Brea Schmidt grew up in Oil City, Pennsylvania, shooting basketball in her driveway for hours. Her dad was a basketball referee with fifty years under his belt. Her older sister was a standout player. And her grandfather — a man everyone in town knew as Ducky — was an experienced basketball coach who had been around the game long enough that he could have offered instruction, analysis, or critique at any moment.

Todd Merkow sits down with Joel Votaw — Arizona Soccer Association State Referee Administrator, veteran soccer referee with experience at every level of the game, sports parent of three, and a man who has spent the last 14 years watching youth sports from the one vantage point most parents never consider: the middle of the field. Joel grew up in Southern California as a multi-sport kid — swimming, water polo, soccer, skateboarding, the full SoCal menu — before life got busy, he got married young, and sports faded out. He came back to refereeing when his oldest son was 12, partly to make some extra money, mostly to find a way to spend more time around the game his family had fallen into. He never left.

Todd Merkow sits down with Skye Eddy — former Division I goalkeeper at UMass and George Mason (Final Four), briefly professional in Italy, All-American, US Soccer coach educator, founder of SoccerParenting.com and The Sideline Project, and mother of two — for a conversation that Todd calls the one he wishes he'd had when his daughters were still playing. Skye is a Title IX baby who grew up as the game was exploding, went on to coach at the national team programming level, and then discovered, when her daughter Callie started playing in a paid club environment, that being a former professional player and an active high-level coach did not make her a good sports parent. That gap — between knowing the game and knowing how to show up for your child — is what SoccerParenting.com was built to close.