The Youth Sports Parenting Tribe

Tyree Dillingham has built a career breaking barriers and elevating leaders, athletes, and organizations across corporate, political, and nonprofit sectors. A performance and accountability coach with a clientele of global leaders, athletes, and celebrities, she brings a rare combination of financial expertise and real-world experience to every conversation.

Her entry into the world of athlete finance came through a long-standing friendship with NFL Hall of Famer Marshall Faulk, who brought her into the NIL space and partnered with her to co-create the nation’s first financial literacy curriculum written for athletes, by athletes. Most recently, she presented at...

Welcome to the 50th Monday Reset for Sports Parents — a short reflection inside The Youth Sports Parenting Tribe.

Each Monday Reset brings you one word, one idea, and one mindset to help you start the week calm, clear, and connected.

This week’s word is Anger.

Not the loud kind. The quiet kind, too.

A dad told me recently: “I never yell. But after certain games I go completely cold. Silent drive home, walls up, nothing.” Then he said: “I think that might be worse.”

He’s right.

We talk abou...

Michael Ockrim has spent over a decade helping kids and families cut through the noise of health and fitness — no hype, no shortcuts, just what actually works. As founder of Mighty Oak Athletic in Westmont, Illinois, he coaches young athletes in strength and conditioning starting as early as age six, holding certifications from USA Weightlifting and USA Taekwondo alongside his CSCS credential.

He is also the author of Death Resistant, 13 Pounds in 30 Days, and the Mighty Oak Athletic Nutrition coaching program for student athletes — all built around his simple but powerful framework: Recovery, Movement, Nutrition. And beyond the...

Welcome to the 49th Monday Reset for Sports Parents — a short reflection inside The Youth Sports Parenting Tribe.

Each Monday Reset brings you one word, one idea, and one mindset to help you start the week calm, clear, and connected.

This week’s word is Investment.

A mom told me recently she spent over $8,000 last year on her son’s soccer. She said: “I’m not proud of this, but some of that money came up in arguments when he had a bad game. I heard myself say it, and I hated myself for it.”<...

Tara Shuler's story starts on the field. A former competitive athlete, she carried the discipline and pressure-tested mindset of sport into the world of sales and communication — becoming one of the sharpest conversation strategists in her field. That journey led her to found ConvoControl™ and author seven books, from Questions Close Deals through to The Fifth Conversation.

Today she is a keynote speaker, corporate trainer, and the coach behind ConvoDojo LIVE — where her philosophy never changes: pressure plus repetition is what turns knowing into doing. A principle any athlete or sports parent will immediately recognize.

In thi...

Welcome to the 48th Monday Reset for Sports Parents — a short reflection inside The Youth Sports Parenting Tribe.

Each Monday Reset brings you one word, one idea, and one mindset to help you start the week calm, clear, and connected.

This week's word is Quit.

One of the most loaded words in youth sports.

When a child says "I don't want to do this anymore," most of us push back. We negotiate, we remind them of commitments, we tell them they'll regret it. And sometimes, that's exactly right.

But th...

Kara Kalin has spent over twenty years working at the intersection of trauma, resilience, and athletic performance. As a Registered Clinical Counsellor, Certified EMDR Therapist, and Mental Performance Consultant, she brings a rare combination of clinical depth and coaching experience — having served as a coach for the Canadian National Team and worked with athletes at every level of sport.

She is also the founder of Shift Change, a mental health movement dedicated to transforming how individuals and organisations recover from stress and trauma, and the creator of The Power of the Drive Home — a program built on a si...

Welcome to the 47th Monday Reset for Sports Parents — a short reflection inside The Youth Sports Parenting Tribe.

Each Monday Reset brings you one word, one idea, and one mindset to help you start the week calm, clear, and connected.

This week's word is Belonging.

A talented teenager quit her club team last spring. When her mom asked why, she said: "I just never felt like I was really part of it." She didn't quit because it was too hard. She quit because she felt alone inside of it.

We spend a...

Stephen Bienko's story starts on the field. A three-sport high school star, he went on to play football at the Air Force Academy and compete as a decathlete at Villanova University — where he held the school record in the discus. After college, he became a New Jersey State Trooper before pivoting into entrepreneurship, building and scaling multiple businesses across franchising, marketing, and sports performance.

Today, Stephen is the co-founder and CEO of The 42U — a student-athlete development and personal branding company dedicated to helping young athletes build an identity and a brand that carries them well beyond thei...

Welcome to the 46th Monday Reset for Sports Parents — a short reflection inside The Youth Sports Parenting Tribe.

Each Monday Reset brings you one word, one idea, and one mindset to help you start the week calm, clear, and connected.

This week's word is Winning.

We say we don't care about it. But we do — and that's okay. Wanting to win is human. The problem isn't the desire. It's when winning becomes the only language we speak at home, and second place starts to feel like failure.

Kids raised in a winn...

Amit Chitre has spent decades working with Fortune 500 executives, young professionals, and senior leaders in television news, public relations, crisis management, and leadership training. Then, as a father sitting through countless introductory sessions at the start of youth sports seasons, he noticed something: nobody was teaching young athletes the skills that actually matter beyond the scoreboard.

That observation became The Other Playbook — a practical guide that helps student-athletes at every level understand themselves as a brand, define their values, and build an identity rooted in character rather than performance alone. It's the conversation coaches and parents have be...

Welcome to the 45th Monday Reset for Sports Parents — a short reflection inside The Youth Sports Parenting Tribe.

Each Monday Reset brings you one word, one idea, and one mindset to help you start the week calm, clear, and connected.

This week's word is Identity.

Not who they are as athletes. Who they are as people.

Somewhere in the intensity of youth sports, the sport stops being something they do and becomes something they are. It feels like confidence and purpose — and for a while, it is. But an identity built enti...

Bill Taylor spent over 20 years as a championship-level collegiate head coach before a deeply challenging conflict in his career revealed a gap he hadn't expected: he didn't have the skills to manage it. That honest reckoning led him to pursue a Master's degree in Conflict Management — and ultimately to found Sports Conflict Lab, dedicated to bringing one of the most overlooked tools in sports to coaches, administrators, athletes, and families.

His book, Managing Sports Conflict: Five Tools to Master Conflict, breaks down the value and danger of conflict in sport, its unique impact on team culture, and th...

Welcome to the 44th Monday Reset for Sports Parents — a short reflection inside The Youth Sports Parenting Tribe.

Each Monday Reset brings you one word, one idea, and one mindset to help you start the week calm, clear, and connected.

This week's word is Presence.

Not just showing up. Actually being there.

We confuse attendance with presence. We drive the long hours, sit through early practices, stand in the bleachers for every game — and still, our kids can feel completely alone out there. Because while our body is in the stands, our...

Phoebe Tran is one of Vietnam's most recognised faces in education media. As Country Manager of Crimson Education Vietnam — a role she has held for over nine years — she leads a team dedicated to transforming the education landscape and creating opportunities for thousands of students and families across the country.

Beyond Crimson, Phoebe is a television host, reporter, and editor at Vietnam Television, covering culture, education, and sustainability, and is best known as the host of IELTS Face-Off on VTV7. She is also the founder of The 3's, a voice services and coaching business offering narration, hosting, and...

Welcome to the 43rd Monday Reset for Sports Parents — a short reflection inside The Youth Sports Parenting Tribe.

Each Monday Reset brings you one word, one idea, and one mindset to help you start the week calm, clear, and connected.

This week's word is Tension.

Not the kind that announces itself. The kind that builds slowly.

It creeps into households after a practice that landed wrong or a conversation that didn't go well. Everyone manages everyone else's mood. No one says anything. And your child carries it onto the field — in thei...

Dr. Douglas Casa's story starts in 1985, when he was a 16-year-old athlete who collapsed mid-race from a life-threatening exertional heat stroke. The quick action of an athletic trainer saved his life — and that moment became his life's mission.

Today, Dr. Casa is one of the most respected voices in sports safety in the world. As CEO of the Korey Stringer Institute at UConn — named after the Minnesota Vikings player who died from heat stroke during training camp — he has dedicated his career to ensuring that what happened to him, and to Korey Stringer, never happens to another athlet...

Welcome to the 42nd Monday Reset for Sports Parents — a short reflection inside The Youth Sports Parenting Tribe.

Each Monday Reset brings you one word, one idea, and one mindset to help you start the week calm, clear, and connected.

This week's word is Silence.

Not the uncomfortable kind. The intentional one.

We fill every gap — practice drives, walks to the field, and post-game rides — with advice, corrections, and breakdowns. We mean well, but all that noise robs our kids of the chance to hear themselves think.

Real growth doesn...

Gayatree Dipchan is a registered British Psychological Society psychologist, NLP coach, hypnotherapist, and behavioral consultant with over two decades of experience working across NGOs, international organizations, and private consultancy — in the Caribbean, the UK, Norway, and the United States. Her work spans trauma recovery, leadership development, and behavioral change, with a particular focus on how our early experiences shape the way we respond to pressure, relationships, and challenge throughout life.

She is also co-author of How to Survive and Thrive Vol. 2, alongside Reebok founder Joe Foster and a collection of global leaders — each sharing the lessons that have...

Welcome to the 41st Monday Reset for Sports Parents — a short reflection inside The Youth Sports Parenting Tribe.

Each Monday Reset brings you one word, one idea, and one mindset to help you start the week calm, clear, and connected.

This week's word is Consistency.

Not theirs. Yours.

We expect it from our athletes — show up, do the work, perform on the hard days. But there's another consistency that rarely gets talked about: who you are as a parent, game to game, win to loss.

Are you the same pers...

Dr. Kelli Uitenham is a nationally certified medical speech-language pathologist, Certified Brain Injury Specialist, and Assistant Clinical Professor at Northeastern University. As founder of Brain Talk Foundation, she has dedicated her career to raising awareness about concussions, TBI, and CTE in athletes — bringing that conversation into schools, athletic programs, and families nationwide.

We talk a lot about performance in youth sports. We don't talk nearly enough about what repeated head impacts can do to a developing brain. Dr. Kelli is here to change that.

In this episode, she breaks down what concussions really do to a...

Welcome to the 40th Monday Reset for Sports Parents — a short reflection inside The Youth Sports Parenting Tribe.

Each Monday Reset brings you one word, one idea, and one mindset to help you start the week calm, clear, and connected.

This week's word is Sacrifice.

Yours. And whether they know about it.

You wake up early, miss dinners, and spend money you sometimes don’t have on gear, travel, and camps. You do it without thinking twice because they love this sport, and you love them.

But when sacrifice beco...

Dr. Indira Couch — or "Indi," as she likes to be called — is a globally recognised expert in leadership, engagement, and culture coaching with over 30 years of experience helping individuals and organizations achieve peak performance. As CEO of ActionEDGE TT and a certified ActionCOACH, she has built a reputation for simplifying complex challenges and unlocking the potential in the people she works with.

Her core belief is simple but powerful: too many people settle for mediocrity when they are capable of so much more. That philosophy doesn't stop at the boardroom — it carries directly into how we show up as...

Welcome to the 39th Monday Reset for Sports Parents — a short reflection inside The Youth Sports Parenting Tribe.

Each Monday Reset brings you one word, one idea, and one mindset to help you start the week calm, clear, and connected.

This week's word is Words.

They last longer than any game ever will.

Your child is collecting words right now, building their inner voice sentence by sentence. The sentences spoken by the people they love most become the voice they hear when things get hard.

High-performing athletes often share on...

Miro Gladovic's journey in sport is anything but ordinary. Born and raised in Melbourne, Australia, he began as a professional soccer goalkeeper before his playing career ended prematurely — leading him to reinvent himself in a way few have. In 1997 he became Australia's first accredited FIFA Players' Agent, and at the time the youngest in the world, going on to broker international transfer deals worth tens of millions of dollars and represent players at clubs like FC Barcelona and Bayern Munich.

Since then, Miro has moved into coaching, working within the youth systems of clubs including Tampa Bay Un...

Welcome to the 38th Monday Reset for Sports Parents — a short reflection inside The Youth Sports Parenting Tribe.

Each Monday Reset brings you one word, one idea, and one mindset to help you start the week calm, clear, and connected.

This week's word is Fear.

Not the kind that stops your child. The kind that drives you.

There's a fear that lives underneath youth sports parenting that we don't always name — but it shapes everything. And most of the time, it has nothing to do with the game in front of us.<...

Parveen Smith left me with three things I haven't stopped thinking about.

She's a neuroscience coach, bestselling author, and award-winning entrepreneur — and one of her non-negotiables is family. Not as a balance strategy, but as a pillar. We live in a world that calls absence dedication. Our kids don't measure our love in achievements. They measure it in moments.

Her method wasn't built in a classroom. It came from seven years of not being able to walk, talk, eat, or breathe on her own. What she built from that darkness worked for others too. Our ha...

Dr. Parveen Smith is a multi-award-winning wellness practitioner, global speaker, and author of multiple books including Transformative Path: 7 Steps to Personal Growth and Empowerment. As founder of Soul2Soul Wellbeing, she has spent over two decades helping individuals, families, and leaders turn adversity into resilience and resilience into purpose.

Her message is deeply personal. In 2005, Parveen faced a life-altering health crisis that left her unable to walk, talk, or breathe without difficulty. She rebuilt her life from the ground up — and that experience became the foundation of everything she now teaches.

In this episode, Parveen sh...

Welcome to the 37th Monday Reset for Sports Parents — a short reflection inside The Youth Sports Parenting Tribe.

Each Monday Reset brings you one word, one idea, and one mindset to help you start the week calm, clear, and connected.

This week's word is Growth.

Are you measuring the right thing?

We track goals, minutes, rankings, scouts. But the growth that actually matters doesn't show up on any scoreboard — the kid who resets after a bad play instead of falling apart, the one who now asks the coach questions, the athlete who...

Lee Schwartz is the author of Raising Giants, a memoir about raising his two sons, Geoff and Mitch, both of whom reached the NFL. What started as a father's journey through the world of competitive football became something deeper — a reckoning with the real risks of brain trauma, CTE, and the long-term consequences of repeated head impacts in contact sports.

Lee doesn't shy away from the hard questions. In this episode, he shares what he wish he had known earlier, how families can make more informed decisions about contact sports, and how to balance supporting your child's pa...

Welcome to the 36th Monday Reset for Sports Parents — a short reflection inside The Youth Sports Parenting Tribe.

Each Monday Reset brings you one word, one idea, and one mindset to help you start the week calm, clear, and connected.

This week's word is Ritual.

Not your child's. Yours.

Every athlete has pregame routines — a signal to the body and mind that it's time. But parents have rituals too, and most of us have never examined them. What does your drive to the game sound like? What happens in your body the...

A few weeks ago I was at Queens, watching the semifinals in person. And Fran Cerúndolo gave me three things I haven't stopped thinking about.

He arrived with no momentum, no narrative, no pressure. Nobody was writing about him as a contender on grass. And maybe that was exactly the point — when you carry no expectations, you carry no weight. How often do we load our kids with our hopes and timelines before they even step on the court?

Between points, Fran and his coach Nico Massú had intense exchanges in real time. Not tact...

Coach Sheri Gazitt is a certified coach and founder of Teen Wise, dedicated to helping teen girls and their parents navigate the complexities of adolescence with more confidence and less chaos. With a background in counseling and psychology, Sheri specializes in friendship dynamics, inner confidence, stress management, and emotional resilience — and brings the perspective of a mom who gets it firsthand.

In youth sports, girls don't just face physical and competitive pressure — they face social pressure, friendship drama, and an inner critic that can be louder than any coach. In this episode, Sheri breaks down what's really goin...

Welcome to the 35th Monday Reset for Sports Parents — a short reflection inside The Youth Sports Parenting Tribe.

Each Monday Reset brings you one word, one idea, and one mindset to help you start the week calm, clear, and connected.

This week's word is Enough.

Not as a consolation. As a foundation.

One of the quietest pressures in youth sports is the feeling that love and approval are tied to performance. Kids rarely say it out loud, but many of them feel it — that a bad game means something about who they...

No guest this week. Just Netflix, two hours, and Rafa Nadal being completely honest.

Rafa was the King of Clay. Grass was Roger Federer's territory. Then he decided to change — not his game, his relationship with the surface. Three years later he was Wimbledon champion. That's not talent. That's a choice.

His body was breaking down from the very beginning. What he built wasn't the ability to ignore the pain — it was the ability to separate the signal from the story. Match by match, crisis after crisis.

And the one that stayed with me...

Three years ago, Hernan launched The Youth Sports Parenting Tribe with a simple mission — to create a space where parents could feel seen, supported, and better equipped to raise resilient, happy athletes.

What followed was something he didn't fully anticipate: a global community of families navigating the beautiful chaos of youth sports together.

In this solo episode, Hernan reflects on the journey — where it started, what it has become, and where it's going.

This one is a thank you — and an invitation to keep going.

If today's conversation resonated, I will send o...

Welcome to the 34th Monday Reset for Sports Parents — a short reflection inside The Youth Sports Parenting Tribe.

Each Monday Reset brings you one word, one idea, and one mindset to help you start the week calm, clear, and connected.

This week's word is Voice.

In youth sports, feelings pile up fast. And most kids don't have the words for them yet — they need us to create the space before they can find them.

Voice is the tool that turns emotion into understanding. When a child learns to express what they feel...

The World Cup just started in the United States. And the lesson this week comes from Messi — not at his peak, but at 39.

For years he was the best player in the world and the most questioned man in Argentina. The narrative was clear: he can't do it for his country. He kept showing up anyway. Qatar 2022, Copa América 2024 — two titles in two years after decades of near misses. That's not luck. That's what happens when someone refuses to let the story end before it's finished.

And now he's back. Playing on tired legs again...

Mayra Clay and Marc Krusin are a husband-and-wife team who have spent over 30 years in design and more than 15 years teaching meditation through Ishaya's Ascension (Bright Path). As parents themselves, they have woven mindfulness into the fabric of family life — not as a technique to perform, but as a way of being.

Mayra is also a children's book author, bringing these ideas to life in ways that speak directly to young people. Together, they help families create calmer, more conscious homes where kids can feel grounded even when the pressure of competition is high.

In th...

Welcome to the 33rd Monday Reset for Sports Parents — a short reflection inside The Youth Sports Parenting Tribe.

Each Monday Reset brings you one word, one idea, and one mindset to help you start the week calm, clear, and connected.

This week's word is Doubt.

Not your child's doubt. Yours.

Am I pushing too hard or not enough? Is this the right sport, the right coach, the right decision? Are they happy? Are they thriving? Am I doing this right?

Doubt is part of the job. It shows up in...