FWD | Trailer

Welcome to Forward: Better Athletes. Better People.

Youth sports have changed—but the guidance for parents hasn’t.

Hosted by publisher Kevin T. Mulhearn and veteran coach Joe Clemente, Forward explores the conversations every sports parent needs to hear. Drawing from Joe’s book, The Long Ride Home: How to Help Your Kids Shine in Youth Sports (Without Driving Them Crazy), each episode tackles the challenges of raising young athletes while protecting what matters most: your relationship with your child.

Whether you’re a parent, coach, or athlete, you’ll find practical advice, honest stories, and thoughtful conversations designed to help families navigate the highs and lows of youth sports.

Join us each week as we talk with coaches, parents, athletes, and experts about building confidence, handling pressure, communicating better, and creating an environment where kids can thrive—not just as athletes, but as people.

Better Athletes. Better People.

Transcript

Kevin T. Mulhearn 0:02

Welcome to Forward. I am Kevin Mulhearn, publisher at Hard Knock Press. Before we get started, I'd like to introduce myself and explain who we are and what we're about to do. This is Forward, a podcast designed to build better athletes and most importantly, better people which is originally derived from our first book, which was just published called "The Long Ride Home: How to Help Your Kids Shine in Youth Sports (Without Driving Them Crazy)" by Joe Clemente, my co-host. Joe and I have been talking for months to roll out his book to the public, and we're both baseball nuts. Joe was a coach for 25 years. I used to coach Little League when my kid was young. I've been a baseball parent, for more than 10 years and I'm still very engaged in my son's college baseball career. But this book is not for just baseball players or baseball parents or coaches. It is a book for parents of any athlete playing a sport. And the reason why Joe and I decided to do this podcast is that we realized that there really is a void as far as any kind of guidelines, guidebook, playbook, any kind of reasonable instructions as to how parents need to act, and perhaps more importantly, not act in order to best maximize their kids' performances, and their kids' enjoyment of the sports they play. We realized that a lot of parents are getting things horribly wrong as far as how they treat their kids and how they talk to their kids after various games. So that was the concept behind Joe's book, "The Long Ride Home," which Hard Knock Press is proud to publish. And it's also gonna be the concept that underlines this podcast as we move forward on a weekly basis. Better athletes, better people. And by far the most important part of that equation is the latter, better people. How do we as parents raise our kids in this very complicated and complex world to be better people, to be the best person that he or she can be? It's quite a challenge, and the challenge is not made any easier by the burning cauldron of youth sports that exist today. It's really hard, and parents go in there all with the best intentions, all trying to help their kids, all thinking that they can be the next Mutt Mantle, or Derrick Jeter, or prominent parent who had a prominent role in making their kid, a very successful athlete. The parents are all trying to help their kids be the best version of themselves, the best athlete, and most importantly, the best person. But a lot of us really don't know how to do this, and I can tell you as a parent who made a ton of mistakes, and as we go forward with this podcast, you'll hear about these mistakes in great detail but I made a lot of mistakes, as a dad, and it wasn't out of any lack of love. I love my child a great deal, and I was supportive as best I could be. But at the same time, I was lost because I didn't have anybody to tell me, "Okay, Kevin, this is what you need to do. This is what you don't need to do, and this is what you really need to avoid." "The Long Ride Home" by Joe Clemente fills in those gaps. It teaches us how to act and how to foster the important and unique bond between parent and child. It's an essential book. Every person who I've given this book to look at tells me the same thing: "I wish I had this book 10 years ago, 15 years ago, when my kids first started playing sports on a competitive basis. This book would've really helped me be a more supportive parent." This book is an essential part of the repertoire for a parent going forward into that deep, dark, cold abyss called youth sports. In the weeks ahead, we’ll be talking with coaches, parents, athletes, and others who have spent their lives around youth sports. We hope you’ll enjoy the conversations, and we’re looking forward to having you with us. Thank you.