Baseball Heaven

Before There Was Research — There Was a Kid Who Wanted to Play

Kenneth Crawford — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 12:55:34 +0000

The Journey · Daily Installment

Before There Was Research — There Was a Kid Who Wanted to Play

Journey Marker: Childhood — Moore, Oklahoma

Before there was Integrity of the Game, before the Brian Crawford Memorial, before the Oklahoma Braves, before tournament spreadsheets, public-records requests, city meetings, or questions about where the money goes in youth sports, there was just a kid in Moore, Oklahoma, who wanted to play.

That kid was me.

I grew up playing baseball and football in Moore. What I remember most today is not trophies or statistics. I remember people.

I remember coaches coming to pick me up. I remember walking to practices and walking to games. I remember team moms helping get me where I needed to go. I did not always have some perfectly organized path from home to the ballfield. Sometimes somebody simply made sure I got there.

At the time, I did not call that community support. I did not think about access, transportation, mentorship, or opportunity. I was a kid.

I just wanted to play.

And I loved to compete.

I believed I was a pretty good athlete, but what sports gave me was bigger than whether I was good. Sports gave me somewhere to be. They gave me expectations. They surrounded me with adults who expected something from me.

I have said many times that when I was involved in sports, I had direction. When I was not involved, I could find trouble.

That is a firsthand memory. I am not trying to turn my childhood into a research study after the fact. I am simply telling you what youth sports meant in my life.

Coaches mattered.

Coach Schrader was a tough football coach. I remember Coach Peck, Coach Honaker and Coach Cox among the people who helped shape that experience. I probably did not appreciate what they were doing at the time. Kids rarely do. But looking back, I can see that adults were investing time in me without knowing where that investment would eventually lead.

That lesson stayed with me.

Years later, when I became a coach, I wanted to win. I have never pretended otherwise. I am competitive. I wanted my players prepared, disciplined and capable of competing.

But I also wanted to give something back.

I wanted to teach.

I wanted the experience to mean something beyond the scoreboard.

Much later, when we had the Oklahoma Braves, I began thinking about what I now call a coaching lineage: somebody coaches a child, that child grows up, and maybe one day he coaches his own children—or somebody else's. One coach's influence can travel much farther than one season.

That is hindsight. I certainly was not standing on a baseball field in Moore as a kid thinking about generational coaching models.

I was thinking about the next practice.

The next game.

The next chance to compete.

Looking Back

Today, after everything this journey has become, I look at those childhood experiences differently.

My formal research would eventually ask complicated questions about governance, public facilities, economics, documentation and accountability. But none of that changes the foundation.

Youth sports mattered to me before I knew anything about the business of youth sports.

That distinction is important.

My concern about the systems surrounding youth sports comes from believing deeply in the value of the game itself. I know what one coach, one ride to practice, one team and one place to belong can mean to a kid because I was one of those kids.

Maybe that is where this whole journey really begins.

Not with research. Not with conflict. Not with politics.

With opportunity.

And with people who made sure a kid got to the ballfield.

“Before I ever studied youth sports as a system, I experienced it as a kid who simply needed somebody to make sure I got to the field.”

Question for the Reader

Who was the adult—a coach, teacher, neighbor, parent or volunteer—who quietly created an opportunity for you before you were old enough to understand what that opportunity was worth?

Next on The Journey

Next, the story begins moving from the kid I was to the father I became—and to watching my own boys discover baseball in very different ways. That is where the game stopped being only something I loved and started becoming something I wanted to pass forward.

Companion Daily Podcast Script

Before There Was Research — There Was a Kid Who Wanted to Play

Opening

Welcome back to The Journey.

Yesterday, I introduced where this story eventually went—the memorial work, the research, the questions and the effort to advocate for youth-sports reform.

But to understand any of that, I think we have to go backwards.

Way backwards.

Before there was research, there was just a kid in Moore, Oklahoma, who wanted to play.

And that kid was me.

Main Narrative

I grew up playing baseball and football in Moore.

When I think about those years now, I do not immediately think about scores. I think about people.

I had coaches who would come pick me up. Sometimes I walked to practice. Sometimes I walked to games. Team moms helped move kids around. Somebody made sure I could participate.

As a kid, I did not understand that as mentorship or community support.

I just knew I wanted to play.

And I loved to compete.

Sports were important to me because they gave me somewhere to be. They gave me structure. When I was involved in sports, I had direction. When I wasn't, I could get myself into trouble.

There were coaches along the way who made a difference—Coach Schrader, Coach Peck, Coach Honaker, Coach Cox and others whose influence probably reached much farther than they ever realized.

Looking back today, I can see something that I could not see as a kid.

A coach does not always know what happens to the child after the season ends.

Maybe that kid becomes a coach.

Maybe he becomes a parent.

Maybe thirty or forty years later he is still carrying something that coach taught him.

That happened to me.

When I eventually began coaching, I wanted to compete and I wanted to win. That's part of who I am.

But I also wanted to give back.

I wanted to teach.

Later, with the Oklahoma Braves, I started thinking about what I call a coaching lineage. You invest in a group of kids, and hopefully some of those kids grow up and invest in another group. The influence keeps moving.

I want to be careful here because that is my interpretation today. I wasn't thinking about coaching lineages when I was a kid in Moore.

Back then, I wanted the ball.

I wanted another game.

I wanted another chance to compete.

Looking Back

The strange thing about this journey is that I eventually began researching youth sports as an economic and governance system.

That sounds a long way from a kid walking to baseball practice.

But maybe it isn't.

Still, I never want the research to bury the reason I care.

I believe in youth sports.

I believe in good coaches.

I believe in community programs.

And I know from my own life that one adult making sure a kid gets to practice can have consequences that last decades.

Pull Quote

“Before I ever studied youth sports as a system, I experienced it as a kid who simply needed somebody to make sure I got to the field.”

Question for the Reader

Who made that kind of difference in your life—before you were old enough to understand what they were doing for you?

Closing / Next Episode

On the next installment of The Journey, we'll move forward into family—when I became a father and began watching my own boys experience baseball for themselves.

That is where the game started becoming more than something I played.

It became something I wanted to pass on.

How a Memorial Became a Mission for Youth Sports Reform

Kenneth Crawford — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 05:53:51 +0000

The Journey · Personal Reflections by Kenneth Crawford

How a Memorial Became a Mission

The personal story behind the research, the questions, and the path toward youth sports reform.

This is mine. For more than two decades, youth sports have been woven through nearly every part of my life—as a father, coach, tournament organizer, nonprofit founder, facility operator, researcher and, eventually, an advocate for reform.

But I did not start out trying to change youth sports.

I certainly did not start out trying to investigate it.

I was a dad.

I coached because my kids played. I helped organize teams because somebody needed to do it. I learned how to put on tournaments because we needed ways to help families offset the cost of playing baseball.

At the time, those things were simply part of youth sports.

Looking back, however, I can see that I was learning lessons I would not fully understand until many years later.

I was learning about leadership. I was learning about money. I was learning about volunteers. I was learning about facilities. I was learning about the difference between having rules and having accountability. Most importantly, I was learning about people.

Then, on April 27, 2005, our family's world changed.

We lost our oldest son, Brian Allen Crawford, in an automobile accident.

There are moments that divide your life into before and after.

That was ours.

What followed eventually became the Brian Crawford Memorial and an annual memorial baseball tournament. Those tournaments traveled across Oklahoma—from Shawnee to Norman, Chickasha, Choctaw and beyond.

What began as a way to remember Brian slowly became something much larger.

Years later, there would be a sports complex bearing his name.

There would be facility operations.

There would be nonprofit work.

There would be Little League.

There would be municipal governments and public records.

There would be spreadsheets, databases and thousands upon thousands of pieces of information.

Eventually, there would be Hidden Valley — Integrity of the Game and a much larger question about how youth sports operate in Oklahoma.

But none of that existed at the beginning.

There was no master plan.

There was not a dataset.

There was not a book.

There was not a reform campaign.

There was simply a family trying to move forward while carrying someone with us who was no longer physically here.

Why This Blog ExistsWhy I'm Writing The Journey

I've spent years documenting youth sports through records, data, contracts, financial models, facility agreements and historical research.

That work matters.

But data does not tell the entire story.

A spreadsheet can tell you what happened.

It usually cannot tell you why someone started looking.

And it certainly cannot explain what it feels like to spend years following one question only to discover that the answer leads to five more questions.

My book, Integrity of the Game vs. Economic Impact (Politics): The Oklahoma Business Plan, was intentionally written primarily as a systems analysis. Its purpose is to examine structures—how tournaments operate, how money moves, how public facilities are used and where responsibility exists or becomes unclear.

The Journey is different.

This is the story behind the research.

I want to go back to the beginning and walk through it chronologically—not knowing in 2001 what I would know in 2026.

That distinction matters.

I do not want to rewrite history through the benefit of hindsight.

When I did not understand something then, I will tell you that.

When something represents my opinion, I will tell you that.

When the documents later changed my understanding of an event, we will look at those documents together.

And when I got something wrong, misunderstood something, or changed my mind, that is part of the journey too.

Because this is not supposed to be a story about one person having all the answers.

It is about what happens when someone keeps asking questions.

The Larger ArcFrom Memorial to Research to Reform

Today I can look backward and see connections that were impossible for me to see while I was living them.

Coaching taught me one lesson.

The Oklahoma Braves taught me another.

Losing Brian changed everything.

Memorial tournaments taught me about operations.

Running a sports facility taught me about the business.

Building the Brian Crawford Memorial Sports Complex taught me about partnerships, fundraising and public infrastructure.

Later experiences caused me to start asking harder questions about transparency and accountability.

Eventually, those questions became research.

And the research eventually became advocacy.

But we're not starting there.

We're going back to where it actually started.

A kid.

A ballfield.

A family.

A coach.

And an opportunity to play.

That's where The Journey begins.

“

I didn't begin this journey trying to reform youth sports. I was a dad trying to give kids an opportunity to play. The questions came later.

A Question for You

Before tomorrow's story, I want to ask you something.

Think about your own childhood. Who was the coach, teacher, volunteer, neighbor or community member who gave you an opportunity simply because they believed kids deserved one?

And here's the harder question:

If you were that same child today, would the system still give you that opportunity?

I'd genuinely like to hear your story.

Tomorrow on The Journey

Before There Was Research — There Was a Kid Who Wanted to Play

We're going back to Moore, Oklahoma, long before there was a Brian Crawford Memorial, Baseball Heaven, Hidden Valley or Integrity of the Game. Before I became a coach, I was simply a kid who needed adults willing to give me an opportunity.

Youth Sports Transparency

Kenneth Crawford — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 03:43:51 +0000