RAISING A BALLER
Raise the Athlete. Protect the Person
Youth sports can build confidence, discipline, resilience, and lifelong memories. They can also bring pressure, comparison, injuries, exhaustion, and difficult decisions. Raising a Baller grew from our family’s experience navigating those realities while trying to protect the child behind the athlete.
We wrote Raising a Baller because youth sports ask families to make important decisions long before they feel fully prepared to make them. Parents are expected to navigate pressure, injuries, competition, coaching, confidence, identity, opportunity, and the growing business around youth sports, often while trying to protect the child behind the athlete.
This book grew from our own family’s experience and the questions we kept asking along the way. How do we support ambition without allowing sports to define a child’s worth? How do we help athletes handle setbacks, pressure, and change? How do we keep the bigger picture in view when the next game can feel like everything?
Join the team of families as we all go through this experience raising a baller together – Ashley and Ragen Schultz
TEAM MOMS BASEBALL BINGO
TEAMMOMS BASEBALL – New Paramount Series Streaming September 24
Kim Kardashian and the producers of Love Island USA are taking on the bleachers. Paramount+’s new reality series Team Moms: Baseball follows the families at an elite youth baseball academy in Scottsdale, where the drama in the stands can top anything on the field. All eight episodes drop Thursday, September 24.
Play along with our free Team Moms bingo cards. Someone says “D1”? Wine enters the chat? Mark it..
BEYOND THE SCOREBOARD
Sports shape more than performance
Raising a Baller is for parents who want to help their athletes compete, grow, and pursue opportunities while becoming grounded, resilient people beyond the game.
Wins, losses, rankings, statistics, and recruiting decisions can feel urgent in the moment. Their deeper influence often appears later, in how athletes respond to pressure, recover from disappointment, communicate, manage expectations, and understand who they are. The habits they develop around preparation, accountability, leadership, confidence, and resilience can follow them long after the final season ends. That is why the conversation cannot focus only on performance. Parents also have to consider the person developing behind the athlete.
Whole-Athlete Development
Support physical growth, emotional well-being, identity, confidence, character, and a healthy relationship with competition.
Better Parent Decisions
Navigate pressure, expectations, injuries, opportunities, technology, and changing family dynamics.
Lessons That Last
Help athletes carry resilience, leadership, accountability, and self-awareness beyond sports.
START HERE
Read Parent Guidance
Raising an athlete involves more than practices, games, and performance. Explore the book, practical guidance for sports parents, and conversations about the experiences shaping young athletes today.
01, THE BOOK
Raising an Athlete in Today’s World
Explore the pressure, identity, injuries, family decisions, opportunities, and life lessons that exist behind the highlights.
02, FROM THE SIDELINES
Guidance for today’s sports parents
Read timely perspectives, research, rule changes, practical ideas, and honest conversations about the realities families face.
03, PARENT COMMUNITY
Join the bigger conversation
Read new stories, practical guidance, parent discussions, and thoughtful perspectives on raising athletes in today’s sports environment.
FROM THE SIDELINES
Thoughtful guidance for today’s sports parents
New stories, research, and practical perspective for parents navigating youth sports today.
THE RAISING A BALLER COMMUNITY
Parenting sports is easier when we talk honestly about it
Join parents who are navigating the same pressure, decisions, setbacks, opportunities, and everyday realities. Get new stories, practical tools, parent conversations, and updates from Raising a Baller.
Share what your family is learning, question what no longer serves athletes, and find perspective from parents who understand the journey.