 Welcome to the Sports Playbook where we discuss solutions to issues that impact sports. I'm your host, Angela Hazelett. Today's guest is Skip Gilbert, the Chief Executive Officer for US Youth Soccer. We are here to discuss US Youth Soccer, the state of youth soccer. Welcome Skip. Well, thank you, Angela. Great to be here. Skip, I know you've played professional soccer as a goalkeeper for the Tampa Bay Rowdies of the North American Soccer League and in England, Holland, Hong Kong and Korea with the US Olympic Development Team and not to mention you are a college and high school Hall of Famer. So how has your experience as a soccer athlete informed your role as CEO of US Youth Soccer? You know, I kind of look at it as not just a soccer athlete, but being a goalkeeper, you know, you stand at the field, you have everybody in front of you. You can see how the play develops, how it comes at you. You can see where your competitors are going and what they're trying to do. And your charge is to make sure you can position your players from a defensive standpoint to be able to block what, you know, the other team is trying to bring at you. And then you're the first line of offense to be able to initiate all of that. So when you try to apply that to the business world, it works, you know, as the CEO of my job is to really oversee all the different departments, what the new initiatives are, how we, you know, exercise our evaluations of existing programs and how to watch the soccer system unfold in front of us. It's the vision on the field and off the field. So that's incredible. Good perspective. So that goalkeeper really has to keep their eye on the ball and the whole game. So the big picture. I know that USU soccer was formed in 1974, so before you took the helm and the organization really provides guidance and resources to its membership to advance the game of soccer for youth. And you serve age groups between six and 19. So what are some examples of these resources that you provide to your membership? Well, part of our chart, we do provide support for our 54 state association, 54 because in certain states, California, Texas, Pennsylvania, we have two state associations within the state. But generally speaking from a competitive environment, you know, it's being able to provide some of the educational material for coaches and referees to being able to provide the pathways. So whether a kid is at the start of their career playing within our, what we call League America recreational social format, all the way up to the elite programming where the kids that are the best from 13 up to 19, we're going to play either in our President's Cup tournament or for our national championships. So, you know, we try to position ourselves as really that community resource center. So anybody that has any questions, anything that they need from a youth soccer perspective can come to us and we'll kind of point them in the right direction. And let's let's hone in on that a little bit through resources for coaches. I know that there are different developmental techniques and approaches for different age groups. And your coaches are expected to have a kind of an age-appropriate license that's issued by US soccer. Can you talk a little bit about the purpose of this license? Sure. US soccer really controls all of the licensing for coaches, you know, whether it's your C license or at the very top of the game, the A license. US soccer is also, and it's more of a global phenomenon, you know, being able to create age-appropriate training so that the coaches understand that when you're dealing with a nine-year-old, it's a little bit different in size and scope than you would an 18-year-old. You know, there's a lot of different experience factor, the body control movements, their spatial and technical aspects of the game, what they can bring in. So, US soccer does a great job getting all of those licenses kind of together. Where we tend to get involved is more of the grassroots, almost the first-time coaching curriculum. And actually this week we just launched our grassroots curriculum with our partner Mojo. But what that is is if you think about, if you have a child who's six or seven years old and they're playing soccer for the first time, most of the time you're not going to get a paid staff coach. You know, you're going to get a parent who volunteers and says, hey, I want to be a part of this. A lot of times, hopefully, they've played soccer or they've been involved in sport, but many times they've never really taken the time to understand how to coach a player, you know, how to make that experience for the six-year-old fun so that they want to continue to, as we call it, you know, be a fan for life, you know, that they want to get that passion for the sport so that when they're seven, eight, nine, ten and all the way on up, that they continue to grow, they continue to have fun with the game, but to continue to just want to be a part of it. And realistically, that coach that for that six-year-old, you know, if they don't have the background, if they don't have some training, you know, they might not make it as fun of an experience. And, you know, for those kids, they're going to move on to either leave sport entirely or potentially go to a different sport. So when I was a youth, I know that they didn't have the same rigor as training and education for coaches. It was just the parents raised their hands and they got, we got thrown on the field. So, but I've heard some rumblings that that might be a barrier to getting parents to say yes to participation because of the time that it takes and the philosophies that they're trying to adhere to, to make it the best experience. So have you had a problem with parents signing up to be the coaches? At the lowest end level, not really. You know, and again, U.S. soccer has, you know, that's the cost and the time commitment to go out and get your coaching license. The resources that we provide are the best way to describe it is one-minute clinics, you know, where you could be out on the field and say, hey, I want to create a plan or an exercise for my kids to learn, give and go. So you can go to your phone, you download the one-minute clinic and it'll tell you right there how to do it in a fun way. So we're really not there to take the time away from the parents' roles of being a parent or being a coach or working, you know, whatever they're doing. We want to be there just as a resource, you know, to help the parents just make it a little bit more fun, hopefully challenging. But again, we don't want to make it where it's so structured that the kid feels like at seven years old, they're becoming a robot where they have to do certain things. We want it to be a fun environment. We want them to just go out and play, but perhaps with a little bit of a twist. That's really cool that the parents and maybe they're stuck in the middle practice and trying to think of what to do next and they can just pull out their phone and find a new drill to use. So what about burnout? You mentioned that you don't want these players to be robots. They started six years old, they're getting more and more push for competitive play. So how do you prevent burnout in the sport and continue to have players develop that love of the game? You know, I've been a big supporter my whole career no matter where I've been, you know, in that multi-sport aspect of it. You know, whether you play soccer and then baseball or run track, you know, years ago I worked at U.S. tennis and I was out at mid-court for my first U.S. Open. My job was to oversee the professional side of tennis in the United States and part of that was to manage the U.S. Open. So I'm there with our chief medical officer and Andy Roddick was warming up and I said, why is it that our men have such a hard time cracking the top five? And his response was, well, watch Andy warm up. And you know, he's an unbelievable player, won the U.S. Open, you know, one of the one of the all-time greats in the American sort of history. But when you compare what he did in his career, which was basically playing tennis his whole life and how he ran and how he did certain things from point A to point B, and you compare that to Rafa Nadal, Novak Djokovic, Andy Murray, Roger Federer, who all played multiple sports, you could see the athleticism was different. And so realistically, what we're trying to ingrain in parents and coaches and within the ecosystem is that, yes, we absolutely want to find the best kids for our national teams, for Major League Soccer, for the NWSL as they get to that age. But at six or seven, they need to develop their bodies. They need to develop their minds. And if we just focus on soccer 12 months a year, it doesn't necessarily allow their bodies to expand to take in that athletic ability, because using certain muscles are different for tennis and volleyball and track than it would be for soccer. So if we have that mentality, hopefully the kids, you know, will be able to play different sports or, you know, play an instrument, you know, go do arts, do other things so that, again, you're a well rounded individual, but you don't get into that burnout factor after 12 months. What age group do you recommend where they should funnel into being maybe a single sport athlete year round soccer player? You know, I think all of the studies show as they get to that preteen teenage level, that that's really where most athletes will start to kick in. You know, and I think if you look around the world in soccer, you know, a lot of the international professional clubs start looking at 12 and 13 for the players that they might start to identify. You know, it's interesting because if you look at the NFL draft from this past, this past spring, I think I saw somewhere where something like 90% of all of the draftees from the first round played more than one sport in high school. So, you know, again, that kind of leads to that criteria that, you know, if the only reason the kids are doing it 12 months a year are for the economic engine of the sport, then that's not the right answer. You know, it's got to be absolutely for the kid. Soccer has always been popular internationally. Is it growing at the youth level? It is, you know, both at the youth level, at the adult level, the popularity of the sport, thanks to MLS and NWSL, you know, continues to soar. Now, we're all going to be watching the World Cup this year when the men play, next year when the women are back at it, you know, and we're keeping our fingers crossed that the men can live up to what the path that the women have for it. But you're doing some really interesting initiatives that's sort of taking the soccer beyond playing on the grass, playing on the turf. You are considering things like footsault, which is where a version of soccer where you play on a hard court surface kind of expands the opportunities of where you can play. Thinking about esports and really tapping into the virtual gaming. So, talk to me, why are you moving in that direction? Why are you expanding soccer to reach beyond the traditional pathways? You know, and it's funny, footsault is such a staple around the world. Years ago, when I was at USA Driathlon, I was down with our team at the Pan Am Games, checked into the hotel, went up to my room, looked out, looked down off the balcony, and there was a basketball court down there. I didn't think everything of it. After dinner, I came back, went back out to the balcony, looked down, just watch, you know, what I thought were going to be kids playing basketball. They were playing footsault. And I thought, right then, even before I got to US youth, you know, I was thinking, God, if we could have something like that in the United States where kids are going out to what were once basketball courts are in almost every city and they could play footsault, what would that do to the popularity of the game, the growth of the game, the connectivity of the game, you know, and kind of meets our vision of making fans for life, that, you know, even people my age could go out and play footsault and, you know, not limp when you try to get home. But again, being able to do things like that is terrific. And at the same token, look at what eSports is doing within, you know, kind of the global society. And again, back when I was within the Olympic movement in USA Triathlon specifically, Larry Proce was named the president of the US Olympic Committee, and he was the chairman of EA. And so myself, I was at that point the chair of the National Governing Bodies Council and ACEs, the chief executives of sport group, we took a number of CEOs to Larry's office to say, why would a video sport gamer want to be part of the Olympic movement? And don't you think that's going to have a negative impact on the Olympic movement in the United States? And he brought out more data to suggest that actually it opened more doors to people wanting to play the sport, you know, the game, and then they actually wanted to go out and try it. So not only did the video gaming make more fans, but it actually increased participation for markets that we never really thought there would be a market. So, you know, from those two, footsball and eSports, you know, it really kind of drives that, can we continue to move the needle for sport popularity and participation? Well, that is incredible. And I know you used to work for the Tennis Association as well, but in Harrisonburg, Virginia, where I'm at the Parks and Rec Department, put a video, a record error over top of the tennis courts to monitor usage. And they realized that more people were coming out with a soccer ball to use the tennis courts. So they actually converted it to a footsball court. So I think that's a great. And I love the fact that you're talking about how online gaming can actually convert people to becoming the physical athletes on the field as well, getting them excited about the sport. So that's definitely a great, great trend. I know for USU Soccer you have, is it two over two million members, I believe, and you've had great success with the history of women in the sport, particularly the US Women's National Team, the last two World Cup cycles in 2015 and 2019, all of the athletes that were playing on that team had been former members of USU Soccer. And what percentage of your membership are girls? You know, it's almost a 50-50 split. You know, I think it's 55-45, you know, it's still a little leaning on the boy's side. But, you know, when you start talking about the girls side of the sport, next month, one of our state associations, Washington Youth Soccer, had the first formal girls program. And next month is their 50th anniversary of creating a girls program. You know, and so, you know, and when you look at where we were back then, the kind of where we are today with the women of the United States National Team, you know, basically dominating the global soccer scene, you know, what, what a road they've traveled and what great examples and role models, you know, they are for the kids that want to be tomorrow's superstars, you know, just kind of coming up through our system today. So, you know, it's worked really well and, you know, again, we're trying to do as much as we can just to support the growth of the sport because we know that it's equal, you know, both, it's a great boy's sport, it's a great girl's sport and, you know, whatever we can do to help make it the best in the world, we will. Well, that's interesting that Washington is celebrating 50 years of the sport for girls that coincides with 50 years of celebrating Title IX, which has brought a lot of opportunity to girls and women in sports. But not all of that has been glorious or glamorous. We've had issues with sexual abuse scandals highlighted by USA gymnastics. Youth girls are really particularly vulnerable to abuse by coaches, medical support staff, and others in sport. Since US youth soccer is focused entirely on youth sport, this probably is a great concern to you. So, what can you tell us about your efforts to protect these vulnerable youth from abuse in sports? Yeah, no, we're, we're strong advocate for the safe sport programming, you know, to put every adult through background checks. You know, we have protocols in place, you know, coaches can't be alone with, with any child under the age of 18, you know, we don't want the coaches to drive a single player home by them. So, you know, all of the checks and balances that, you know, really should have been in place for the last 50 years, but, you know, really, you know, given some of the issues that have come to the forefront, you know, we're making sure that, you know, the education resources are out there. We launched last year something called USYS University, and it really wasn't meant to create coaching support for on field programming. It was more to help the off field mechanism of, you know, of kids getting older and being able to understand, you know, mental health aspects. We're working with the US Center for Mental Health, is one of our university partners. Our friends at TrueSport, you know, part of the US Anti-Doping Group, is character development. You know, when it's all part of being able to provide those resources and I'll, and I'll go back to the mental health side of it, is, you know, if kids feel like they're being bullied or they're being sexually harassed or abused, you know, how can they communicate that to their teammates, to their friends, to their parents, to their coaches? How can coaches understand and really be able to recognize when a child is in trouble? You know, are they seeing behavioral changes that they need to kind of, you know, either bring others into the into the conversation or have the conversation with the parents? You know, so we're looking at all of those and how can we be that resource center? So again, it's not just, you know, how can we make people and how can we help kids become great players? We also want them to be great citizens and, you know, and have a wonderful childhood, you know, free of any, you know, those anxieties that you mentioned. Absolutely. And SafeSport is a non-profit. They're committed to ending abuse in sports, so that is certainly a very valuable resource. So what about the parents on the sidelines? We have heard about abusive parents that are really making it difficult for the coaches, players, referees. Which age group do you find maybe the most difficult parents on the sidelines and what is being done about abusive parents in youth soccer? You know, and it's one of those that I don't stand here and say this is a soccer only issue. You know, my friends at, you know, all the team sports, actually all sports, you know, have the same behavioral problems. You know, we, in trying to describe it, you know, given, again, the costs of sport at the elite level, we kind of put parents into that being a general manager, that they feel that they put so much, they invest so much into their child's sport education, that they feel like they can direct and yell at the coaches, the referees, the players. I mean, again, you've seen it time and time again, you know, parents, they're yelling at their kids in the drive home, you know, and all of that behavioral coming post pandemic seems to have risen a notch. And so, again, we're through our university programming and working with truce board in the center for mental health with mojo and, you know, in our hospital for special surgery, being able to bring awareness to what some of the behaviors and the impact it has on the players and the entire ecosystem. Because, you know, it's not just the players that are feeling the brunt of it, we're losing referees. You know, we've got a lot less referees and soccer and across all sport than we did just a couple of years ago. And, you know, there's a there's a great saying it came out of the St. Louis Sports Foundation, which is no ref no game, you know, no ref no play. And, you know, that brings incredibly true that if you don't have a referee, especially as the kids get older, it makes it very difficult to navigate the laws of the game on field and be able to create a fair environment for, you know, a an outcome. So we're doing everything we can to be able to put behavior modification stories together. I will give you a shout out to my friends at Little League Baseball that just came out at the start of the World Series this August with a whole campaign against kind of parental behavior. We're looking to do the exact same thing. We're going to be pushing forward a little bit to the fall. But again, if we don't change that that that behavioral pattern, and it's going to have a huge negative impact on the game. Get those parents to sign up as the referees, right? Experience the taste of their own of their own medicine on this from what's happening. And that'll solve the official's problem as well. Let's shift gears a little bit and talk about concussions and how the impact is on soccer. So I know you have some restrictions in not allowing headers for the younger athletes, meaning they can't use the hit the ball with their head as part of part of forward play or backward play. So and then the coaches or referees are supposed to suspend play when an injury happens that might involve a concussion. So what else have you seen that concussion numbers change in recent years? Or what else are you guys doing to kind of combat this problem? We've seen an increase in concussion. And I don't necessarily think that is because there's a higher propensity for concussion, but I think the safeguards are in place. The education is out there for how coaches, parents, referees are able to see when there's impact and to look for changes again in player behavior or simply put if two heads collide going for a header, and they both go down to the ground. Well, we're going to pull them off the field and have them go through the concussion protocol. So again, we've pushed on the safety feature. We pushed on the awareness factor, but we've really made it so that if there's any danger to the child or to the player from a head injury, we want to make sure that they get treated as quickly as possible. And then once they're cleared to play, they'll be able to return to the field to play, ready to go. It's interesting because I think historically a lot of us thought that concussions only came if you actually hit your head. But two players, you mentioned two players going up and colliding, they could bump shoulders, and a concussion can be sustained from something like that. Do you provide any extra training or tips or identification measures if there doesn't need to, if there doesn't be any, if there is not any apparent head collision? You know, it really depends on the impact and then the reaction post impact. You know, again, a shoulder charge is perfectly legal in soccer. Sometimes, you know, again, the older you get, the harder those charges are. And just because you have one, it doesn't mean that you have the concussion. The pulling the player off the field to play absolutely when you have, you know, what looks like a significant head injury. But you're absolutely correct. There are some times where players hit the ground and their head snaps, especially on, you know, if it's a hard surface, if it's, you know, it hasn't seen rain in a couple of weeks, or if it's a old turf field, you have to just, it doesn't necessarily mean that a player is concussed. It just means that the propensity of concussion might be higher than it was on, you know, a beautiful soft grass field and the player just kind of fell over. So, you know, we're getting to that point where the educational materials are out there. It's part of the training that people are more aware of, you know, what those injuries could look like, you know, what the post injury can look like with a player and they're acting according. So, again, I think we're seeing more kids getting pulled off for concussion protocol. But I think that's just because the awareness is at an all-time high. In addition to concussions, give me the top kind of two to three things that COVID has done to make you rethink or change the way your organization operates or the information and guidance that you provide to your members. You know, one, the first thing that comes to mind with COVID, everybody stayed home. And so I think that changed part of the pattern as you get more into the elite play of trying to keep games closer to your home base. You know, and just before COVID, I mean, teams, especially at the elite level, we're flying all over the country to play, you know, hey, let's go up to New England or let's go down to the southwest. But because of the pandemic, you know, we're seeing a shift in that regard. So from that standpoint, you know, that's there. There's also, I think the protocols, the medical protocols for COVID, you know, if you're if you're sick, you know, and if you've got a fever, you know, here's what has to happen today, even though it may not ultimately end up with a positive COVID test, there's still protocols in place that if you've been sick, let your coach know, and then you collectively come to the decision whether this day you might want to stay at home, or yep, I think you'll be clear to play. So it's just again, raise the awareness level of what the youth sport ecosystem really should be doing. Well, Skip, it's certainly been a pleasure. I'm curious. Have you hung up your cleats in your goalie gloves or are you still kicking around a ball? No, I've hung them up. I've come to the realization that, you know, as much as I probably could go out and play with some of my friends at my age, you know, when you when you got to a certain level and you played at a certain level, my body just can't move as fast. And I know that if I went and threw myself across the goal now, the next morning, I would, you know, not be getting out of bed quite as quick. So, you know, I'd rather play on the administrative side and just remember the fun days than actually go out there. Maybe you can transition to esports then, Skip. Yeah, I haven't done that yet, but maybe I should. Well, thanks for your insight into the US youth soccer, the state of youth soccer. Thanks to our viewers for joining us today on the sports playbook. In two weeks, our guest is Jen Nelson from the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee who will discuss coordinating sports travel for the Olympic and Paralympic Group. We will see you then. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and donate to us at ThinkTechHawaii.com. Mahalo.