A dad sat across from me in my office a few years back and told me he was pulling his son from the team.
Not because of playing time. Not because of a conflict with another coach. He’d decided baseball was taking too many hours away from what actually mattered, and he wanted his son focused on grades and college applications instead.
The Story
I didn’t have a study to hand him. I didn’t have a stat sheet for retention, connection, or well-being. All I had was what I’d watched happen to kids over a decade of doing this: the ones who showed up every day, who learned to take a coach’s correction without melting down, who found out what it felt like to be needed by a group of guys who weren’t going anywhere. I told him his son wasn’t just learning how to turn a double play. He was learning how to be depended on. How to fail in front of people and keep showing up anyway. How to sit in a dugout next to a kid he had nothing in common with and call him a brother by June.
The dad wasn’t convinced that day. He gave it one more semester, mostly to keep the peace at home. His son ended up staying for his junior and senior year. Last I heard, he still talks about that team more than he talks about his SAT score.
I’ve had some version of that conversation more times than I can count, and I’d guess every coach reading this has too. We make the case for what this actually builds, and most of the time we do it on conviction alone, because nobody has handed us the numbers to back it up.
Turns Out, We Weren’t Just Telling Ourselves a Story
The NFHS just released its National Parent Benchmark Study (reported by Davis Whitfield for the NFHS Report), a national survey of 2,500 parents and guardians of current high school athletes and activity participants. This is the largest, most direct look we’ve gotten at how parents actually experience education-based athletics, and it says, in numbers, what most of us have only ever been able to say in conviction.
93% rated their child’s experience as good or excellent. 96% said they’d encourage their child to participate again. 93% said participation helped their kid develop teamwork and communication skills. Compared to before their child started, 82% reported a stronger connection to school, 75% reported greater motivation to do well in the classroom, and 80% reported improved overall well-being.
Those aren’t soft numbers. That’s 2,500 families, independently, describing the same outcome we’ve been building toward all along.
It Was Never About the Trophy
Here’s the part of the study that stopped me. When parents were asked to name the greatest benefit of participation, they didn’t say wins. They didn’t say championships, all-region honors, or a highlight video. They said teamwork and relationships.
Parents described belonging. Friendships. Trusted adults. Structure. Confidence. Accountability. Motivation. Connection to school. They talked about their kids finding a place where they were known.
That’s the whole thing I’ve been trying to say for years, just spoken back to me by 2,500 people who weren’t in the room when I said it. The scoreboard was never the point. The only scoreboard that actually matters, the one built on legacy, character, and relational equity, was showing up in a national survey, and nobody had to explain it to the parents. They already knew.
The Part That Can’t Be Replicated
This is the piece I think every coach and athletic director needs in their back pocket. 68% of parents said their child’s experience in school-based athletics or activities provides something that cannot easily be replaced outside of school. 91% supported the environment, culture, and structure of the education-based model specifically, not sports participation in general, but the version that happens inside a school.
The reason is right there in the data. Education-based athletics come wrapped in academic standing, attendance expectations, adult guidance, and student conduct standards. That structure is the whole point, not a bureaucratic inconvenience layered on top of the fun part. A travel team can teach a kid to hit a curveball. It can’t tie that instruction to a report card, a teacher relationship, or four years of being known by the same hallway of adults. More than 90% of parents in this study said their child feels safe and welcomed in the school environment, and that it supports their growth, not just their results.
That’s the part I’d tell every athletic director sitting across a table from a budget committee. This isn’t an extracurricular expense. It’s one of the few structures left in a kid’s life that ties performance, accountability, and belonging to the same building where he’s supposed to be learning everything else.
The Application
If you’re a head coach, put these five numbers in front of your parent group at your next preseason meeting: 93 % rate the experience good or excellent, 93% say it builds teamwork and communication, 82% report a stronger connection to school, 68% say it’s irreplaceable, and 93% support continued investment. Parents walking in skeptical about the time commitment need to hear that the outcome they actually want (a kid who’s connected, motivated, and well) is exactly what this study says they’re most likely to get.
If you’re an athletic director or administrator, keep this study on hand for budget season. When athletics gets framed as the first line item to cut, this isn’t a feelings argument anymore. It’s 2,500 families telling you the structure you’re funding is doing exactly what the classroom can’t do alone.
And if you’re the guy having the conversation I had in my office that day, you don’t have to lead with conviction alone anymore. You’ve got the numbers standing behind you now. Say what you believe, and then hand them the study.
The Close
I still think about that dad sometimes, and about how many more of those conversations are happening in offices and kitchens right now, coaches and parents both guessing at something they couldn’t fully prove yet. We were never wrong about what this builds. We just didn’t have 2,500 families willing to say it back to us in one place. Now we do.
Greater Together
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