Brea Schmidt

Brea Schmidt grew up in Oil City, Pennsylvania, shooting basketball in her driveway for hours. Her dad was a basketball referee with fifty years under his belt. Her older sister was a standout player. And her grandfather — a man everyone in town knew as Ducky — was an experienced basketball coach who had been around the game long enough that he could have offered instruction, analysis, or critique at any moment.

He attended every one of Brea’s games. He always sat on the top bleacher.

What Brea remembers most is not his basketball knowledge. It’s that he was simply there. A steady presence. When she wanted his advice, she could go to him — and he always had it. But it was when she went to him. She describes a moment from one of the last games of her senior year — a foul shot in a big gym, the crowd quiet, and then a voice from the top bleacher: “Put it in, Breazy.” She laughed. She made the shot. She looked up at him. That was Ducky.

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He was just there. He was a steady presence. If there’s anybody that could have been coaching from the stands or coaching me after the game, it would have been him. But what I remember most is that he was just there.

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That memory is the foundation of The Top Bleacher, the platform Brea created to support sports parents navigating the realities of today’s youth sports culture. She didn’t build it because she has the answers. She built it because she’s still in it — a mom of three kids across multiple sports, a former multi-sport athlete, a mental well-being advocate through her platform The Thinking Branch, and a sports parent who is honest enough to admit that her own ego sometimes walks into the gym with her.

In this conversation with Todd, Brea talks about what it actually means to show up for your athlete — and why that question is harder and more important than it sounds.

One of the most honest threads in the conversation is about guilt. Brea has three kids playing multiple sports, and like most sports parents, she can’t be at everything. She describes the early pressure she put on herself to be physically present at every game — and the slow realization that this standard was both impossible and, in some ways, beside the point. Showing up, she says, doesn’t always mean being in the bleachers. It can mean watching a game on an app and being able to talk about it afterward. It can mean sitting on the edge of the bed at the end of the day and asking how they’re really doing. The message the athlete receives is the same: I love you, I’m paying attention, and I’m here.

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Showing up doesn’t always have to mean physically being there. There are so many ways that we can show up for our athletes and for our kids that don’t involve having to be there.

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Her kids, she says, have figured this out before she did. They’re like, “Mom, it’s fine. We know you love us. We know you’d be there if you could.”

The conversation turns to the sports-parent ego, and Brea is candid about her own. She describes walking into a gym already stressed from a hard day and feeling the pull to react to a bad call, to get caught up in the noise. She knows the feeling. Her dad was a referee for fifty years, which makes it worse. She has to tell herself: don’t get caught up in the noise. This is about the kids. What she’s found most meaningful in the response to The Top Bleacher isn’t the parents who already have it figured out — it’s the ones who are willing to admit that their ego sometimes takes the wheel. That honesty, she says, is where the real conversation starts.

Brea also talks about what it means to give the experience back to the athlete. When adversity arrives — a roster decision that doesn’t go the way your child hoped, a season that doesn’t unfold as planned — the instinct as a parent is to fix it. She understands that instinct. She’s had it herself. But she describes a moment with her daughter around club soccer rosters where she and her husband made a different choice: they sat her down and put the question back to her. If it’s bothering you, what are you doing extra? What do you want to do about it? The daughter took ownership of her own development from that point forward. That shift, Brea says, is the whole point. Sports is a classroom for life lessons. Parents who rush to fix adversity take that classroom away.

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If you are thinking about how you’re impacting your kid and if your kid feels loved, you are probably already doing the right thing.

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The final thread is one Brea returns to throughout the conversation: sports parents need care, too. Not just because it makes them better parents, but because they are human beings whose own well-being matters. She describes walking during the hour before a game rather than standing around — using that time for her own mental and physical health. She talks about therapy, about modeling what it looks like to ask for help, about the message it sends to her kids when they see her taking care of herself. Self-care isn’t selfish, she says. It’s part of parenting. And sports parenting is one hat a person wears — it should not consume the entire person.

Near the end of the episode, Todd asks Brea what one piece of advice she would leave every sports parent. Her answer: before you drive to practice or walk into a game, say to yourself, “This is about the kids.” Center yourself. Remember your role. Show up as a supportive presence. Be what Ducky was for her — just there, in the stands, saying I love you and I love watching you do what you do.

Todd’s response to that answer is one of the most memorable moments of the conversation. Watch or listen to hear what he said — and why Brea immediately embraced it.