Behind Every Great Student Athlete: What Your Teen Really Needs From You - and How to Help Them Grow Without Hovering, Pushing, or Holding Them Back (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781965692073)

Here's what nobody tells you: the same love that makes you show up - the 5 a.m. drives, the club fees, the lump in your throat at every whistle - is the exact thing that, aimed a few degrees wrong, gets between your kid and the game they love. Too much help becomes control. Too much investment becomes pressure. And the line between backing your athlete and smothering them is a lot thinner than any of us wants to admit.

Behind Every Great Student-Athlete is the book for the parent in the stands - written by one. Dobb Mayo has raised three athletes through club ball, high school, and the full recruiting gauntlet, and he's been every version of the over-involved sports parent along the way. This is the playbook he wishes he'd had: how to stay close without taking over, when to step in and when to step back, and how to protect the one thing that outlasts the final whistle - your relationship with your kid.

This book is for you if:

• Your whole mood rises and falls with a game you're not even playing.
• You've delivered the post-game breakdown your kid didn't ask for.
• You're quietly carrying the scholarship math - and the pressure that rides shotgun with it.
• You can't always tell when to fight for your kid and when to let them handle it themselves.
• You want your athlete to still love the sport long after you've stopped driving them to it.

You don't need to care less. You need to aim it better.

From the award-winning author of the Student-Athlete Series.

Book One of the Sideline Parent Playbook.

The game will end. What you build off the field doesn't have to.