David Prince has a message about how sports can be used to mature children, specifically boys.  It’s very contra-church cultural from other messages about sports and very much worth your time.  He also expands the topic into a more general theme about how to raise boys.

One of the points he covers is how to deal with kids who sit the bench.  He’s written an article about this called The Glory of Bench Warming

Here are his first five principles he developed for bench sitting in basketball.  You’ll need to read the article to get the other five:

1. Make sure your posture communicates that you are engaged. Sit on the edge of your seat.
2. Be the loudest player on the bench cheering for your team.
3. Leap from your seat every time your team scores or gets a turnover.
4. Get out of your seat during timeouts and go out on the court and greet the players who are in the game.
5. Talk only about the game to your teammates on the bench.

This article about Christians in Sports is also worth considering