“Fine, Go Then!”

In youth travel sports, you can always bet on one thing…Change.  Fields change, bodies change, and as much as it stinks sometimes, players & coaches change.  Recently, I witnessed the result of change and it reminded me how the business and travel sports worlds are alike.  One might wonder as to how those two areas have commonalities, well here you go.  In business, employees change jobs, get promoted and sometimes terminated from their positions.  The same holds true for players in travel sports.  The longer they play, the more they’ll experience change.

How people handle change varies tremendously.  One thing I firmly believe, both in sports and business, is there are two types of people.  Those who want the best for their employees & players and genuinely wish them success in the future with their new endeavor AND those who feel slighted for not being the company or team selected for the future and take it as a personal attack when they aren’t the team/company selected.  I’ve been privy to both scenarios as a parent as well as in my professional career.  You know when a coach or boss is excited to see a former player or employee, whether they are wearing the same uniform or not.  You also know when a former coach/boss takes a departure personally and they might as well walk through the handshake line with their thumb on their nose blowing raspberries, humming “Nanna Nanna Boo Boo.”  It is unfortunate, but it’s the way the world operates.  You can only control so much, so let the naysayers’ wallow in their pity party while the rest of us take the high road and do amazing things!