How a Memorial Became a Mission
The personal story behind the research, the questions, and the path toward youth sports reform.
This is mine. For more than two decades, youth sports have been woven through nearly every part of my life—as a father, coach, tournament organizer, nonprofit founder, facility operator, researcher and, eventually, an advocate for reform.
But I did not start out trying to change youth sports.
I certainly did not start out trying to investigate it.
I was a dad.
I coached because my kids played. I helped organize teams because somebody needed to do it. I learned how to put on tournaments because we needed ways to help families offset the cost of playing baseball.
At the time, those things were simply part of youth sports.
Looking back, however, I can see that I was learning lessons I would not fully understand until many years later.
I was learning about leadership. I was learning about money. I was learning about volunteers. I was learning about facilities. I was learning about the difference between having rules and having accountability. Most importantly, I was learning about people.
Then, on April 27, 2005, our family's world changed.
We lost our oldest son, Brian Allen Crawford, in an automobile accident.
There are moments that divide your life into before and after.
That was ours.
What followed eventually became the Brian Crawford Memorial and an annual memorial baseball tournament. Those tournaments traveled across Oklahoma—from Shawnee to Norman, Chickasha, Choctaw and beyond.
What began as a way to remember Brian slowly became something much larger.
Years later, there would be a sports complex bearing his name.
There would be facility operations.
There would be nonprofit work.
There would be Little League.
There would be municipal governments and public records.
There would be spreadsheets, databases and thousands upon thousands of pieces of information.
Eventually, there would be Hidden Valley — Integrity of the Game and a much larger question about how youth sports operate in Oklahoma.
But none of that existed at the beginning.
There was no master plan.
There was not a dataset.
There was not a book.
There was not a reform campaign.
There was simply a family trying to move forward while carrying someone with us who was no longer physically here.
Why This Blog ExistsWhy I'm Writing The Journey
I've spent years documenting youth sports through records, data, contracts, financial models, facility agreements and historical research.
That work matters.
But data does not tell the entire story.
A spreadsheet can tell you what happened.
It usually cannot tell you why someone started looking.
And it certainly cannot explain what it feels like to spend years following one question only to discover that the answer leads to five more questions.
My book, Integrity of the Game vs. Economic Impact (Politics): The Oklahoma Business Plan, was intentionally written primarily as a systems analysis. Its purpose is to examine structures—how tournaments operate, how money moves, how public facilities are used and where responsibility exists or becomes unclear.
The Journey is different.
This is the story behind the research.
I want to go back to the beginning and walk through it chronologically—not knowing in 2001 what I would know in 2026.
That distinction matters.
I do not want to rewrite history through the benefit of hindsight.
When I did not understand something then, I will tell you that.
When something represents my opinion, I will tell you that.
When the documents later changed my understanding of an event, we will look at those documents together.
And when I got something wrong, misunderstood something, or changed my mind, that is part of the journey too.
Because this is not supposed to be a story about one person having all the answers.
It is about what happens when someone keeps asking questions.
The Larger ArcFrom Memorial to Research to Reform
Today I can look backward and see connections that were impossible for me to see while I was living them.
Coaching taught me one lesson.
The Oklahoma Braves taught me another.
Losing Brian changed everything.
Memorial tournaments taught me about operations.
Running a sports facility taught me about the business.
Building the Brian Crawford Memorial Sports Complex taught me about partnerships, fundraising and public infrastructure.
Later experiences caused me to start asking harder questions about transparency and accountability.
Eventually, those questions became research.
And the research eventually became advocacy.
But we're not starting there.
We're going back to where it actually started.
A kid.
A ballfield.
A family.
A coach.
And an opportunity to play.
That's where The Journey begins.
I didn't begin this journey trying to reform youth sports. I was a dad trying to give kids an opportunity to play. The questions came later.
A Question for You
Before tomorrow's story, I want to ask you something.
Think about your own childhood. Who was the coach, teacher, volunteer, neighbor or community member who gave you an opportunity simply because they believed kids deserved one?
And here's the harder question:
If you were that same child today, would the system still give you that opportunity?
I'd genuinely like to hear your story.
Before There Was Research — There Was a Kid Who Wanted to Play
We're going back to Moore, Oklahoma, long before there was a Brian Crawford Memorial, Baseball Heaven, Hidden Valley or Integrity of the Game. Before I became a coach, I was simply a kid who needed adults willing to give me an opportunity.