The only real important thing in the world is that we developed these young men and women in such a way that they understand how to compete, and they understand how to play fair, and they understand that they are not going to be defined by the outcome of this game.
This is the Reform Sports Project, a podcast about restoring healthy balance and perspective in all areas of sports through education and advocacy.
Hi, this is Nick Bonacor from the Reform Sports Podcast. Today, I'm speaking with Adam Gold, longtime North Carolina sportscaster who just celebrated twenty five years on the radio. The host of The Adam Gold Show, Adam covers North Carolina's collegiate and professional teams, talking sports year round, a staple of sports radio for over two decades. Adam was named the twenty twenty two North Carolina Sportscaster of the Year and is an Emmy winner for a multi platform documentary on
the influence of money and college sports. Adam and I discuss why it's important to remember that players mimic both the good and bad behavior of their coaches, the media's role in professionalizing youth sports, and why as a coach he prioritizes players mental and emotional wellbeing over the technical aspects of the game.
I am really really excited. I have someone who I listened to daily. He's a long time sportscaster. He's a damn stud. He was named the twenty twenty two right, Adam, I gotta blow you out man, twenty twenty two North Carolina sportscaster of the Year. And you just celebrated twenty five years on the radio. So Adam gold Man, thanks for hopping on.
Adam gold The pleasure is mine. Nick. The word stud got me. It has been a long time since I have thought of myself in that manner, but thank you.
Listen. My job is to have We're gonna have a great interview. We're going to talk about some important things, and I got to stroke your ego a little bit. Maybe you'll come on. That's fun. But what made me want to and for those listening, wanted to reach out to Adam having come on. Obviously I listened to him
all the time. Covers you know, majority in the Triangle area in North Carolina and also nationally professional sports and collegiate sports, particularly here in North Carolina, and Adam, like
I've heard you talk about youth sports. I know you're a sports parent, and we recently just had like a piece of legislation in the state of North Carolina that's like up for review, and I want to start here with you because it's something that's near and dear right here in our state talking about, you know, making a law outlawing participation trophies in youth sports. What the hell's going on there?
I you know, for the life of me, somebody brought it to my attention and just said, have you seen this? And I went and read it and it's only like a two sentence bill, and all I could think of was, who hurt you that you would actually take the time? You know, it didn't take a lot of time to write it, because again it's a two sentence bill, But who hurt you that you would go and actually think that this is something necessary as the participation true the
anti participation trophy. People feel like this is a scourge upon our society from their perspective, at worst, it's a net zero. At the absolute most evil, it's a net zero. It's neither good nor bad. It is not a sign that our society is becoming somehow soft. I'll kid, you not. We talked about it on the radio for about thirty minutes one day. It was actually because we were and had finally given up waiting for the state senator who wrote it to respond to our calls and texts to
come on. I mean he gave us, he gave us his phone number and then ghosted us, which is fine. I don't I mean, that's fine, I don't care. But I hadn't talked about it because I wanted to talk about it with him first. But it had been like two days and he's not getting back to us, and they weren't even session, so I mean, he could have easily just said, hey, can't do it now, would love to do it in the future. He just was not interested in having a conversation, and that's fine. I don't
blame him. I wouldn't be either. So we talked about it on the radio and actually had somebody use the term that's why we're creating sissies today, and I thought, well, that's a thing that just happened. Cool. You know, it's funny you called me a sports parent, and I am. My son plays fairly competitive youth soccer. He's fourteen. But I also coached for a long time. I coached before I had kids. I coached when I lived in Baltimore. I coached baseball twelve thirteen fourteen year old kids in
a city league. I coached for three years there. I coached when I moved to Raleigh. I just loved doing it and I was I'm a baseball player first, as I know you are, so I wanted to coach little league baseball. So I had no kids. City Raleigh allowed me to coach a team, so I coached for a couple of years Citi Raleigh, and then I married a woman and she had already She already had a son,
which was awesome. He was at the age where he's starting to play sports, so I coached him in basketball, and coached him in baseball, coached him in soccer at the why level, which is really what this guy is talking about. It's that level of soccer, the rec league level of sports. So I've been in both sides of it.
I've been in the parent side of it, and I've been to the coach side of it, and I can actually see problems in both areas that need to be dealt with by not just smart people, but people who are aware of all of the elements in play.
That's a great segue because I know you've spent, as I mentioned, the majority of your career covering high level collegiate professional sports. What changes have you witnessed over the span of the twenty five years that you've been covering at those levels and you know, good, bad, are indifferent, and what if anything have you noticed has trickle down to youth sports?
Well, everything trickles down to youth sports because everything they see they do so And again, my son right now is playing at a pretty high level of classic soccer, so it's very competitive, but at the end of the day, it's still just youth sports, right And the roles for substitutions are different. It's not like you start and when you come off the field you're done. There's free substitutions,
so it's still kind of a hybrid. And I'm amazed at the way everybody celebrates a goal or you know, acts on the field, and they act exactly as what they see. Yeah, no, I don't have a problem when people celebrate goals. I don't have a problem when I'm watching the Premier League. If I'm watching Liverpool and Arsenal I don't have a problem when Gabrielle Jsus scores a goal and goes to the corner and shushes the crowd.
I have zero problem with that, and I really don't have a problem that much when I see players do it at my son's level. But all I'm saying is that they copy everything they see. At some point it becomes this is what is done, and again I'm generally okay with it. There are times when it seems excessive unnecessary, but that's what they see, and again I think that's basically harmless. There are certain gamesmanship that happen at the professional level that have no business at the youth level.
But again, we're imitating everything that we see, and I think in some ways that has trickled down to the adults that have something to do with youth sports, and they treat it as though this is the be this is the absolute most important thing in the world, and
the only real important thing in the world. Is that we develop these young men and women in such a way that they understand how to compete, and they understand how to play fair, and they understand that they are not going to be defined by the outcome of this.
Game as you were talking right there. I literally as you were saying, it trickles down to the adults in youth sports. I literally visualize, you know, watching loup panella, you know, going bananas. Yeah, you know. And then you say it doesn't happen all the time, But turn on social media. You see it doesn't matter the sport. But you'll see a baseball coach at a nine YOU game or a basketball you know, they Bobby Knight, the fifteen year old referee, they're freaking loop Penelli in the twelve
year old umpire at a seven U game. It's like, you know, that's a great point, Like it's not. And I interviewed Jim Calhoun and he talked about it. He's like, it's not the same. Like we're being coaches at the kyle and professional level are being compensated millions of dollars and high salaries. There's a lot more at stake. Volunteer coaches don't need to mimic the likes of the intensity of a final four game.
Yeah, it's I think it's funny. I'll just bring up a an anecdote from a youth game that my son played in, and this is actually this is about a year and a half ago, so he wasn't even playing at this level yet. NCFC has three tiers of football. They have REC, which is really just these kids aren't all that great or for whatever reason, they didn't have the time to devote for the extra practice every other week to play at a challenge level, so they're just
playing REC. They can get on the field, run around, kicking soccer ball, and that is purely just you know, fun. It wouldn't even matter if they didn't keep score. Sure, there's that, and then there's Challenge level, which is the middle point between REC and classic. The level kids they're not quite good enough to be high level competitive players. And for most of his time, jack my son Jack
was playing at that level. And we were playing a match and Jackson keeper and one of his best friends was one of our forwards, and a team we were playing against the coach was screaming not only at his players, but screaming at referees throughout the game, and it took about fifteen minutes twenty minutes for this to happen for him to get going, and then by the time we got to the second half, the other team was screaming
and yelling at referees. Teams will take on the personality of their coach, whoever is in charge of leading them, especially at a youth level. It is just an absolute guarantee that if the coach behaves poorly on the sideline, the players will behave poorly on the field. It is a direct I mean, it's immediate, and it is an absolute certainty. So predictably, that game got out of hand at the end and to the point where parents got involved. It was a very ugly scene and it was it
was shameful to even be a part of it. I know this is going to sound like, well, my son would never do anything like that. There's no question that our team said things to the other team in the course of the game, but it definitely began when the other team just went absolutely I could not believe we went to an eleven midway through the first half. I'm like,
why are we here? And then they ended up tying us in like the last sequence of the game, and so our emotions are our players emotions were pretty raw, and all of a sudden I realized that we have a bunch of kids arguing and there was nothing physical about it. And then parents got involved. And I'm like, what is going on here? But it really began because the other coaches decided that. And I think this is the way they act. This is just the way they coach.
And look, it's not that important to get a call. It just isn't that at that level, It's not that important to get a call. I get you know, when we're getting up into really competitive sports, I get it, but we weren't at that in challenge. But again, this is about the adults also mimicking what they see on television, so working the refs, screaming at the refs. I mean, I'm not gonna lie and say I have questioned a call or I have asked a question, what did you
see here? Why did you say that? Why did you do that? But you know at that point, these are these are not the best referees in the world. Pretty safe to say that many times these are sixteen year old boys or girls who are just you know, making an extra twenty five dollars on a Saturday, So why would we be giving them a hard time? Real quick about referees. And I actually wrote this down because I thought it was important. I think the most important and
not just how coaches and players deal with referees. We've told our players don't ar don't ever argue with a referee a You're not going to change their mind and be You're only going to make them mad at you. If you want to ask them a question in a respectful way. I have no problem with that because I think that is helpful to you and them. But the referees that we deal with on a regular basis, and I'll just use the sport of soccer because that's what
my son plays. Your primary job or basketball too. Actually it works out well. Your primary job as a referee is not to call the game. It's to protect the players. And we can say, well, you have to get the calls right. Sure, we'd like you to get the calls right, but again, these are not professional referees. They're going to get a lot of calls wrong, and they do, and you just deal with it. But games will get out of control physically unless the referees do a better job
of policing it. And that is the only thing that I have ever argued with a referee about as when I was a coach, is can we please make sure that nobody gets hurt here? Because I have seen games physical and I'm not even arguing that a foul. It could have been just two guys fouling each other.
Sure right.
I'm not saying that we deserve to call or they deserve to call. I'm just saying the way we are playing this match is way too physical, and it is your job to make sure that nobody gets hurt. That is the first job of the referee. So that's the only time I have ever yelled with a referee. And I actually he was running past me and I said, are we going to protect these kids from each.
Other or no?
And he looked at me. Up. I'm like, you think this is okay, because I don't. I don't. I don't care who you put call a foul of, but that has to stop. Uh So that was my only concern. The only time I've ever as a youth referee, as a youth coach in soccer, it's the only time I've ever yelled at a referee.
I think that's I mean, I want to say it's it's obvious, but I mean it's not. I mean, I love, you know, sports, I love the physicality. My sons are wrestlers. I mean, they played football. I love hockey. I love all you know, I love when things get a little physical, but there's a there's a right physical and there's a wrong.
And I think to your point, and I mean, maybe you got to have a little bit of feel, but you can kind of sense when things are getting a little chippy, you know, when you see a little a little extra, you know, And that's kind of I think what you're talking about.
I I mean, soccer is a contact sport. Basketball is a contact sport. They are they're contact sports. There's a lot of physicality. There's a lot of danger involved in playing these sports. Even at the competitive youth level, there is a ton of danger involved. I've seen kids, uh break bones. I saw a match that we played in. It was actually it was a challenging match. It wasn't
even a classic match. I saw collision on the on the field actually involving my son as a goalkeeper, where he came out to play a ball and he collided with turns out a friend to his uh. And it's just an honest, innocent collision. There's gonna it's gonna happen, and that kid suffered a separated shoulder and a broken classical There are going to be injuries that happened, but that didn't happen because the game got too physical. That was just a freak. But these are contact sports and uh,
they just have to be. You just have to monitor it and not let it get out of hand, because again that that's the first job of youth officials. It's to make sure the kids don't get hurt as best they can.
You know, I've heard you talking about this a lot, not just you, but I mean it's a nationwide topic right now. It's completely changed the landscape of recruiting and collegiate sports, the professionalization even you call professionalization of youth sports for crying out loud, forget about collegiate I think it's been professional for you know, as long as we
can bring back. But as a radio host journalist, what role does the media play in terms of exposure or more specifically, in perhaps fueling the exposure and hype around you, you know, young athletes who are still developing not just as athletes, but maturing as individual people as well, particularly
when it comes to things like nil. How can the media not like, for instance, I give you an example you might see in baseball and particular now there was a big rule change here recently where collegiate baseball used. I mean, you see kids in seventh and eighth grade announcing their commitments, and you have some quessanies out there that are literally doing like live Instagram. I mean, these are I don't want to name them, but they's some of the biggest gorillas in the room in travel baseball.
Having seventh and eighth graders announced on Instagram their commitment to accoueage. Well, theoretically, there's nothing binding with that commitment. You don't sign a national letter and until you're a senior. There's so many kids who commit and then that they don't develop and that scholarship goes away. But yet you have people in the media fueling the Listen, there's only going to be how many Lebron James are going to be being called the Chosen One at seventeen years old?
So how does that help the overall development and their identity? And how does the media do you think play the role? And maybe the good and the bad of that.
I think it all comes down to. In my profession, I think there's not a lot of honest, like thoughtful perspective on things like this. The way what you described to me is more of a parental issue than anything else. As a parent. You know, let's just pretend that my fourteen year old is good enough right now to be college is if you want to play here, you've got a spot. Well, let's just assume that that's true. Am I going to encourage him to go on his Instagram
account and commit or have some sort of a show. No, man, Like, I know too much about life to know that. You know, you know what could really change between fourteen and seventeen years old. Everything your body could change. You could stop growing, you could grow too much, you could grow too much in the wrong direction. There's a thousand things that could happen to kids that I would never I would never encourage them to put themselves out there like that because
it just I think it's a bad look. And I think those types of things are about parenting more than they are about anything else. And I'm not going to teach anybody how to parent. You do whatever it is you want, but I don't. I would not be interested
in having my son do that. But like all this other stuff, in all I mean, it's what they see, you know, the high school seniors and with the hat show, and you know what those kids have achieved at that level, if they want to have a little fun with it, and if it's good for their high school and all of that, and in some respects it's a life changing thing. Yeah, Okay, do I like it? Not? Really? Do I hate it to the point where I'm gonna complain about it? Nah,
they gonna do it. But I do think that there's a lot of people who do what I do for a living that they're looking at it from all right, we have to celebrate this because this kid is either front by area or coming to school in my area. So you're going to play it up. So we're kind of feeding the beast. If we didn't want it, we wouldn't give it the attention that they are seeking. But I do think that we look at these things. I literally could care less. I don't follow recruiting at any
level in any sport. I do not know who any of let's just say, dukes in becoming basketball players are. If they were sitting in this room with me, I wouldn't know who they are. I will figure them out when they get on campus in the fall. And I will say that about any sport. I just don't know. Every time you go up a level, whether it's from youth sports to middle school, middle school to high school, high school to college, the cone is getting narrower and narrower.
It's a big code at the bottom. It's an inverse code. It's not like an ice cream cone. The further you get up, the more narrow it gets. And only the best team going up. It's going to get harder and harder and harder. And enjoy your youth sports while you can. But man, the older you are as you keep playing, the more serious it becomes, the more serious the people become. I don't know. I'm not a fan of all that, but I think it's a parent Pasian.
When you return, Adam and I discuss why playing sports at the youth level is an achievement that should be celebrated. Where we left off, Adam and I were about to talk about why sports can be a life changing experience for kids when coaches prioritized well being over results.
Just judging by the fact that you said you wouldn't know who the uh you know, the top duke recruit would be if they were in your office right now, I'm guessing you wouldn't know who the top ten you nationally ranked kids are in the core. Let's say there are nationally ranks.
Why why are there that?
Exactly? That's my point.
Why do we have that?
Exactly? It's a money grab. That's why.
Yes, somebody gets paid to rank ten year olds in a sport. I'll never, ever, ever in my life understand why that's a healthy thing. It just look one of the things that I've always believed in. And this goes back to my time coaching, and it was I stopped coaching last year. I coached my son at a challenge soccer team because I had the opportunity to do it, and last year was the last year I'm ever going to coach. I believe that the kids are so much
smarter than the adults to them credit. And just to go back to the dufus in the state legislature who wrote the bill outlawing participation trophies for the lowest level of sports, basically because those are the only people who give out participation trophies like city leagues. And by the way, playing is a level of achievement. Making every practice, making every game is a level of achieve especially.
When seven years old. For crying out loud exactly.
So the players, the young boys and girls who play, they understand how good they are. They understand how good the players on their own team are. They get the hierarchy of who's good, who's not, who should play more, or who should play. They get all of that. We don't have to protect them from any of that because they get it. I mean, I can't even put a figure on it, but I'll just say they are five
hundred percent more intelligent than adults give them credit. And I think we would be much better to stop trying to protect them from that and just watch, just watch, and if a problem comes up, then we can address it. But I think you create more problems by trying to prevent a problem that doesn't really exist. I've coached I don't know how many years, it's got to be a dozen years total in Baltimore City or Raleigh and then youth Sucker, not all as the head coach. But I've
coached probably for ten twelve years. I've had zero Actually, no, I shouldn't say zero. I've had one parent problem one and it's because I was coaching Baseball City and after our first practice, I had all players and all of their parents around me, and I was saying, I have one ground rule, and this ground rule is not for the players in front of me. The ground rule is only for the parents. Do not coach your kids. Don't please, I'm begging you. Don't coach your kids while we are
at practice or while we are at a game. If they're doing what I have asked them to do right, then let them do that. Do not tell them to do something, because who may be telling them to do something that I have asked not to do or I am not telling them to do. I want you, as parents, I'm taking all the pressure off you. Come watch your son play, enjoy it, and be there for them if
they have questions. I've told every single player if there is a problem with anything I am doing or singing to you, please tell me you're not going to hurt my feelings. I want to know if you are okay. I want all of you to have fun. I want all of you to be happy. And I have one parent who didn't like the fact that I told turn not to coach her kid and she had two boys on my team, and I said, if that is a problem for you, and you would like to have them,
move to another team. I will call the league and will get them switched. I have no problem with that. Yeah, I didn't realize at the time that one of her sons would ultimately be my best player and the other son. And they were not twins, but they were born in the same year, so they played at the same level. One was like in eighth grade, the other was in seventh grade.
Perish twins or something like that.
Right, the eighth grader was my best player. The seventh grader was my smartest player. And I still I still have a relationship with that kid who was in the seventh grade then today. I still communicate with him. This is twenty years ago.
That's awesome.
So he is married, he's got kids. I still talk with him today. Needless to say, they didn't leave the team. They told their mother coach is right, you just need to sit and watch. She did not like me from that moment, but her boys. She allowed her boys to play. I never had a problem with her, but she also really didn't say another word to me for the balance of that season. But the parents need to stop being coaches on the field. I see it every game. I
gold every single game. You just have to shut up let the coaches coach. If the coaches are not good, they're not supposed to be good. They're not paid, they're just parents for the most part. But we're doing the best we can. I don't know a soccer ball. I don't know if a soccer ball is blown up or stuffed, but I know kids. I know. My job was to manage the emotions of what at that point, depending on the age, twelve, thirteen or fourteen year old kids. I
wasn't coaching them in soccer, right. I have an older son who played. He actually did the technical coaching. It was my job just to make sure everybody was in a good headspace. That was what I did. I think that's my best skill as a coach, to recognize when kids needed, uh, just kind of a mental break, or when kids need to be told, look, you're you can't do this. You're hurting them, You're hurting your teammates. Uh, they all want to be they all want to be
good teammates. That's what I found is that the if you have, if you have good players, they generally all want to have all want to be good teammates. I think I rambled. I'm not even sure it made me sense there.
I love it, especially the teammate part. But I want to finish with this. I mean, considering your longtime involvement in sports, what positives and negatives do you see in the youth sports experience today? And what do you want for your son or your kids in their youth sports experience.
Uh, that's that is a great, great question. Problem I see in youth sports is unfortunately, like everything else in life, it's become a money grab. For instance, and this is not Germane too NCFCU because I see it in every single goal club that pops up, and it gets back to a parental problem. If a kid is not good enough to play classic level soccer, somehow the parents feel like, how can we we're as good as that player. You might be. The evaluation process is not foolproof, but there's
not spots for everybody. But what those what the clubs will do is that they will create another level of team and every As a matter of fact, in the last year, two clubs that didn't have a third or a fourth team created one because there was a demand by parents who wanted to get their kids into classic soccer. Essentially, they're glorified challenge teams where they're just not good enough
and that's it's okay, not everybody is good enough. What we're doing is we're kind of inflating their sense of well, how good we are and don't I don't think that's fair to to the kids. But it's really about how much money can we get out of parents. Youth sports are too expensive to begin with, and then we get into that. So that's the problem I have with youth sports. It's ultimately about making money. I want for my son whatever he wants to get out of it, So it's
not about what I want. Look, what I would love is for him to be good enough to get some scholarship money to go to school. But if he wants to take soccer beyond high school, then that's what I want for him. I want him to be able to do that. I want him to I mean, at one point he was like, I'm going right to Arsenal's academy. Of course you are, But you know, I just want him to be able to get everything he can out of it, and I'm going to help him do that
to a point. I'm not going to baby him about it. But here, this is work that needs to be done, We'll get evaluated. They'll tell you what you need to improve on, and then it's up to you. Mean, part of it is up to them. How hard are they willing to work? And that has to be told. It can't do the work for them. So I mean, I was a very competitive youth athlete. I was a very good baseball player, but I wasn't willing to do what was necessary to continue beyond high school. And that was
my own fault. I do regret that, but okay, that's fine. I got through it. I'll help him understand what he needs to do through the help of the people who really know what he needs to do to get better. The positive of it of youth sports is when the adults handle it properly, it is a life changing experience for the kids. And if the experience is positive, it
does not matter what the end game is. It doesn't matter if these kids go on to play high school or college or they just develop a love for what they do and they play adult rec league later on in life. As long as the kids have a positive experience, that's the only thing that matters. And I will tell you this my most gratifying thing. I've one quick thing to say about coaches, And then I'm gonna tell you
my most gratifying thing as a coach. Coaches have to make sure at the youth level to have it not be about you. There are a lot of coaches that want to win, and let me tell you, I have never gotten enjoyment out of winning. The enjoyment I get is watching the kids. And I'm an emotional person to
begin with. But we won a soccer tournament, our last hurrah as a club last May, and it was the first time in three years because of the pandemic that we had traveled as a team in stayed in a hotel and the kids got to play in the pool when they weren't playing soccer, because that's what it's all about.
Is there an indoor pool.
Nobody cares about anything else. And I couldn't keep it together emotionally. Had nothing to do with the fact that we want and had only to do with the fact that they had a blast. They accomplished something that they tried to do, and they did it as a complete team. Everybody played, everybody contributed. I pointed out something that you did positively in the game to help us win. It got very emotional for me because I saw what it
meant for them. I don't care whether my team wins or loses a game as a youth coach, that's not the job. The job is to make the experience positive for kids. And if you do that right, I mean, you might win by accident, Yeah right, I mean that's fine, and I'd rather win than lose, because they'd rather win
than lose. But my interaction the relationships I still have with every parent other than that woman back in the day, that that I've encountered and I've developed friendships with, and I still see a lot of the players because you know my son, you know, you come across each other down the road at different levels. It's just it's it's heartwarming to know that the experience was good and that the kids grew of it, and you can see when you see kids get better or you see kids really
enjoy each other and being teammates and developing friendships. It's the greatest thing in the world because you feel like you're actually having a positive impact on who they are. I don't miss the time that it took to be a coach. It's not just the practices and the matches and all of that, but it's the headspace that you use in preparing for practices and matches and the decompressing. I don't miss that time. I'm glad I have that back because I don't have enough time in the day
to do everything I want to do anyway. But I absolutely miss being around, you know, the thirteen of the fourteen year old kids and watching them grow as players and kids and being around and seeing them interact. I mean that it was That's what I got out of it. It had nothing to do with win. We had plenty of years where we didn't win and I still had a good time doing it. So it's really about that.
But you got to make it positive for them. The kids are smart enough to understand and if there's a participation trophy at the end, if they participated, that's an achievement. That's an accomplishment, and that state centator can go stuff it.
Adam freaking Gold, I love listening to you. Where can they connect with you?
I am available on Twitter at a gold fan if they want to hit me up there. I don't do the other forms of social media, but you can also reach me on You can send me an email a goldfanat me dot com.
I love it man. Well, I appreciate your time. I can't wait to listen to you later. Big fan for a long long time, and I can't thank enough for coming on and sharing.
Nick. Thank you very much. I appreciate that a lot. Thanks for reaching out, it was an honor.
That's Adam Gold, longtime sportscaster and former youth sports coach.
Thanks for listening to the Reform Sports Project podcast. Dominick Bonacor and Our goal is to restore a healthy balance and perspective in all areas of sports through education and advocacy. For updates, please follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, or check out our website by searching for the Reform Sports Project