Episode 98: Dennis Bairos (Youth sports dad/Author)
🎙️ | Dennis Bairos knows the youth sports dad life well, raising 3 kids under the age of 10 while navigating the highs and lows of sports parenting.
🔹 Bairos built a career in fitness and admits he has an “all-in” personality that can quickly become obsessive when pursuing interests.
🔹 What started as a fun father-son golf hobby quickly accelerated after his son began beating him on the course at just 6½ years old.
🔹 Bairos openly shares how early success can become intoxicating for parents and how quickly the mindset can shift to, “How do we level this up?”
🔹 His son’s early love for golf snowballed into constant tournaments, medals, rankings, and bigger dreams before he had even reached puberty.
🔹 Bairos reflects on a major turning point at the Under Armour Nationals, when he realized his son looked more nervous and scared than excited to compete.
🔹 We discuss how physically early-developing kids can dominate youth sports temporarily, while late bloomers often struggle emotionally once others catch up or pass them.
🔹 Bairos shares the warning sign he ignored… a camp director cautioning him to “give him some time” instead of constantly searching for the next opportunity.
🔹 As expectations and pressure increased, golf slowly shifted from being a bonding activity into something that started to feel more like a job for his son.
🔹 Bairos admits there were multiple moments where he considered scaling things back, but his own drive at times kept pushing the process forward.
🔹 One of the hardest realizations for Bairos was understanding that his son may have continued playing mostly to avoid disappointing him.
🔹 Bairos discusses coming to peace with his son eventually walking away from golf and how the experience completely changed his perspective on youth sports parenting.
🔹 We also dive into Bairos’ book, “Wired Like This: Why Men Push Too Far and Still Say… I Got This,” which explores the hidden patterns many men — and youth sports dads — fail to recognize in themselves.
