When Loving the Game Starts to Hurt
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Episode Summary
Callista Elmore knows what it feels like to love a sport enough to build your life around it.
Growing up in Tucson, softball became more than something she played. It became part of who she was. That journey eventually took her to the University of Arizona, where she played catcher for legendary coach Mike Candrea and became a two-time NCAA Division I softball champion.
But Callista's story isn't simply about championships.
It's about what can happen when an athlete loves the game so deeply that performance begins to affect how she sees herself.
"Loving the game hard meant that it hurt hard."
Callista describes the difficult emotional side of being a highly competitive athlete—the pressure she put on herself, the fear of failing and the gradual connection between performance and personal worth.
Loving the game hard meant that it hurt hard.
At one point, that internal equation became painfully simple: if she performed well, she felt good about herself. If she didn't, something much bigger felt wrong.
"I have to perform in order to feel like I'm worth something."
That distinction—between supporting an athlete's performance and supporting the athlete herself—runs throughout the conversation.
I have to perform in order to feel like I'm worth something.
One of the episode's must-hear stories comes from Callista's college career and a matchup with legendary pitcher Cat Osterman. After struggling with the mental side of performance, Callista began working with a sports-performance coach and using visualization to prepare differently.
What happened when she stepped into the box against Osterman became a powerful lesson in what confidence can feel like when an athlete's mind is prepared alongside her body. Callista remembers entering the moment with an unfamiliar sense of calm, peace and confidence.
The story also opens a larger conversation about an important distinction in athlete well-being. Sports-performance coaching helped Callista prepare to perform, but looking back, she recognizes that performance support and broader mental-health support are not necessarily the same thing.
Callista also reflects on what she learned playing for Candrea and being part of an elite college program—an environment where understanding the athlete as a person could matter just as much as understanding the player.
Parenthood has changed her perspective again.
Today, watching her own children play sports has forced Callista to think differently about specialization, private training, year-round schedules and the increasingly common fear that taking time away will cause a young athlete to fall behind.
Sometimes athletes need enough distance from their sport to discover whether they actually miss it.
"They need to miss the game."
That doesn't mean parents should disengage. It means learning when to support, when to intervene and when to leave enough space for the experience to belong to the child.
That distinction becomes especially important after competition.
They need to miss the game.
For Callista, the car ride home should give the athlete the floor. They may want to talk. They may be frustrated. They may need to cry. Or they may not want to say anything at all. Before a parent begins analyzing or teaching, the child needs a safe place to process what just happened.
It's one of the central lessons connecting Callista the athlete with Callista the parent.
Young athletes need opportunities to compete, struggle, fail, recover and grow. But they also need adults capable of separating what happened in the game from who that child is.
The goal isn't to make sports painless.
It's to create an environment in which young athletes can pursue something they love without believing that their value rises and falls with their performance.
Love the game. Protect the kid.
Top 5 Takeaways
LOVE OF THE GAME DOESN'T PROTECT AN ATHLETE FROM THE HARD PARTS.
Deep passion can make sports incredibly rewarding—and make setbacks hurt more. Parents should pay attention not only to whether their child loves the sport, but to how that love is affecting confidence, identity and emotional well-being.
PERFORMANCE AND SELF-WORTH HAVE TO REMAIN SEPARATE.
When athletes begin to believe they must perform well to feel worthy, the consequences reach far beyond the scoreboard. Parents can reinforce that the athlete they love after a great game is exactly the same person they love after a terrible one.
ATHLETES NEED SPACE TO MISS THEIR SPORT.
More isn't automatically better. Year-round schedules, specialization and constant training can eliminate the distance that allows young athletes to rediscover their own desire to play.
GIVE THE EXPERIENCE BACK TO THE ATHLETE.
Parents have an important role, but ownership matters. As athletes grow, they need increasing responsibility for their goals, decisions, successes and failures. Support doesn't require controlling every part of the journey.
MAKE THE CAR A SAFE PLACE TO LAND.
The ride home doesn't need to become a coaching session or immediate performance review. After the emotional intensity of competition, give your athlete the floor and allow them to decide what they need from you in that moment.
Take This With You
The Parent Playbook
Every Be Valiant guest leaves sports parents with something practical they can take into their family's sports journey. This is Callista Elmore's contribution to the Valiant Parenting Playbook on PlayFearless.org.
Give your athlete the floor.
After the game, resist the urge to immediately analyze what happened.
Give your athlete the floor.
They may want to talk. They may need to vent or cry. They may be frustrated. Or they may simply want silence.
The parent's job in that moment isn't necessarily to solve, coach or teach. It's to provide a safe place for the athlete to process the experience and let the conversation develop on their terms.
The lesson from Callista's experience as both an elite athlete and a sports parent is simple: make the car a safe place to land.
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