1. If you’re not a fisherman yourself, the easiest way to start is at a Fishing Clinic. These free, 45-minute clinics are sponsored by California’s Fish & Game Department, and they feature learning stations on everything from safety and knots to casting and ecological lessons too. The clinics are designed for families with kids 5 and up. All equipment is supplied. And the next one is this Saturday, June 20 from 8 a.m. to noon at Newark’s Lakeshore Park. Get there early! The last clinic starts at 10 a.m., although once you’re in, you can fish till noon.

2. The East Bay Regional Parks hold fishing classes too, including a catfishing basics class at Livermore’s Del Valle Regional Park on June 27 for kids, ages 7 and up, and grown-ups. And Fremont’s Quarry Lakes is holding an intriguing “Skills of the Past: Fishing Nets” class on June 28.

3. The bluegills are biting at the Lafayette Reservoir. You’ll need to bring your own equipment, but the fishing fee is a measly $4. Or seek out more than 10 other charming fishing possibilities at the East Bay’s Regional Parks.

4. Take advantage of the state’s Free Fishing Day, when you can fish without a license. This year’s dates include Fourth of July and Labor Day.

5. Or try something entirely different – fish for crawdads in the pond at Pittsburg’s Small World Park.

Looking for more backyard fun ideas?

• Homemade Forts & Pirate Ships
• Popsicle Mania
• 6 Great Swimming Pool Games
• Gigantic Bubbles
• Homemade Sidewalk Chalk
• Beanpole Tepees & Other Garden Fun
• Stickball, Whiffleball and 4 Other Street Games

Maybe I’ll get some answers tomorrow: Join us for a live chat at noon Friday with sports reporter Carl Steward.

In a column that will appear in Friday’s Contra Costa Times and Oakland Tribune, Steward writes about Mark Hyman, author of “Until It Hurts: America’s Obsession With Youth Sports And How It Harms Our Kids.” Check out the story and then join us at noon.

Meanwhile, I’ve gotta go check my kid’s baseball schedule.

How bad is it? Hyman says Lyle Micheli, a Children’s Hospital Boston doctor and co-founder of the nation’s first youth sports medicine clinic 35 years ago, no longer makes small talk with the thousands of Little Leaguers, future Olympians and everyday young athletes he meets each year. He just asks them where it hurts. Back in the early days of his Boston clinic, sports injuries stemmed from gridiron pileups or ill-advised slides into second base. Even as recently as the 1990s, only 20% of young athletes’ injuries stemmed from repetitive stress and chronic over-use. Now, it’s 75%.

“They’ve trained—and overtrained—in their sports,” writes Hyman, “until their bodies just can’t take it anymore.”

The rest of the story provides a chilling portrait of what we, as parents, are doing to our kids. Most of these injuries are entirely preventable, says Hyman, “by introducing variety, moderation and rest into an everyday sports routine… The problem doesn’t lie with the kids, though; it lies with the adults—the great enablers. Where they go, lugging their runaway sports ambitions for their children, overuse injuries inevitably follow.”

“Not me,” you say? Is your kid playing year-round soccer, baseball or another sport? Swimming butterfly every month of the year? Are you building your vacation around the availability of workout pools or the summer baseball schedule for the league that follows spring season and precedes fall ball? You need to read this. Really.

They got it backward with Michael Phelps. They suspended him from competition for three months, which means he now has more time to wander into parties and hold interesting-looking objects up to his face and say, “Hey, dude, what’s this?”

What USA Swimming, the national federation, should have done was make him perform community service by competing in swim meets every day of the week and give him obligatory practices, since this is a lad who obviously functions better in chlorinated water than on terra firma.

… What’s the penalty for being dopey? Not suspension, that’s for sure. The penalty should have been: go out there and swim, ya big lug ya. The chlorine is good for you.

So, do you treat the activity as a privilege and take it away or keep the kid involved in the activity and respond to the behavior with something along the lines of what Vecsey suggests?

The international gymnastics federation says everything is peachy regarding the ages of the Chinese gymnasts who competed and won gold at the Beijing Olympics in August. Federation officials have checked passports and other documents, verifying the gymnasts were all the legal age of 16. (Of course, the Chinese government produced said documents — and yes, I’m alleging that the government was a party to duplicity.) Case closed on the 2008 team, but hey, at least the federation is still investigating the suspect ages of two Chinese gymnasts from the 2000 Olympics. Due diligence, right?

As a former Olympics beat writer, I’ve had a lot of people ask why age-gate matters. Who cares if the gymnasts are 14 or 16? The international age limit is a “ridiculous” policy in the first place, they say. Except, it’s not. That rule is the only thing keeping the highly exploitive sport of gymnastics in check.

Younger gymnasts do have an advantage. They are more flexible and better able to manipulate their bodies for hard skills. They also are less likely to have sustained the major falls and injuries that can make them more afraid and cautious on an apparatus. But gymnasts also aren’t professional athletes who are old enough to make their own decisions. They are minors, thrust into the highly competitive world of gymnastics at a young age. In China, the average start age is 4 years old. Some girls take their first tumble in an official gym at age 2 — before they’ve even developed the verbal skills to fully explain why they are tired or hurting. And in China, being a national team athlete often means leaving your family — your parents — to train at top-notch facilities. Imagine parting with your child when they’re just a toddler.

Furthermore, gymnastics is a sport prone to injuries and eating disorders. I met a U.S. gymnast once who had separated her shoulder three times, had pins in her ankle, busted her knee twice and needed a nightly dose of ibuprofen just so she could sleep without pain. She was only 9. Remember the much hyped Kerri Strug performance at the 1996 Olympics, where Strug took her final vault on a broken ankle? It looked great for the cameras, she became an American darling. And years later, she couldn’t finish a marathon because her ankle is destroyed beyond repair.

Because of the high-rate of injury in gymnastics, Olympic-caliber athletes usually compete on the world’s biggest stage only once. If they’re really lucky, they may get two cracks. As a result, most gymnasts have a shelf life of six to eight years. The purpose of the Olympic age limit is to deter national programs from rigorously training gymnasts too young — when their bodies are still developing and their bones and joints are still vulnerable. If you need proof that competitive gymnastics can eat its athletes from the inside out, check out Joan Ryan’s book, “Little Girls in Pretty Boxes.” It’s a real eye-opener.

In the meantime, let’s hope the international gymnastics federation has learned a lesson from this Beijing Olympics debacle. Passports and official papers aside, doubt remains. An official investigation brings about only so much closure. This can and will happen again. It will continue to cast a shadow over the sport until the federation comes up with a more diligent system — like perhaps making every gymnast register with the federation the moment she enters the sport, even if she has no grand competitive aspirations. It’s not the perfect solution, but at least that would be a start.

1. Doublecheck the equipment. Kids grow fast, so gear that fit perfectly last year may be too small now. “Ill-fitting shoes can be an especially big problem,” says Breitbach. “Last summer’s baseball cleats will likely not be right for this summer.” And protective equipment – cups, helmets, shin guards – must fit properly to protect.

2. Watch the diet – low fat, lean protein and complex carbohydrates – and hydration. Athletes need lots of complex carbs – what Breitbach calls “high-energy foods” – right before and after a game or workout. And water, water, water. “People place way too much emphasis on energy and sports drinks,” he says, “hen good cool water will do just fine. Don’t give him a bottle of water for a long game. A jug would be better.”

3. Keep them well-rested — and not overbooked. “Parents need to be really careful about overscheduling their kids,” he says. “They need as much time as possible between games so their bodies can rest and recover.”

4. Stay physically fit. The more fit someone is, the less likely they are to be injured playing sports, and the best way to keep your kid in shape is to never let him or her get out of shape. Make sure they’re active all year-round, and don’t rely on sports to keep your kid fit. “They need to love the sport,” says Breitbach. “The truth is, lots of sports aren’t conducive to weight loss anyway – in baseball, for instance, there’s a lot of standing around. If your kid needs to lose weight, put him on a healthy diet and join a fitness center where there are personalized fitness programs.”

5. And take care of injuries right away. “Even something as simple as a scrape needs attention,” Breitbach says. “Scrapes need to be cleaned and covered up to avoid infections, such as a staph infection that’s resistant to antibiotics.” Pay attention to scrapes, aches and pains, and if your child has been injured, make sure the play-or-no-play decision is made by your doctor, not the coach.

Click “comments” to add your tips.

Do the North Coast Section and league championship trials and finals conflict with AP exams at your kids’ high school? I’m not talking “conflict” as in “cuts into studying time,” although that’s certainly a concern.  I mean, games and meets that start during the exam. Senior year, our oldest son had to choose between swimming in the DFAL league trials, which began at 2:15 p.m., and taking a German AP exam that ran from 12:30 to well after 4 p.m.

Click “comments” and share your thoughts…

Frankly, it’s a common complaint, particularly in prosperous suburban areas where kids play high-octane, year-round ball, and their parents routinely hire private pitching/batting/whatever mentors to help their kids excel. In this case, school officials investigated and found no evidence of preferential treatment, but one of the coaches was removed halfway through the season, so commence with the dot-connecting.

Having had four kids play nearly every kind of aquatic and field sport for the last decade and a half, we’ve heard similar charges lobbed every time someone’s kid gets cut from a varsity team or doesn’t get as much playing time as mom or dad expects — and we have to say, this is a complicated issue.

On the one hand, it’s unreasonable to expect a coach who makes peanuts directing public high school athletic teams – $500 to $2,000 for a four-month coaching position whose hours make it incredibly difficult to hold down a day job too – to turn down the supplementary income that comes with high-powered, ultra-competitive “rec” teams. And what coach turns down the chance to train “his players” 12 months a year and reap the glory of a state championship? Truth is, rec teams often become feeder programs for high school sports. When it comes to team sports, most high school athletes prefer to train with the teammates and coach they’ll be playing with during the Big Season. And for a coach facing the task of building a championship varsity team, his year-round players become a known quantity. The kid who played frosh/soph last year? Not so much.

So, it’s certainly understandable that farm team-heavy varsity squads have emerged. Is the system ripe for abuse? Well, of course.

Naturally, you want to advocate for your kid.  Thing is,  every parent thinks his kid will get that full ride athletic scholarship, go to the Olympics, play major league ball. And years of teeball and everyone-gets-a-trophy sports just feed that fantasy … until you really, truly believe your kid is God’s gift to high school sports. But JV and Varsity sports is where the rubber hits the road. Not everyone makes it. And those two San Ramon brothers didn’t. Were they varsity level? Who knows?

At some point, you have to trust the coach – and the school’s athletic director, principal and superintendent who ultimately oversee it all. And at some point you have to stop and ask yourself this, is the coach playing favorites or is the “favorite” Chris Blackwood?

So here’s the cautionary tale: Miramonte High basketball coach Tom Blackwood led his team to 27 winning seasons, six league titles, and a North Coast championship, only to be forced out by team parents who accused him of favoritism toward his son at the expense of their, well, vastly more talented children, right? Only thing was, Blackwood wasn’t playing favorites. His kid was the real deal. After his father’s ouster, Chris Blackwood transferred and led rival Campolindo High to victory after victory, including a thorough thrashing of his old team that had sports columnists crowing about karma and parental sports hubris.

Click “comments” and weigh in with your thoughts…

Parents sacrifice weekends and vacations to tournaments and specialty camps, spending thousands each year in this quest for the holy grail. But the expectations of parents and athletes can differ sharply from the financial and cultural realities of college athletics…

“People run themselves ragged to play on three teams at once so they could always reach the next level,” said Margaret Barry of Laurel, Md., whose daughter is a scholarship swimmer at the University of Delaware. “They’re going to be disappointed when they learn that if they’re very lucky, they will get a scholarship worth 15 percent of the $40,000 college bill. What’s that? $6,000?”

And what’s never discussed is the downside to playing college ball, track, swimming, etc. – the painfully early morning weight training, long practices and travel time. There’s a reason colleges routinely hire tutors for their star athletes.

It’s because those kids have trouble making it to class.

“Kids who have worked their whole life trying to get a scholarship think the hard part is over when they get the college money,” said Tim Poydenis, a senior at Villanova receiving $3,000 a year to play baseball. “They don’t know that it’s a whole new monster when you get here. Yes, all the hard work paid off. And now you have to work harder.”

The story closes with this comment from a college athlete:

“On every team I played on, every single person there thought for sure that they would play in college. I thought so, too. Just by the numbers, it’s completely unrealistic. And if I had it to do over, I would have skipped a practice every now and then to go to a concert or a movie with my friends. I missed out on a lot of things for soccer. I wish I could have some of that time back.”

Your thoughts?