The Blackboard
(June 2003)

 “Youth Sports”
By Ron Jones, MS

Today as many as 47 million children participate in U.S. sport programs with over three million adults assisting.  Positive youth sport programs can not only improve children physically, but also psychologically and socially.  With today’s epidemic levels of obesity and Type II diabetes, it is even more important that youth participate in daily physical activity and don’t drop out of sports due to burnout.  However, many sports programs are turning kids off to physical activity because of over-zealous adults focused on winning at all costs and making kids sports “professional.”  Kids are NOT pros!  There are two basic sport models that explain the important differences between youth and profession sports.  These sport models are the Developmental Model (youth) and the Professional Model (adults).  The Professional Model of sport explains the goals of professional sports—to win, make money, and entertain.  If you don’t win in pro sports, you are down the road.  Nothing wrong with that—it’s just the nature of the pro game in the adult world.  In sharp contrast is the Developmental Model of sport for youth whose goal is to develop the individual while providing a “quality of experience” for the child.  Youth sports should be focused on the process of developing skills while providing a positive environment.  The emphasis in youth sports should not be winning but rather the process of learning and performing sport skills along with good sportsmanship.  Adults can quickly ruin a positive youth sport experience for a child by imposing adult stressors and the professional model of sport goals like winning at all cost. 

The latest trends in “youth” sports are to make them “professional” by hiring professional coaches and having the kids training and competing all year long.  From a motor development standpoint, it is not healthy for young children to do the same repetitive sport movements year after year—they need a variety of movements to properly develop physically not to mention the psychological issues that arise from the kids being over-scheduled and pushed by adults.  Numerous surveys of youth athletes reveal the “real reasons” kids play sports—and they are not what you would probably perceive as an adult.  Kids play sports to (in this order): 1) to have fun 2) to improve skills 3) to be with friends and make new ones and 4) for thrills and excitement.  Winning didn’t factor into the top list.  In fact, numerous studies show that kids put the relationship with the coach (quality of experience) and playing over winning.  Even more interesting is that when kids are happy with their coach and sport they can work even harder and produce the “winning” results anyway—but just from a different philosophy and approach.  Most of our lives we spend as adults with adult pressures.  There is a very short time to be a child.  Let kids play, learn cool skills, and enjoy the experience…the winning will take care of itself as they perform their skills well with enjoyment.  And remember—kids are NOT pros!  Only 1 out of 12,000 high school athletes make the pros—so why are adults treating youth sports as feeder programs for the pros?

Next month, I’ll be writing on nutrition and portion sizes.  We don’t need all this food!  Many restaurant meals now are equivalent to 4-5 meals!  Too much!

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