Maximizing Potential: The Problem 🤔

By Quinton Hurdle

The Challenge

There are many factors within youth football which prevent players from becoming the best player they can possibly be.  These factors occur at both the macro and micro level.  Factors at the macro level usually are more difficult to change. Those at the micro level have a greater capacity to change by influencing individual stakeholders, i.e., players, coaches and parents. We’ve identified parents as a key stakeholder in players’ development. The challenge for a parent is protecting and fostering their player’s potential. We want to share our knowledge to aid parents in doing just that.

Capitalization

In Malcolm Gladwell’s speech to Microsoft Research regarding his book Outliers: The Story of Success, he spoke about an idea posed by intelligence researcher James Flynn, called Capitalization.  Capitalization is the rate at which a society capitalizes on its potential.  The questions that followed were:

• What is the rate at which a society capitalizes on its potential?  

• What percentage of people who are capable of doing something actually end up doing that thing?

• How efficiently do we make use of the talents within a given group of people? 

After hearing these questions I naturally wondered:

• What is the rate at which youth football capitalizes on its potential? 

• What percentage of youth players who are capable of playing collegiately or professionally end up playing at those levels?

•  How efficiently do we make use of the talent within youth football?

These questions provoke more questions. Are we doing a good job at capitalizing on football talent?  What is the capitalization rate?  Is that rate good?  Which country should we compare it with?  What are the statistics?  How do we even know that there’s a problem?  

Frankly, I do not know the statistics regarding capitalization rates of youth football in the U.S., nor do I think it’s a good idea to present you with the “facts”.  In this era of alternative facts, I think a far better “alternative” would be to provoke thought. We should question if what we are doing is truly maximizing players’ potential, or jeopardizing it.

Capitalization Constraints

Gladwell spoke on identifying sources which jeopardize potential, and called them capitalization constraints.  One of our roles as stakeholders should be to identify sources which jeopardize players’ potential and figuring out how to remove or mitigate them.  As a parent you are one of the most influential stakeholders during your child’s football development.  There is no greater stakeholder (other than the players) who is more critical during this process. You not only have the authority to alter the condition(s) within their environment. You also have the authority to switch them to completely new environments. Making arbitrary decisions can have negative consequences for your child’s development. This is why we want to share our knowledge with you. 🤔 We’ve observed parents who have the best of intentions jeopardize players’ potential with subjective experiences and opinions (Subjective Thinking). We want to help you act in the best interest of your child, by developing your ability to protect and maximize their potential. In our next post, we will share our proposed solution for protecting and maximizing your player’s potential.

Takeouts 🥡

• Are your best intentions truly maximizing your player’s potential?

• Remove or mitigate sources which jeopardize potential.

• 🤔 The Problem - Basing players’ development on subjective experiences and opinions jeopardize potential.

• Protect and Maximize your player’s potential.