Greg Stewart spent the first 25 years of his life trying to prove to people that he wasn't disabled despite being born without half of his left arm. Once he changed his mindset, he found the sport of shot put and won two Paralympic gold medals.

Greg is a three-time world champion in para standing volleyball, a U Sports Defensive player of the Year in able bodied basketball, and he stands seven foot two. But the most interesting thing about him isn't his resume. It's the path he had to walk to get there. A path that ran through able-bodied sport, university, rock bottom, two lost jobs, and an eventual breakthrough: accepting himself exactly as he was.

In this conversation, Greg talks about what sport means when you spend years doing it for the wrong reasons, why failure is one of the most important things we can teach young athletes, and what the word inclusion actually means when you strip away the box-ticking. He shares the three values he brings to young athletes — trust, ownership and integrity — and makes a compelling case that the real problem in youth sports right now isn't the coaches or the kids. It's the parents... who he also believes are the solution.

Greg is 40 years old, newly married, a brand new father of a three-month-old daughter, and studying for his master's in counseling. He has more to say about sport, identity and mental health than almost anyone we've had on this show.

🎙️ Better Sports Parents: helping parents positively contribute to the youth sports environment. Subscribe for new episodes every week.

Chapters

00:00 Opening

01:36 Introducing Greg Stewart

03:46 How Greg Got Into Sport

05:03 "You Can't Coach Height" — Using What You've Got

05:38 Starting in Grassroots: Soccer, Lacrosse and Everything Else

07:15 What His Parents Got Right: Encouragement Without Force

08:41 Did Sport Feel Like a Place He Belonged?

11:43 25 Years Trying to Prove He Wasn't Disabled

13:09 Leaning Into Able-Bodied Sport: What He Was Really Chasing

15:02 Having Success Without Having Joy

16:51 Chasing External Validation for 25 Years

17:16 Rock Bottom: Almost Failing Out, Fired From Two Jobs

19:36 How He Found Joy in Sport Again

20:26 Failure Is Important

22:26 How He Discovered Shot Put

25:24 Physical Health and Mental Health Are the Same Thing

28:12 Finding Flow State in Sport

30:07 What Greg Tells Young Athletes: Trust, Ownership and Integrity3

3:15 Are Parents Owning the Right Things?

35:19 Your Discomfort Is Leading the Way: A Message for Parents

38:17 Mental Health Support in Sport: What's Changed and What Hasn't

39:23 Why We Need to Let Kids Fail 41:20 Do All the Sports

43:18 Youth Sport Has Become Too Commercialized

44:13 The Coaches Who Shaped Greg

46:04 Ownership and Trust: Who Really Runs the Team?

48:38 What Inclusion Actually Means

52:03 Where Does Healthy Competition Belong in Youth Sport?

55:56 The Objective vs. The Purpose: A Crucial Distinction

57:42 Greg's Biggest Issue in Youth Sport Today: Parent Involvement

01:00:04 How to Bring Parents Along: Lead by Vulnerability

01:02:32 The Listeners We Really Need to Reach

01:03:30 The Mindfulete

Resources

Greg Stewart

The Mindfulete

Jumpstart

Jay Triano has spent almost all of his 67 years in sport. He's a former captain of Canada's Men's Basketball Team, the first Canadian head coach in NBA history with the Toronto Raptors, and a current assistant with the Dallas Mavericks. He's also the son of a high school basketball coach and the father of three kids who all played youth sports, which means he's seen every side of the equation.

In this conversation, Jay draws direct lines between how he was raised in sport in Niagara Falls and the NBA coach he became. He talks about playing basketball, volleyball, baseball and track until he was nearly 18, why Steve Nash never acted like the best player in the room despite being exactly that, and what a parking lot practice with no hoops taught him about fundamentals that individual skill sessions never could.

Jay is direct about what he sees wrong in youth sports today: parent-driven environments that prioritize exposure over development, social media that skips all the steps, and a growing culture of selfish play filtering down from the professional game. And he's equally clear about the fix: fun, teamwork, open communication, and coaches who understand that they're coaching twelve kids, not just yours.

🎙️ Better Sports Parents: helping parents positively contribute to the youth sports environment. Subscribe for new episodes every week.

Chapters

00:00 Opening

01:35 Introducing Jay Triano

03:18 A Life in Sport: 67 Years and Still Going

04:16 How Jay's Dad Shaped His Love of the Game

05:37 Multi-Sport Until 17: Basketball, Baseball, Volleyball & Track

06:44 Unstructured Play: Street Hockey and Stats in the Front Yard

07:20 How Multi-Sport Cross-Training Made Jay a Better Athlete

08:21 Raising His Own Kids: Let Them Love What They Love

10:00 What Youth Sport Looked Like When His Kids Were Young

11:32 What Jay Looked for in a Youth Coach

12:31 Youth Sport Today: Parent-Driven and Overspecialized

13:55 NIL, Agents at Young Ages & Money Changing the Game

14:17 Higher Skills, Lower IQ

15:47 Too Many Games, Not Enough Practice

18:25 Multi-Sport and Learning to Fill a Role

19:08 Steve Nash: The Best Player Who Never Acted Like It

22:14 The European Model: Growing Together

24:15 Canadian Basketball's Rise and the Affordability Problem

26:14 If You're Good Enough, You Will Be Found

28:04 What Jay Wanted His Kids to Get Out of Sport

29:51 Learning From Bad Coaches Too

29:58 The Coaches Who Shaped Jay

33:32 The Biggest Mistake Jay Made as a Young Coach

36:11 Number One Advice for New Coaches: Make It Fun

38:19 How to Recognize and Reward Every Role on a Team

40:16 Phil Jackson's Rule: Acknowledge the Screen, Not Just the Bucket

44:54 What Jay's Dad Said After the Games

47:15 The Volunteer Coach and Referee Crisis

48:07 No Secrets: Jay's Rule on Parent Communication

52:10 He Wasn't Going to Cut a Kid in Grade Seven

53:51 What a Good Youth Environment Actually Looks Like

58:23 Developing Canadian Coaches: A Missed Opportunity

01:00:14 A Simple Thank You Can Keep a Coach Coming Back

01:02:16 The Parking Lot Practice That Built His Fundamentals

01:04:06 Social Media Is Skipping All the Steps

01:06:01 Are We Over-Parenting? Kids Need Difficult Situations

01:07:38 Learning to Be Coached Hard

01:09:06 Jay's Biggest Issue in Youth Sports Today

Resources

Jay Triano

⚠️ This episode deals with serious topics including mental health, self-harm, and abuse. If you or someone you know needs support, contact Kids Help Phone (1-800-668-6868) or the Suicide Crisis Helpline (988).

Brock McGillis became the first openly gay player to have played professional hockey, but the path to that moment nearly cost him everything. Depression. Daily drinking. Self-harm. A sport culture that told him, in a thousand small ways every day, that he couldn't be himself.

Today Brock runs the Shift Makers tour, visiting over 250 hockey teams across Canada in a single season. What he finds in those rooms is alarming: over a thousand players disclosing thoughts of self-harm or suicide, thousands more sharing mental health struggles, and more than 50 who had never told anyone they'd been sexually assaulted — until they told him.

In this conversation, Brock talks about why sport culture continues to silence young people, what true inclusion actually looks like versus what organizations claim it looks like, and why the answer isn't more analysis — it's action. He also shares the story of Brendan Burke, whose friendship and tragic death became the catalyst for everything Brock does today.

This is one of the most important conversations Better Sports Parents has had.

Better Sports Parents is helping parents positively impact the youth sports environment. Subscribe for new episodes every week

Chapters

00:00 Opening

01:36 Introduction & Content Warning

03:17 The Shift Makers Tour: 250 Teams in 200 Days

04:11 How Locker Room Culture Programs Kids to Conform

08:13 How Do We Go From Thinking the Right Things to Actually Doing Them?

09:15 The Push-Up Story: How Shift Makers Was Born

10:06 Challenging Bravery: "Tell Me Something You Wouldn't Tell a Teammate"

12:10 "The Locker Room Should Be Disneyland"

15:04 Why Kids Won't Talk to Parents and What Brock Does Differently

19:17 The Real Reason Kids Don't Come Forward

22:14 Why Brock Becomes the First Person They Ever Tell

23:11 Parents Need to Humanize Themselves Too

30:38 What to Do When Your Teenager Won't Talk to You

34:19 Why "I Didn't Mean It Like That" Is Not Good Enough

35:08 How the Culture Became Brock's Identity and His Prison

38:11 Who or What Finally Made Him Be Himself

43:27 Brendan Burke: The Friend Who Changed Everything

43:58 What True Inclusion Actually Looks Like in Sport

46:36 Why "We're a Family" Is Often Hollow

51:26 Stop Talking. Start Doing.

54:21 The Vicious Cycle: Coaches Doing What Was Done to Them

58:51 Talk to Them as People, Not as Hockey Robots

1:00:47 Resources for Self-Harm and Mental Health Support

1:04:14 The Biggest Issue in Youth Sport Today: Affordability

1:07:21 Why Sport Can Still Be Great

Resources

Brock McGillis' advocacy and speaking platform

Kids Help Phone

⁠Jumpstart