PARENTS

By CRAIG HARVEY on observertoday.com

CHAUTAUQUA - Every March, thousands tune into CBS to watch the college basketball March Madness Tournament and usually see Clark Kellogg sitting in front of the camera back at the studio wearing his usual blue suit coat.

On Tuesday, the 6-foot-8 Kellogg stood at the podium of the Amphitheater at Chautauqua Institution not to talk about college basketball or who will be picked in tonight's National Basketball Association draft.

He was there to advocate for the younger generation and the young athletes as well as discuss the troubles they face today.

While Kellogg's name is synonymous with college basketball, some may not be aware he was a first-round draft pick (eighth overall) in the NBA draft in 1982. He spent five seasons in the NBA where he was a unanimous pick for the All-Rookie team. At the age of 26, Kellogg was forced to retire due to a knee injury. He finished his career averaging 18.9 points per game and 9.5 rebounds a game.

As Kellogg got ready to give his lecture, "The Young Athlete: A Different Perspective For Students and Parents," he pointed out he does not want to be considered a lecturer.

"I think of an expert as someone that is accomplished in a very important and significant field," he continued. "I would much rather consider myself as a guest speaker if that's ok with you all."

Though being a speaker isn't what he had hoped for in life, everything has worked out well for Kellogg and his wife and their three children.

"My wife would be amused if she knew folks here thought of me as a lecturer," he said. "My wife is always amazed when I get asked to speak somewhere. She finds it hard to believe that simply earning a living through playing basketball or talking about basketball, I have had these unique opportunities. She says, 'Clark, you have been unbelievably blessed. We've done really quite well together considering you've never really had a real job.' "

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Seattle Times staff reporter

Tom Farrey, investigative reporter and father of three, spent years examining kids' sports in America and has a two-word description: "runaway train."

"Youth sport is the most important institution of all our sports, because it is where the magic begins," he writes. "It is where we learn to love sports, picking up fitness habits and rooting interests that can last a lifetime. But it's an institution at a historic crossroads, one in which performance often matters more than participation does.

"It's less and less accessible to the late bloomer, the genetically ordinary, the economically disadvantaged, the child of a one-parent household, and the kid who needs exercise more than any other — the clinically obese."

Farrey, a former Seattle Times sports reporter, is now a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine, and an on-air journalist on ESPN's E:60 newsmagazine. His work has won two Emmys for outstanding sports journalism. This, his first book, is an important work in that it touches almost every American home with kids.

Some of the information in the book is startling: college athletes being paid for their sperm by women or couples who want athletic children; a "world championship" golf tournament for 6-year-olds; fourth-graders getting letters of interest from college basketball coaches; a national ranking for fourth-grade basketball players; 6-year-olds with personal trainers; and a New England couple that spends an estimated $100,000 a year on sports for its five kids who aren't yet in high school.

But this isn't a book that is out to bash people.

"I must say, I came to like nearly everyone I met," he writes. "The stereotype of the abusive parent pushing the reluctant kid usually doesn't apply. Most want their kids to be champions in life, not just sports. And when parents go to extremes in prepping their kid for athletic stardom, it never springs from a lack of love."

As a father — his infant son Kellen is on the cover — he knows parental impulses and dilemmas firsthand. He deftly weaves his kids, all under 12 years old, and their situations into his story.

He writes that he and his wife, Christine, reluctantly let their son Cole play "travel" (select team) soccer at age 8 because they were concerned that "if he doesn't catch the bullet train now, he might lose the chance to play soccer in high school. The other kids would be too tactically advanced."

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Parents who rant at kids' sporting events let ego get in the way, study says

MONDAY, July 7 (HealthDay News) -- People who are prone to road rage are also more likely to rant and rave while watching their children play sports, says a U.S. study.

Ego defensiveness, one of the triggers of road rage, also causes "sideline rage," said researcher Jay Goldstein, a kinesiology doctoral student at the University of Maryland School of Public Health.

He observed parents at youth soccer games in suburban Washington, D.C., and concluded that parents become angry when there's an apparent challenge to their ego.

"When they perceived something that happened during the game to be personally directed at them or their child, they got angry. That's consistent with findings on road rage," Goldstein said in a prepared statement.

He also found that control-oriented parents were far more likely to take something personally and explode than autonomy-oriented parents, who take greater responsibility for their own behavior.

"In general, control-oriented people are the kind who try to 'keep up with the Joneses.' They have a harder time controlling their reactions. They more quickly become one of 'those' parents than the parents who are able to separate their ego from their kids and events on the field," Goldstein said.

But even autonomy-controlled parents can get angry due to ego-defensiveness.

"While they're more able to control it, once they react to the psychological trigger, the train has already left the station," Goldstein said.

The study was published in the June issue of Applied Social Psychology.

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Title: ESPN Little League: Stands Agency: DCode, New York

ESPN Little League: Stands

Baseball is here, and what does that mean?

It means renewal. It means optimism. It means spitting. It means San Francisco is going to have a very bad six months. Title: ESPN Little League: Stands

That's because the Giants stink, substantially because their best hitter is a Giant no more, but an unsigned free agent, languishing at home with his all-time career home-run record and tattered reputation.

Yeah, Barry Bonds, the most prolific slugger ever, can't get a job because he's been denounced as a cheater. Very good power to all fields. Very bad role model.

Baseball's steroid scandal has robbed a generation of children of so many heroes. Bonds, Jose Canseco, Mark Maguire, Roger Clemens, Miguel Tejada -- tainted by drug allegations all -- have left a trail of disillusionment. Baseball may have long since ceased being the true national pastime, but it is still uniquely situated for role modeling. Every player's approach -- swing, delivery, batting stance -- is distinct, and therefore prime for imitation by the kids who see it again and again over 162 games.

And kids imitate what they observe. (That, by the way, explains the spitting. Long ago, players chewed tobacco and spit out the juice. This led to generations of Little Leaguers spitting, too. When they got to the big leagues, they kept on spitting. The actual tobacco chaws are long gone, but the spitting goes on, a vestigial habit in a never-ending cycle of expectoration.)

But we digress. So if a kid can't believe in Barry Bonds, then who? Why, Dad, of course. He's the instructor, the mentor, the No. 1 fan and the voice of encouragement in the stands.

Or (sigh) not. Because with spring comes another annual rite: the obnoxious Little League parent at a kids' game, behaving like a jackass. He screams at the umpire. He hectors the other team. He second-guesses the coach. He berates his own child. And he can't claim he was doped covertly.

He's a dope all by himself.