In Episode 4 of Be Valiant, Todd Merkow sits down with one of his oldest friends in youth sports — Mike Strati, a former collegiate and semi-professional soccer player at the University of New Mexico and the New Mexico Chili's of the USL, a coach with nearly 25 years of experience at the youth, high school, and collegiate levels, and the founder of Strategic Alliance, a company that uses personality analytics to help businesses build better teams. Todd opens the episode by admitting something he has said privately for years: he envied Mike throughout the youth sports journey. This conversation is about why.

Mike's playing career gave him something most sports parents never have — a clear-eyed view of how rare professional success actually is. He can count on two hands the number of people he grew up playing with who made a living from the sport. That perspective shaped everything about how he approached his three children's athletic lives. His household philosophy was simple and consistent: youth sports is a great learning opportunity, not a financial strategy. The goal was never a scholarship or a contract. The goal was that his kids would love it.

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I spent a lot of time thinking I was going to play for Manchester United. And I can count on two hands the people I know who actually made a living at it. So I looked at youth sports and said — if they get a scholarship, they get a free education. Beyond that, that's the most I can hope for.

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The conversation moves quickly into one of the most practical frameworks in the entire Be Valiant catalog: Mike's post-game car ride routine. Rather than analyzing what went wrong or critiquing the coach's decisions, Mike would ask his kids two questions on the way home — what did you do well today, and what do you think you could improve? Then he would ask the same questions about the team, and finally about the coach. The result was an open, ongoing dialogue that kept his kids thinking critically about their own performance without ever feeling judged by their father. Todd admits he did not arrive at that approach nearly as early, and asks Mike directly: how did you get there? Mike's answer is disarmingly honest — he realized that if he complained about the coach, his daughter still had to go back to practice the next day. All he would accomplish was planting negativity in a place she had to return to.

Mike coached his oldest daughter after watching her have bad experiences under other coaches, and he is candid about how difficult it was to shift from being a parent on the sideline to being responsible for fifteen or sixteen girls whose parents all had their own expectations. He describes being tougher on his own kids than he should have been — a pattern he has heard from other parent-coaches — and talks about the moment his wife drew the line when he was coaching his son: you either change how you coach him, or he's going to a different team. He took the personality analytics survey he uses professionally, applied it to his son, and realized he had been coaching him to be someone he wasn't. The second time around, coaching his son's senior year after the head coach unexpectedly quit, he coached him the right way — and his son would tell you it was one of the best experiences of his athletic life.

The episode goes deep on multi-sport development, which Mike calls one of the most important and most ignored principles in youth sports. He played baseball, tennis, basketball, and soccer growing up, and credits each sport with skills that made him better in the others. He coached at a highly successful high school program and actively encouraged his players to play other sports, run cross country, and even participate in school plays — a decision that got one of his players benched for an entire tournament weekend by another coach. Mike's response to that story is one of the most quotable moments in the episode: there were going to be another 500 soccer games in her career. There was one school play.

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She had been practicing for a school play for six months. She made the decision to stay and do the play. She got benched the whole weekend. And I'm thinking — really? You're going to punish someone because they're committing to something else? There were going to be another 500 soccer games in her career. There was one school play.

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On finding the right coach and club, Mike offers a framework that Todd calls the investment advisor test. If you were handing a financial advisor fifty thousand dollars — which is roughly what most families spend on youth sports over a child's career — you would ask about their philosophy, their risk tolerance, their track record, and how they communicate. Why would you not do the same for the person responsible for your child's development? Mike's non-negotiables are concrete: watch a practice before you commit, talk to other parents, ask the coach directly how they handle conflicts and missed games, and count the ratio of positive to negative feedback. Three credits to one debit is the floor. If a coach can't clear that bar, keep looking.

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Think about it this way — your kid's youth sports career is a fifty-thousand-dollar investment, or more. If you were giving an investment advisor fifty grand, wouldn't you test different advisors? Ask about their philosophy, their risk tolerance, their return on investment? Why would you not do that with your own kid?

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The boys-versus-girls coaching section is one of the most honest in the episode. Mike had never coached girls before taking over his daughter's team, and a parent handed him a book about the difference. The core insight: boys compete to win or dominate; girls compete because they love the team and their role in it. That doesn't mean girls don't want to win — it means the pathway to getting there is different, and coaches who treat girls like boys are leaving performance and joy on the table.

Todd closes the episode the way he closes every conversation that moves him — by telling Mike that the reason he's sitting in that chair is not just his experience, but the fact that he got it right. Three kids, three sports, three different journeys, and all three of them ended up wanting to coach. That, Mike says, is the outcome he was always hoping for.