Away Game

A Christian Parent's Guide to Navigating Youth Sports

By: Brian Smith, Ed Uszynski

Narrated by: Brian Smith, Ed Uszynski

Transform the competitive sports field into a discipleship opportunity as you help your young athlete become not just a better player but a devoted follower of God.

If we don’t own the process of discipling our kids as they play sports, sports culture will do it for us. But as parents, we can get so consumed with our young athletes’ physical development that we miss the opportunities athletics provide to help them grow spiritually. Away Game challenges us to be more than spectators on the sidelines of our kids’ spiritual lives. Discover how to:

• Leverage sports as a platform for instilling biblical values in kids and teens.
• Keep joy, play, and gratitude at every level of your child’s athletic experience.
• Use sports involvement as an opportunity to strengthen your relationship with your child—from car-ride conversations to post-game processing.
• Spark faith-based discussions about sport-culture challenges such as handling pressure, dealing with failure, and being a next-level teammate.
• Counter the toxic elements of today’s youth sports culture by cultivating kingdom virtues like self-control, humility, and peace—in yourself and your kids.

Away Game empowers you to embrace the role of spiritual mentor throughout your child’s athletic journey as you recognize—in the margins of every practice or game—winning opportunities for spiritual growth.

Contains extensive bonus commentary from the authors not included in the printed book.

©2025 Brian Smith and Ed Uszynski (P)2025 David C Cook

Really helpful perspective on youth sports and faith.

I really enjoyed the practical insights and stories from their own lives that these guys shared in this book. Great book for parents of young athletes who want them to thrive in sports for the long haul. And fun to hear the bonus content discussions at the end of each chapter of material that didn’t make it into the hard copy of the book!

A must read/listen for Christian parents whose kids play sports.

This book was biblical, practical, and insightful. Both authors write from experience not just theory. The bonus content from the authors at the end of each chapter was a nice addition to this audio version of the book. I will be highly recommending this book to all the parents I know with kids in youth sports. As a coach, while I was easily able to apply this as a parent and a coach, it would be nice to have a version written directly to coaches. I will be recommending this to coaches I know but with the caveat that it is primarily written to parents. Thank you for your work on this book. I will be working to apply this for a long time.

Christian or not, this is a great book

As a parent and a coach, I resonated so much with the way they articulated the youth sports industrial complex. I was lucky enough to be in a group going through this and even got to talk to the authors at the end. So much wisdom and advice for navigating youth sports. It's not sport specific either. Can't recommend enough!

Justifications throughout the book for lack of

Book has some good references back to the Bible in comparison to some real life scenarios although a lot of pointers are exactly why as parents of the gen X era are lacking focus, drive, motivation, inspiration amongst others.
As a millennial parent, our generation had good intentions of raising our kids differently compared to the traditional way of belt whoppings, yelling, and harsh punishments for certain reprimanding actions but it spiraled out of control as we kept throwing the blanket instead of correcting, allowing passes and letting things slide when we should’ve disciplined. This has gotten worse now to the point of no return. Kids/teenagers these days having simple home thought manners with a thank you sir, ma’am or good morning and afternoon are things of the past because of the lack of correction and warm blanket placed over our kids with an “ok what can we do better next time” approach that has parents trying to figure out what went wrong. This book has a ton of good info that can be used, but has many details that can be misleading for parenting as it justifies many reasons for our kids actions.
I have two teenagers and raising kids these days is a tough task, but being firm and assertive with love and care balanced out is what our young human beings are needing nowadays.