Brooke De Lench: HOME TEAM ADVANTAGE: The Critical Role of Mothers in Youth Sports (HarperCollins 2006)

Question: Who is the intended audience?
Answer: As many professionals state; “It should be required reading for parents, pediatricians, coaches and staff.”

Q: What is the book about?
A: HOME TEAM ADVANTAGE provides constructive, practical and forward-thinking advice to help mothers not only understand the current youth sports culture but the critical role they can play in balancing the hard-wired competitive instincts of many of the fathers and men running youth sports with a nurturing and cooperative spirit that is second-nature to women. The book arms mothers with the tools and the confidence they need to make their children’s sports experience and that of the entire family, safer, saner, less stressful and more balanced by restoring mothers to their natural role as nurturers and guardians of children at play, a role that was lost when youth sports became big business, ultra-organized and dominated by individuals focused only on competition and feeding their own egos.

Q: Why are you the best person to write this book?
A: Packed with stories from my own experiences deep in the youth sports trenches, as a mother, coach, and Editor-In-Chief of MomsTeam, the leading source of information on the Internet about youth sports parenting, and drawing on the latest research from sports safety experts, child psychologists, and social scientists, Home Team Advantage provides the deep wisdom and seasoned advice of a veteran sports mother and youth sports expert.

Q: How is this book different from other books on this topic?
A: I am a youth sports expert unlike all of the youth sports parenting books which are written by successful male ex-professional athletes or by journalists peering into the culture of youth sports. I am able to write about exclusion from sports from the heart and Home Team Advantage is the only youth sports book to tackle physical, sexual and emotional abuse and catastrophic sports injury and death.

Q: Why were you compelled to write a book with tough messages such as urging women to become involved at the coaching and administration levels of youth sports?
A: I am convinced that the solution to the youth sports crisis is not to ask parents to sign a code of conduct but to challenge the status quo in a new and different way: By creating a balance in youth sports between the values and attitudes of men and women and in the process restoring mothers to their natural role as guardians of children at play.