What the Young Players Bring That the Veterans Forgot They Had

I want to say something to the veterans in this room.

You have something the younger players don’t. You know that. But they have something you had — and might have lost some of without realizing it.

Do you remember your first season? The hunger that was just clean, uncomplicated, not yet tempered by disappointment or experience? The way you played before you knew everything that could go wrong?

Read this passage slowly.

Let that sit for a second before you move.

The psalmist is reflecting on a lifetime of experience and his intention to pass it to the next generation. But notice what’s in the verse: he’s still declaring. Still engaged. Still bringing what he has to the people coming after him.

There’s a temptation for veterans in team settings to manage rather than mentor. To protect rather than share. To be the experienced one who holds their cards close rather than the one who openly invests in the people who are coming up.

But here’s what the younger players carry that you might have stopped noticing: they play without the weight of what they know can go wrong. They take risks you’ve learned not to take because you’ve seen them fail. Sometimes that costs them. And sometimes it produces something that your experience would have prevented.

The best veteran players find a way to let the younger players’ energy remind them of something they had and lost touch with. They don’t manage the young player into something smaller. They let the young player remind them what full, uncomplicated hunger looks like — and they reach back toward that.

What would it look like for you to be genuinely energized by what the younger players bring instead of just managing them?

Reflective and vulnerable for the veterans. Give it time.