Great question.
I'm sure very few parents will ever put their kids in sports to get to the Olympic Games. They do it to build all these great skills that you guys have brought. But what I find is that these kids are often very goal-oriented, because that's one of the concepts: we're going there in three weeks, six months, two years.
I think they've also learned to desire issues such as being a great team player. You look at the leaders within their area—for me in my sport, there are six lanes in a pool, and there's always the concept of concentration, attention to skills, attention to details—and they're getting ready long-term as competitions approach.
I think there are so many great qualities that these kids have, but one of the main ones is they're forced to plan their school work, they're forced to plan their day-to-day organization. So if they swim at 5:30 in the morning, they have to make their lunch the night before, and they have to do their homework. They have to do so many things that average kids don't do. Athletes often have a higher GPA at university than the average student. On top of that, they represent their schools with great pride.
One of the biggest challenges we have when we get to that point is that we have a lot of Canadian kids who go to U.S. colleges. In my sport, 150 of my best swimmers go to the NCAA system. So we have to build our CIS college system where they want to stay in Canada and they want the pride to be in a Canadian university. They get wooed by scholarships.
I can tell you that most great Canadians who compete at the international level for Canada, and they do well in Canada, have stayed in Canada through the college system. They go to Canadian universities. For me, there hasn't been a Canadian who won a gold medal for Canada who competed in the U.S. in terms of college systems. So I think the quality we're looking for in terms of planning and long-term thinking is the reason we put our kids into sports.