Hey Reader, get your Blockbuster card and some popcorn!
There was something magical about a Friday night trip to Blockbuster.
You would walk in, fully convinced you knew exactly what movie or game you wanted. You knew the aisle. You knew the cover. You could picture it in your hands. But when you got there, the case was gone. Empty. Someone else snagged it. And just like that, the night changed.
So you wandered.
You picked up something else. Maybe argued with a sibling. Maybe tried to convince your parents that Mortal Kombat was totally fine and not “too violent.” You negotiated. You compromised. You adapted.
But you still walked out with something, and maybe even discovered a new favorite in the process.
Today, you can stream whatever you want instantly. Hungry? Tap an app. Can’t find a movie on one platform? Just check the other six. Everything is built for convenience and speed.
And it got me thinking…
Are we accidentally removing the very thing that built so many of our skills growing up? That low-level disappointment, that friction of not getting what you wanted the second you wanted it? It mattered. It shaped us.
In youth sports today, we complain about athletes lacking resilience or decision-making or communication skills, but take a step back. We created a system that removed the chances to develop them.
Tryouts? You fill out a form, pay a fee, and refresh your email. No conversation. No feedback. Just an offer or silence.
Practice? It is structured, scheduled, controlled. No more pickup games, no more sorting things out on a back field with six cones and a bag of half-deflated balls.
Games? Played to win, not to experiment. Coaches feel the pressure. Parents feel the pressure. Kids feel all of it.
We want adaptable athletes, but we give them no reason to adapt.
We want confident athletes, but we strip away the space for trial and error.
We want leaders, but we micromanage every part of their experience.
Blockbuster, in its weird way, taught us something. It taught us that sometimes you have to pivot. That plans do not always go as expected. That you might have to choose a movie you have never heard of and give it a shot. Sometimes it was terrible. Sometimes it became your favorite.
So how do we fix it?
We start by bringing a little bit of friction back. Not chaos. Not cruelty. Just the kind of challenge that builds capability instead of just comfort. That means letting things unfold without rushing in to smooth every rough edge.
We can create small moments of adaptation, like letting kids figure out their own warm-ups, or solve problems during practice without immediate correction. We can surprise them with a new rule mid-drill and see what happens. Or, instead of correcting every mistake in real time, we give them a beat to think, adjust, and try again.
We can resist the urge to pre-pack, pre-plan, and pre-solve. Instead of jumping in with solutions, we ask: “What do you think the next step should be?” That one shift, giving them the space to think, starts to rebuild confidence from the inside out.
We can even revisit how we handle tryouts, feedback, and evaluations. If we want athletes who can handle adversity, we need to give them opportunities to face it in safe, supportive ways. We do not need to remove emotion from the process. We need to humanize it.
And most of all, we need to model it. When we do not know the answer, when plans fall apart, when we mess up, we show how to regroup instead of retreat. That is where the real lessons live.
This is not about going back to the good old days. It is about moving forward with intention. Because if we keep eliminating every obstacle, we might just eliminate every opportunity to grow.
The other night, our usual pizza spot was closed. No app. No easy fix. So we grabbed what we could find, some random ingredients, and threw together our own version. It wasn’t great. But it wasn’t bad either. And we laughed. We improvised. We got creative.
It was, in a small and silly way, a workout for the same muscles we want our athletes to build.
So maybe this week, let something go sideways. Skip the fix. Watch what happens. It might not be perfect, but it might be the moment that shapes something even better.
Make sure you are kind and rewind before you return, and see you next week!