
- Sport
- Boston Globe
Parents: When you're eating a ham sandwich on the soccer sidelines at 3 p.m., is it time to reevaluate your life?
Advertisement Welcome to Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up 'I have a hard time understanding how sports trump sleep and health. Full stop,' says Arlington's Dana Lynne Varga, a mom of two neurodivergent elementary schoolers. Both play spring sports. The games start late and run long, upending dinner and crucial downtime. 'I expressed my frustration with the late start times for games for kids so young and was met with lots of camaraderie and a lot of 'get over it.' … The late games are a huge lift,' she says. Advertisement Her kids' routines are disrupted; everyone is grouchy. She understands that many coaches are volunteers who can't arrive until evening — they double as working parents! — but this means that games seem to finish when bars close. She's reconsidering her kids' participation in certain sports because it's untenable. What's going on here? Do kids with extracurriculars belong to a leisure class of parents with ultra-flexible jobs — or no jobs at all — with infinite time to chauffeur, cheer, and coach? Don't the Sports Gods know that people work? 'In my town, it feels like [sports are] social hour for parents who have too much free time: It's a battle of judgment on both sides, which is so unfair and ultimately makes kids feel like they aren't as supported as other kids. I think youth sports organizations need to better support families,' says one Freetown parent. Sign up for Parenting Unfiltered. Globe staff #mc_embed_signup{background:#fff; clear:left; font:14px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; } /* Add your own Mailchimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block. We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. */ Subscribe * indicates required E-mail * Organized sports are increasingly becoming the realm of the well-off, with parents who can afford to pay hefty club fees and maintain autonomous schedules. A recent The study found that about 70 percent of Americans born in the '90s, reaching age 18 by 2015-16, said they took part in organized sports through recreational, school, or club teams, while slightly more than half of those born in the '50s reported participating in organized youth sports. However: For kids born in the '50s, there were few class differences in who played organized sports. For kids born in the '90s, the share of those who played organized sports were 24 percentage points higher when they had a college-educated parent. The average family paid $883 annually for one child's primary sport in 2022, according to Project Play by the Aspen Institute. Advertisement 'For most of us who are single parents, poverty, a lack of time, an always messy home, a lack of support in emergencies, and loneliness is enough of a burden. We don't need the responsibility of providing more play and activity as well to keep our kids at a baseline level of health. The ironic thing is that most schools have plenty of playground space and wouldn't have to do much to provide the physical activity kids need to be healthy. I truly hope someone takes this seriously at some point,' says Cambridge's Pam Cash. One interesting factoid: This disparity is particularly noticeable for kids ages 6-12, where sports participation in homes earning $100,000 or more increased 6 percent from 2023 to 2024 — but actually declined 2 percent for the wealthiest youth ages 13-17. Why? Too much pressure, maybe. Instead of choosing one sport, some kids are loading up on two or three. Or else they're specializing in one sport so narrowly, competing on so many teams with so many conflicting schedules, that they're run ragged before they're old enough to drive to a 9 p.m. practice themselves. 'These kids are often being fed sports with a fire hose,' said Tom Farrey, Aspen Institute Sports & Society Program executive director. 'There is lots of pressure on them to play one sport year-round, traveling all over the place. Some are burning out or are just too injured to continue playing.' Advertisement Their parents are burned out, too, and this is true even for activities that kids enjoy. Westwood's Patrick French found time to weigh in on the extracurricular conundrum mid-afternoon, while driving his son to an a cappella lesson. Both he and his wife have full-time jobs with on-site components; she serves on their town's school committee, and he performs in community plays. Their teens participate in soccer (school and club), theater, and voice. Occasionally, the couple finds time to watch a TV show; they're midway through four different series and will finish one, hopefully 'The Wire,' when they find time. I ask French how we got here. I tell him that I remember my own childhood — when the highlight of my week was riding a pink Huffy to New London Style Pizza with my best friend, Vicky, and when extracurricular activities were held right after school, at the school. Seems quaint now. 'We're often signing our kids up for all these structured activities in the hopes that, by doing all these things, they're going to continue to really develop as human beings,' he says. 'I think it's probably peer pressure. If you're not participating in as many things, then maybe, in some ways, you're worried about your kid being left out.' FOMO is real. Parents who weighed in for this piece underscored that the meteoric rise of club sports — with weekends-long travel tournaments in towns you've never heard of, often populated by college recruiters — are a presumed necessity for kids who long to compete at a higher level. Which, fine: But for every budding Jayson Tatum, there are thousands of anonymous athletes riding the bench and devouring 12 straight nights of Chipotle while their parents do off-camera Zoom calls from a hot spot in the parking lot. Advertisement Then there's the mental load: the logistics, the carpool strategizing, the remembering which bag goes with whose cleats and which car goes to which field. New research from the University of Bath and the University of Melbourne, published in the Journal of Marriage & Family, reminds us that mothers overwhelmingly carry this mental load. The study found that American moms take on seven in 10 of all household mental load tasks, ranging from planning meals and arranging activities to managing household finances. This comes as no surprise to any mother who has six different league-scheduling apps on her phone, a carpool text thread with 12 unknown numbers, and a rickety foldable chair with a cup holder rattling in her trunk, ready for action. Emily Sheff, an assistant professor of nursing at Rivier University, has a PhD in burnout among nursing faculty. Expertise aside, the Bedford, N.H., mom is a work in progress as she navigates extracurriculars for her teenagers; in fact, she transitioned to a work-from-home teaching position to keep up with their schedules. To maintain some shred of balance, Sheff wakes up at 5:10 a.m. for a morning boot camp to meet friends. 'That's where we stress about our days ahead. I need to have fellow moms and friends in the trenches with me, and it helps to debrief and de-stress,' she says. Meanwhile, pulling her kids from activities — even inconveniently timed ones — doesn't feel like an option, either. Success favors the flexible. 'Then they miss out on an opportunity, which leads into the tryouts in two months, and that means they don't make the team,' she says. 'What I've been doing for the past 17 years is just taking on the burden, and then once every six to eight months, I have a huge cry session. I break, and then I pick up the pieces, and I start all over.' Advertisement Once a month, she joins friends for margarita lunches to vent about the inequity of it all, even though she has a helpful partner who pitches in. The household systems are so entrenched that it doesn't much matter. 'My husband always says: 'What can I do? How can I help? Let me know what to do.' But again, it goes back to the mental load: If I have to know what to do in my head and then communicate to you what to do and then check after it's done, that doesn't even help,' she says. Hingham's Cam Smith, who has a fairly autonomous work schedule — and three kids in a total of 20 activities, many of which meet multiple times per week — sees the double-standard firsthand. Although he's the point person for most activities, many messages are still reflexively channeled to his wife, whose job is less flexible. 'I do think there's a deeply unfair mental load which still gets put on mothers every time in this. The sports tend to be a little better, but all these activities take [my wife's] contact info because they just assume she needs to be the primary contact. Our daughters have been competing in Irish step dance for more than six years, and we have tried numerous times to get their Irish dance school to add my contact to all their correspondence. They just don't do it,' he says. Brookline's Julie Starr, a single mom who works full time as a nutritionist, relies on carpools and ride-sharing for her high-school athlete, who runs track and plays soccer. She outsources where she can because she has to: At a certain level, deprioritizing practices or games just isn't an option. Her work vacations don't match up with her daughter's vacations, but sports schedules don't match working realities, either. So she improvises. 'If you go on vacation, you're not going to play. During her school vacation, practices are during the day, so she takes an Uber sometimes,' Starr says. 'The vacation weeks are horrible.' Sometimes Starr takes client calls from the parking lots of games; other times, she skips games entirely (and hopes other parents let themselves off the hook, too). But she insists on serving a nutritious dinner no matter what — 'we're humans, not raccoons,' she says — but that requires conscientious meal prep on Sundays: sweet potatoes, pre-chopped salads, and roast chicken play starring roles. Even when she's not working, she's working. Starr has advice for parents just now wading into the madness, wondering if their kids are benefiting from this whirlwind. 'Notice: 'Are they happy? Do they really enjoy doing this?' And don't get too crazy before they're in seventh grade, especially with the club and the travel teams — and find somebody to carpool with,' Starr says. Needn't be a friend, just a sentient being with access to a driver's license. Another key tip: Keep perspective. 'Having so many sports all at once is too much on their bodies as well. It's about keeping in mind that, when they're 25 years old, the bulk majority of these kids aren't going to be professional sports players,' says Lakeville's Krista Allan, a single mom who was widowed several years ago. Time is precious. And so, when deciding how to occupy her kids, she thinks: 'This is really about learning teamwork, learning how to take guidance from other people, and thinking through the real purpose of sports and activities for kids. I think it's important to level-set.' Wise words, but hard to remember when you're driving from Raynham to Rowley in the hopes of seeing your child compete for 10 seconds in the high-visibility lacrosse tournament while eating a Chipotle burrito with your one free hand. 'I personally always feel like I'm running from one thing to the next and hardly ever taking time to just stop and — I don't know — look at a flower blooming for a second,' says French, the Westwood dad. That is, unless he's stopped in traffic on the way to a game at rush hour. Kara Baskin can be reached at
Miami Herald
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Miami Herald
Erin Andrews says her son shows interest in following in dad's hockey footsteps
While co-hosting 'Today With Jenna and Friends,' Fox Sports reporter and podcast host Erin Andrews took some time to talk about her 1-year-old son, Mack. Andrews shares son, Mack, with her husband of 7 years, former professional hockey player Jarret Stoll. While talking with Jenna Bush Hager, Andrews shared how Mack's not even 2 years old yet and he's already learning how to move around in skates. 'The thing in our house right now is my son, Mack, almost two, getting him to walk in skates, hockey skates, because when we get him on the ice, he's already got the balance,' Andrew explained. And as the proud mom shared, Andrews said Mack has really started enjoying wearing the hockey skates around their house. 'Apparently, Daddy put the skates away in a drawer. I got the old, 'Hey, babe, I was watching the playoffs, hockey playoffs, for a couple minutes.' The old, 'I turned my head for one minute,'' Andrews shared, admitting she was concerned before Stoll explained that Mack got the skates out of the drawer on his own. 'He goes, 'Mack, opened up the drawer, grabbed his skates and brought them over to dad, and dad goes, you want me to put him on?' So that's, like, a big deal. So he likes it.' Andrews shared a video of Mack walking around in the skate, much to Hager's surprise. 'Wait, he's a toddler?' Hager asked. 'Yeah, he's not even two. Look at him. I mean, he's crushing being on those skates. So we just want his ankles to be strong, right? Look at his little legs,' Andrews shared. Fans were also impressed, like Hager. 'Omggg! So cute! He has such amazing balance,' one person wrote. 'This is adorable,' another added. 'Jarrett is soooooo proud!!!! Look at his face when Mac walks over to him,' another commenter wrote. According to Project Play, there are many benefits for kids who play sports, noting that it can help 'children develop and improve cognitive skills.' 'Physical activity in general is associated with improved academic achievement, including grades and standardized test scores. Further, such activity can affect attitudes and academic behavior, including enhanced concentration, attention, and improved classroom behavior,' the website reads.
