Prevent your young athlete from becoming a falling Leaf

While listening to ESPN, I was entranced by an interview with former NFL No. 1 draft pick Ryan Leaf, whose travails have been well documented since his fall from grace with the San Diego Chargers nearly two decades ago.

A recovering Vicodin addict, Leaf, 38, talked about how he started to spiral out of control emotionally when he was 12.  He described how adults raised him up on that precarious pedestal.  Without proper counsel, Leaf began to believe that he was better than everyone else, could do no wrong and was immune to consequences from his bad behavioral habits. All that came back to haunt him and he was ill-prepared for the descent.

It took numerous run-ins with the law following his abbreviated NFL career and waking up on a jailhouse floor to finally shake him into facing his demons and taking recovery seriously. Still, he relapsed, but managed to get back up and try again, this time successfully, or at least so far.  As he described the sad account of his own precipitous decline, I thought of all the young people — boys and girls — currently being positioned by adults on that same shaky platform.

National Scouting Report scouts see it quite often: adults who put young athletes on pedestals only to see them fall and struggle to construct a normal life.

It is scary to watch.

NSR scouts see an overly protectiveness from parents which creates a wall between their child and other athletes, not to mention reality.  These parents erroneously believe their child is indeed better and deserves better when actually he/she is just a child.  Soon the child is conditioned to adopt this bogus status, too, and his/her attitudes and actions begin to erode into an unhealthy sense of self-importance and litany of poor habits like Leaf depicted.

From coaches, scouts see treatment which is viewed from the outside as privileged and unfair to other athletes who possess just as much skill and demonstrate a more team-oriented approach.  Yet, these coaches are blinded by the kid’s star power and reputation or influenced too heavily by the athlete’s overbearing parents.

Parents and coaches who do this are oblivious to the long-term harm they are doing to the child. With heads willingly in the clouds instead of feet firmly on the ground, albeit unintentionally, they are the real culprits when the athlete eventually hits the skids.

Leaf’s story offers parents a stark lesson in what the outcome can be when a young athlete is convinced that he or she has all types of advantages. In the end, no athlete should be thrust into this type of spotlight at such an early age and then be expected to reasonably cope with life after the limelight.