The Sports Doc Chalk Talk

When we first wrote the book Positive Transitions for Student Athletes in the late 1990′s, our primary intention was to help college student athletes prepare for life after sports (since the reality was that most would not be continuing on with their professional sports careers).  The trend that was already in motion at that time was that increasingly more student athletes were exiting from their collegiate athletic careers confused, sometimes depressed, and often unprepared to leave their athletic identity behind and enter what some jokingly refer to as “the real world.”

Since Positive Transitions was released, the book has assisted thousands of college student athletes prepare for sport retirement by helping them better understand their unique athletic identity, the role confusion they experience when re-defining themselves, and specific tips and strategies designed to help them identify and use athletic transferable skills to help develop the self-confidence and skill set needed to excel in their future careers (similarly to how they succeeded in their previous athletic careers).  Interestingly, while the times have changed since then, the issues athletes commonly experience while exiting from sports have remained relatively stable — perhaps the biggest change, ironically, is that the same issues that were once unique to DI college (and professional) athletes have now “trickled down” into the younger ranks of sports, including small college sports (DIII) as well as high school athletics. What this means is that younger athletes, including those far less likely to move onto professional sports, still experience the same challenges when all of a sudden the identity, lifestyle, and mindset they have developed over the last 10, 15, or 20 years of their sports career is suddenly stripped away from them in a moments notice.

If you are a parent of a student athlete and your gut tells you that he or she may one day be heading toward a difficult sport retirement transition, I encourage you to check out Positive Transitions for Student Athletes. While the book was written primarily for college student athletes, I am confident that there are many tips, insights, and strategies that you can use with your teenage son or daughter in preparation for when sport retirement occurs — an inevitable transition for every athlete who competes in sports.  In the case of sport retirement, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” is very true, and can make all the difference between your son or daughter using the sport experience to excel in life, or allowing it to hold him or her back because of a lack of confidence and belief in his or her talents beyond sports.

www.drstankovich.com

I believe the time is now that we make concerted efforts to better educate and prepare families for their child’s eventual sport retirement.  With sports being as big as they are in this country, its a shame that so many athletes are still left to themselves to figure out who they are, what their talents are beyond sports, and what future paths exist for them when in the midst of the sport retirement transition.  Fortunately, most athletes do not fall into the worst-case scenarios of suicide (as with the recent passing of Junior Seau), but literally millions of athletes from various sports, backgrounds, and types, experience great distress during sport retirement – often resulting in depression, anxiety, role confusion, and poor future planning.  In order to cope with this distress, many athletes turn to drug and alcohol abuse, aggression, and reckless behaviors (like gambling).

The message I am sending today is designed to promote more action in the ways of better educating sports families about the athletic identity, and how kids often develop an exclusive athletic identity that hinders them when they end their careers in sports.  With so many kids now specializing in one sport and playing it nearly year-round, it becomes easy to see how athletes develop their self-worth around “athlete.”  Their social identities (or how others view them), are also constructed around the athletic identity, too (like when we immediately ask about the game before anything else).  None of this is “bad” necessarily, but it all leads to the fact that most kids never play beyond high school (only about 5% do), making the sport retirement transition usually an abrupt and unplanned one. Without better educational efforts, families will continue to struggle when their kids (who are often just teenagers without great coping skills due to their youth) experience distress during this period — making it that much more important that we make things better.

Help is Here!

One approach that we have developed is Sport Success 360, a licensed educational system designed to help schools and youth sport leagues by providing key psychosocial information, tips, and strategies designed to help kids have a safe, fun, and meaningful athletic experience.  I encourage you to learn more about Sport Success 360 by watching this introductory video — Sport Success 360 includes a broad range of topics (including sport retirement), complimentary videos, and free downloads of Sport Success 360 and Sport Success 360 PLUS audio program.

If you are reading this blog, then it can be assumed you have an interest in youth and interscholastic sports (probably as either a parent, athlete, or coach).  While you may not be a decision-maker in your school or youth league, you can help raise awareness by mentioning Sport Success 360, or other great sport education programs out there that can help kids not only better prepare for sport retirement, but also learn about key psychosocial issues like the dangers of performance enhancing supplements, youth sport burnout, hazing, and many more issues.  In all likelihood you have also experienced more traditional issues, like playing time, cuts, sportsmanship, tough coaches (or parents), and travel leagues – Sport Success 360 covers those topics, too.

Education Helps On and Off the Field

Mental toughness is needed on the field, but it’s not limited to just wins and losses — we need to help families learn the culture of sports today, and successful strategies to help kids cope with the pressures they commonly experience in sports.  Just as important as the X’s and O’s are, we need to help kids with performance anxiety, as well as the resiliency needed to bounce back from adversity.  Ironically, these are really life skills and not limited to sports, making these kinds of sport education efforts that much more vital.

Better and more prevalent education does not imply that sports are bad, or that all kids who play sports have terrible experiences — far from it.  Instead, we need to realize that the days of a handful of casual summer games played on the local sandlot are long gone — replaced by high-level, intense, pressure-filled travel league sports schedules for kids who sometimes struggle to keep up.  Of course, these are not bad kids, either – they are just that, kids, vulnerable to kid mistakes when trying to deal with pressure.

Helping Kids – Even the Ones that Don’t Speak Up

Kids don’t always speak up when they feel pressure – be it from their parents or team expectations.  In some cases kids have a talent for a specific sport, but don’t love playing the sport — yet still refrain from speaking out because the see the time, money, and energy being invested in their athletic career.  Some kids have a lot of trouble multi-tasking other activities – like school and social activities — while others have difficulty dealing with resiliency that sometimes manifests into unsportsmanlike behavior and/or uncontrolled aggression.

When we view youth sports through the lens of it being an often intense, complex, and radically different experience than generations of the past, it helps us better frame the educational approach to youth sports as being one of “keeping up with the times” than one that needs to be done because of “problems.”  Introducing new and more advanced ways of delivering contemporary sport education is not an admission that an athletic department or youth league has gone out of control, but instead an example of sports leaders making important budgetary decisions that go beyond the traditional basics.  Of course, finding new revenue streams is never easy, but when issues become important enough people become resourceful – this is often referred to as a “tipping point.”  Are we there yet?  I think so, and from my experiences with many sports people, it sounds like there is increasingly more support to improve future efforts.  I personally believe this will happen, and I hope you do, too.

www.drstankovich.com

Sport Success 360 is the premier sport education system, designed to improve the culture of your youth or interscholastic team/league!

In today’s youth and interscholastic sports world, the sport specialist (an athlete who plays a single sport rather than sampling different sports throughout the year) has become an increasingly more common sighting (AHPS).  In some cases the child makes this decision, while other times parents, coaches, and other influential people encourage the student athlete to specialize rather than sample different sports.  The main reason for sport specialization, according to most sport psychologists and physicians, is to devote more time and energy toward a specific sport with the idea that more training = better athletic skill acquisition for that specific sport.

While it is likely true that most kids who specialize in a sport will get better at that sport (and at a faster rate), it’s also true that the chances for youth sport burnout increase dramatically as well.  In addition to sports burnout, kids who specialize (and train year-round) might also be running a significantly higher risk for physical injury as a recent Yahoo story revealed:

Repetitive stress injuries are also on the rise. The days of lettering in several different varsity sports are gone; instead, students are encouraged to focus on a single sport starting at a very young age — as early as kindergarten, in some places — and stick with it throughout high school and college. Sometimes, they’re urged to do so by coaches hoping to hone a particular skill. Other times, they’re pushed by parents or driven to land a rare college scholarship. But the intense training in one sport over a long period of time can take a toll, even on young and fit bodies.

“Probably the thing that we’re seeing the most right now is any type of overuse injury, from stress fractures to low-level muscle injuries,” Charlie Thompson, chair of the NATA College/University Athletic Trainers’ Committee and the head athletic trainer at Princeton University, told Yahoo! Shine. “Off-season programs start too soon after the end of a long season, and we’re not allowing recovery to happen.”

So what does this all mean for the typical American sports parent?  The short answer may be that “more doesn’t always = better,” especially if ongoing injuries prevent a young athlete from actually benefiting from specializing in one sport.  It appears as though more sports medicine physicians, trainers, and other helping professionals are becoming aware of the health concerns surrounding sport specialization, and if you are a sports parent today, maybe you should pay attention to this news, too.  As with any important decision, pros and cons should be examined within your family before deciding whether to specialize or sample youth sports.

www.drstankovich.com

Sport Success 360 is designed to help you with the contemporary issues in youth and interscholastic sports – like sport specialization — check it out today!

While watching Barry Melrose talk about the Penguins – Flyers NHL playoff match-up yesterday, he used the expression “will beats skill” when describing Philadelphia’s surprising 3-0 playoff lead over Pittsburgh.  While the Penguins were the heavy favorite going into the series, it is the Flyers — playing with more heart and intensity — who are about to advance to the next round of the NHL playoffs.

Breaking down the Melrose expression, he is really talking about mental toughness and the degree in which players display confidence, focus, motivation, intensity, and the ability to develop the resiliency needed to “play up” and beat an opponent that seems to be the better team (Pittsburgh).  In sports, it is often “who wants it more” that ends up beating otherwise better talented athletes and teams.

While most coaches and athletes agree that “will beats skill” when it comes to the outcome of many sporting events, it’s still a tough sell — especially when trying to convince kids that they can beat state-caliber teams and athletes.  In these instances, kids are so intimidated that they either forget (or don’t believe) that their mental toughness can make a huge difference in the outcome of a game, and often the result of the game is fairly predictable (the more skilled athlete/team wins).

Great coaches and parents are able to connect with kids and “sell” the message that will beats skill, and when this occurs the athlete begins to “play to win” as opposed to “playing to avoid losing.”  When kids buy-in to this approach, they begin to pay more attention to positive cues (the good block, tackle, or pitch they just made), while overlooking or dismissing negative cues (their missed tackle, strike out, etc.).  What we pay attention to in life in large part dictates what we will do next — play harder or give up.

Will, motivation, perseverance, and resiliency are all things we can develop, and are independent traits from our physical abilities.  Do your part to “sell” this message to a young person today!

www.drstankovich.com

Go to Advanced Human Performance Systems to check out our product line to help with developing WILL!

Sport Success 360 is the premier sport education system on the market today, designed to provide coaches, parents, and student athletes with key information pertaining to today’s commonly experienced problems, issues, and trends in youth and interscholastic sports.  Whether its youth sport burnout, dealing with irate parents, playing time, travel leagues, or the decision around sport specialization vs. sampling, Sport Success 360 delivers professional advice designed to help kids use sports as a vehicle for life success.  Improve the sports safety at your league or school by delivering easy-to-understand tips and advice specific to coaches, student athletes, and parents – providing the “360″ advantage!

Benefits of Sport Success 360

• A 24/7 resource for coaches, student athletes, and parents
• Immediate and practical advice, as well as short videos to help with even deeper insights around today’s psychosocial issues in sports
• A built-in coach exam to test for proficiency
• FREE Sport Success 360 book and audio file downloads
• Finally, a product designed to help with the overall culture of your athletic department or youth sport organization!

Visit Sport Success 360 today and watch the short demo to learn more about individual purchases as well as school/league licensing.  Do your part to help the kids in your league or sport organization have a safe, fun, and meaningful athletic experience – check out Sport Success 360 today!

www.drstankovich.com

A common question I receive from youth sports parents is why some kids who display above-average athletic skills seem to struggle with focus and motivation.  Of course, there are many reasons why this may occur, but one reason that is usually overlooked is the interest level the kid has in playing sports.  In other words, some kids are good at sports, but simply don’t love playing them!

Admittedly, it’s difficult to accept that a talented young athlete might have little (if any) interest in playing a particular sport, but this actually happens more than you might believe.  Kids who are especially good at a sport, yet are indifferent about playing that sport, seem to present the most frustration for parents.  The faulty assumption some parents make, unfortunately, is that if the kid is good at playing sports, he must also love playing sports.

There are a number of reasons why an otherwise athletically talented kid might not like playing sports, including the following:

• For some, it simply doesn’t interest them – there’s nothing more to read into it than this.
• Some kids like playing games, but do not enjoy the commitment to practices, extra training, travel, and all the other responsibilities that often come with being an athlete – in fact, the child may even be experiencing sports burnout.
• Some kids feel as though the time commitment with sports take away time they might have devoted to other things, like academics, other activities, and social endeavors.
• Some kids don’t “connect” with their sports friends, and would rather spend their time with their friends who might not be involved in sports.
• Some kids do not enjoy all the intensity around sports these days – in other words, they like playing the sport, but don’t like how it feels like a job to them because of all the outside expectations by others.

Kids who don’t enjoy playing sports (even if they are good at them) are not good or bad, right or wrong.  Just like how we as adults like to do some things and don’t like others, kids are the same — and in some cases kids show a natural talent toward something, yet have little interest in the activity.

Of course, a little parental coaxing to get a kid to have more fun playing a sport isn’t a bad thing, but be careful to not push too hard, or to continue signing your kid up for sports if it’s clear he doesn’t want to play.  While it might not be the easiest thing to do, it’s almost always a better move to work with your child on future decisions rather than continue pushing him because he has an above-average athletic talent.

Sport Success 360 is a great tool to use when helping provide your child with the best sports experience possible – pick up your copy today!

www.drstankovich.com

Millions of kids each year compete in youth and interscholastic sports, and there are many different reasons why they elect to devote their time and energy to playing on a sports team (Sport Success 360).  For some, they play sports to be with their friends, while others enjoy the identity that comes with wearing a sports uniform and being part of a team.  The main reason kids play sports, however, is actually a pretty simple one – to have FUN!

Every research study I have ever read has clearly shown that the number one reason kids play sports is to have fun, and, as you might have guessed, the number one reason why kids voluntarily quit playing sports is when they no longer have fun.  Interestingly, while many adults might guess that “winning” is a big reason why kids play sports, in most cases it doesn’t even make the top ten lists of the polls surveyed.

As adults, we sometimes forget this most basic lesson about why kids play sports, and the result of our oversight can lead to a less-than-exciting experience for kids.  When adults make youth sports a very serious experience and at the cost of having fun, kids often lose their motivation for playing – and usually quit a lot sooner as a result.  Therefore, it makes a lot of sense to think about the many ways in which you as a parent or coach can make youth sports a fun (and meaningful) experience for kids:

• Bring your “A-Game” when it comes to attitude and emotion!  When you get excited about sports, kids will, too.
• Make sure to keep sports interesting and find ways to offer your positive reinforcement and hearty praise whenever possible — even if it’s just for effort.
• Balance instruction with fun, especially with the younger kids you coach.
• Laugh and have a sense of humor.
• Ask the team what things you can do that would make the sport experience exciting for them – you may not be able to do everything they suggest, but if there’s an idea or two you can make it happen it can really make a difference!
• Do fun team bonding things outside of sports if you can – like taking the team to a college or professional sports game, or establishing team dinners.
• Create a team identity the kids can be proud of, maybe a team nickname or a slogan that matches your team’s character.

Obviously there are many different things that you can do to make sports a fun experience for kids, so be sure and do your part and capitalize on the number one reason they play – TO HAVE FUN!!

The Parents Playbook is a great resource for helping kids maximize the sport experience – pick up your copy today!

www.drstankovich.com

Staying in the Game: Combating Athlete Burnout – pick up your copy at Championship Productions today!

No child should ever have to endure through the emotional pain that the sexual victims of Jerry Sandusky or Bernie Fine went through, yet the reality is that thousands of kids in the United States each year are put into compromising sexual positions by coaches and other adults involved in youth and interscholastic sports.  I know, as I have personally worked with countless families, school districts, and youth leagues that have had to respond to such allegations.  I also know that we have lagged terribly behind when it comes to providing appropriate training and oversight for coaches so that we can better protect children who sign up to play sports, not be forced to guard molesters from stealing their innocence.

To see how safe your child is and to quickly gauge how well your child’s youth sport league or school team is doing to protect kids from pedophiles, please take a moment to answer the following questions:

1.) Does your child’s youth league or school require a criminal background check for every coach that is hired?  While it is true that more leagues and schools are doing this today, please note one very important related detail pertaining to background checks: If the perpetrator has never been caught before, he or she will easily make it past this threshold. What this means is that background checks are certainly important, but if you are relying on them to effectively weed out pedophiles you may have an over-inflated sense of their worth.  Case in point – both Jerry Sandusky from PSU and Bernie Fine from Syracuse abused boys for over 20 years each, yet only in the last few months were they arrested.

If your child’s youth sports league or school does NOT have a mandatory criminal background check add 1 point to your score.

2.) Does your child’s Athletic Director or League Operator require ongoing professional training and development that includes training in psychosocial issues (i.e. appropriate boundaries, burnout, performance supplement abuse, etc.)?  Most schools and leagues only require a minimal level of first aid training, unfortunately, leaving countless coaches nationwide with zero training in the interpersonal aspects of coaching kids.  If your school or league is not teaching coaches about interpersonal issues, like hazing, it’s much more likely your child will eventually experience a problem that likely could have been prevented with just a minimal amount of psychosocial training.

If your child’s youth sports league or school does NOT have a mandatory professional training and development that includes training in psychosocial issues, add 1 point to your score.

3.) School Sports ONLY – Does your child’s school coaching staff comprise of at least 50% teacher-coaches? Most parents are surprised to learn that in most schools across America today over 70% of the coaches in the school are non-teacher coaches. What this means is that unlike the coach prototype found in schools just a generation ago, most coaches in schools today come from the community at-large, and while they might know the X’s and O’s of the sport they coach, it’s very likely that they have never had any formal training to work closely with kids.  Teacher-coaches, on the other hand, have earned a college degree, been trained to work with kids, and are required to keep up with professional development to maintain their teaching license.   Of course, this does not mean teacher-coaches are better, nor does it mean that they never cross the line with kids — but it does illustrate how important it is to know who is coaching your child and what training he or she has attained.

If your child’s school does NOT have at least 50% of it’s coaching staff also employed as teachers, add 1 point to your score.

4.) Has your youth sports league or school athletic department had previous issues in the last 10 years with pedophiles, sexual predators, or sexual molesters? In today’s technology-driven world, it’s not uncommon for pedophiles to share information in chat rooms and other private forums online, and leagues and schools that are easier to prey upon will often see a greater number of these folks look into trying to coach in the school or league. 

If your child’s youth sports league or school has had at least one sexual molestation charge in the last ten years, add 1 point to your score.

5.) Is your youth sports league or school athletic department currently using Sport Success 360? Unlike other coach training courses, Sport Success 360 is the only training course in the world that includes dedicated training devoted to helping coaches create safe and healthy boundaries between them and the kids that they coach. Sport Success 360 includes many additional psychosocial training components and is designed to help train coaches to in turn help kids have the best, safest, and most enriching sport experience they can possibly have!

Subtract your points if your child is benefiting from Sport Success 360 in his youth league or school.

What your score means:

0 points: Your child’s sports league or school is doing an outstanding job of preparing its coaches to safely and effectively mentor kids.  While it is still true that problems can occur, the odds are reduced dramatically by the measures your league or school has put in place.

1-2 points: Your child’s sports league or school is in great need of delivering timely, appropriate, professional training to its coaches, especially as it pertains to appropriate boundaries between coaches and kids.

3-4 points: Your child is participating in a very high-risk youth sports league or school athletic department.  Check with your league operator or athletic director immediately about future plans for contemporary psychosocial training.

Sport Success 360 is the premier training course when it comes to helping coaches with the many unique issues they face in youth sports today, including developing successful, safe, and meaningful relationships with kids.  Talk to your league operator, school athletic director (or other school administrators) about how you can implement Sport Success 360 today!
www.drstankovich.com

ESPN premiered “The Marinovich Project” last week, offering up close and personal views of the way Todd Marinovich was raised to play football under his father Marv’s relentless training.  This story was especially interesting to me, as I am about the same age as Todd, and even back in the 1980′s (before the internet!) I remember hearing about this “bionic QB” being built out in California by his dad.  Unlike today, where high school athletes are regularly talked about on ESPN and other national sport outlets, for us to even hear — much less watch video — of a high school quarterback from the west coast was simply unheard of.  I remember seeing Marinovich on television and hearing about all the hype surrounding how he was literally “built” to play football – and how his dad controlled his every meal and put him through unbelievable training workouts.

Since first hearing about Marinovich in high school, I continued to watch from afar as he went on to play college and professional football, and I went on to graduate school to study human thinking and behavior.  While I never obsessed on Marinovich, he was always in the back of my mind, especially later in my professional counseling career when meeting with parents at my office that seemed to be obsessed with their kid’s athletic development. After watching Marinovich burn out from football, his story (sadly) served as an example I used with parents who were clearly going too hard with their kid.

What one famous behaviorist once said…

Interestingly, I remember in graduate school learning about the famous behaviorist John Watson, and specifically learning about his claims that if he could control all the surroundings of a kid from birth onto adulthood, that he could essentially develop the kid into anything he wanted (i.e. a doctor, artist, accountant, etc.).  His argument was that environment, not genetics, play a much bigger role when it comes to human development.  In the Marinovich example, one could easily say Watson’s theory may have held up – at least for a short while.  While Marv did seemingly develop his kid into an elite-level QB, the price they both paid for the efforts seems to have been a hefty one indeed (ESPN revealed their personal struggles in the program – Todd with drugs, and Marv with failed marriages).

Some of my other observations from the Marinovich program included:

• This was a perfect example of erroneous human thinking – we often believe if somebody is “good” at something, they must also love doing it.  Todd admitted he liked playing football, but to objectively parse out that he “loved” playing was rather difficult, especially with his militant-style father never giving him a chance to experience life without football.
• The pursuit of playing in the NFL seemed to serve as a utopia for the Marinovich’s, leaving Todd in no-mans land once he finally made it to the league.  What do you do for the rest of your life once you have played in the NFL at the age of 21??  Todd struggled with this, and admitted on the program he really didn’t know what to do “next” as this was his end-all, be-all lifelong pursuit.
• Marv Marinovich appeared to be a very loving and caring father, but also a troubled one.  He clearly obsessed with Todd’s development, even to the point of losing jobs and marriages.  Supporting your child is one thing, but living your entire life through your child is another.
• It was really no surprise for me to learn about the drug usage Todd admitted to while playing football.  Of course, it’s never advised to recklessly use street drugs, but in the case of Todd Marinovich it’s easy to see why he would turn to drugs (or anything for that matter) that would provide a respite from all the pressure and expectations placed upon him.  Again, this doesn’t excuse or endorse the behavior, but instead hopes to explain it.
• I found Todd to be a very interesting, thoughtful, and caring guy.  Most of us simply saw him as some kind of super-human machine when we first heard of him in the 1980′s, but after all that he has been through he came off in the program as a level-headed and cerebral guy.  No bitterness, no animosity, and no hatred toward his dad (or anyone else).  If anything, he appeared more confused by all that has happened the last 25+ years of his life – almost as if he had been on the sidelines watching his life play out based on a story written by his dad.

I’m sure there are other parents out there today similar to Marv Marinovich, obsessed with their child’s athletic development to the point where all other life pursuits are thwarted.  This is unfortunate for a number of reasons, the least being the fact that even with 24/7 training the pursuit of one day becoming a professional is still an unbelievable long-shot for most kids (even if John Watson would think differently if he were alive today!).  Not only are the odds against “making it” (even Todd Marinovich admitted to his God-given talents being just as, if not more important as his training was), but leading an imbalanced life as Todd did often sets people up to be unprepared in many other important ways.  Even in the best-case scenario when an athlete does “make it,” the average professional sports career is only 3-4 years, making holistic life skill development that much more important than exclusive sport training.

Every sports family should watch the Todd Marinovich story and talk openly as a family about the tradeoffs that often come part and parcel with 100% devoting to sport development.  At the end of the day, we should, at minimum, learn a few basic things from this story:

- While it sounds great in theory, John Watson’s original idea of creating a persona (i.e. a football quarterback) is really more of a talking point for balancing nature vs. nurture when it comes to personality development. To try an control a young persons surroundings like Marv Marinovich did is not only unhealthy, but potentially dangerous.

- When people feel overwhelmed, pressured, and don’t see a way out of their circumstances, it is very common for them to turn to drugs, alcohol, or a number of other reckless and dangerous behaviors.  The short answer for this is that they provide a temporary “break,” or respite, so that the individual doesn’t have to continue to stress out over his or her circumstances.

- Perhaps the biggest oversight by Marv Marinovich was that while he taught his son how to succeed on the field, he apparently stopped short of teaching Todd how to use his athletic skills off the field.  When an athlete compartmentalizes all his learning through sport into only being useful in sports, he has missed an incredibly invaluable learning opportunity.  Ironically, Todd Marinovich learned countless athletic transferable skills (i.e. discipline, teamwork, goal setting, etc.), yet was never taught how to parlay those skills into everyday life experiences (like learning how to successfully deal with stress).

Check out our entire line of sport and life skill products at the AHPS website!

www.drstankovich.com