October 3, 2004
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Posted on Sun, Oct. 03, 2004
What's the goal of kid sports?
The fall youth sports season is in full swing.
Are we having fun yet?
Wasted weekends. Late-night dinners. Anxiety over playing time and performance. As a parent, I accept those necessary evils as part of the process of my three children having fun, staying in shape and learning valuable life lessons.
But I'm having difficulty accepting the growing notion -- spawned by the Olympics and fueled by parents trying to give their children an edge -- that one of the chief goals of youth sports is to create mini-professionals.
This push for perfection can be seen in the rapid growth of ultra-competitive club sports and travel teams for children at increasingly younger ages. A generation ago, most youth sports leagues had defined seasons and made an effort to balance winning with the need to let every child play.
No more.
Today's club teams -- with the best of intentions -- use rec programs as feeder teams to identify the most talented athletes, who then try out for and play on increasingly competitive and elite teams. Some teams play year-round; many travel statewide and nationwide in search of the most competitive games. Sometimes the athletes are as young as 8.
The message couldn't be clearer: If you want to get to the Olympics -- or increasingly just to play your favorite sport in high school -- you have to start training single-mindedly when you begin elementary school.
This is the athletic equivalent of sending your kids to a school that, beginning in first grade, teaches only one subject. Yet no one seems to be asking if this trend is in the best long-term interests of youth sports and children's overall development.
Don't get me wrong. I love competitive youth sports. I played high school and college sports and have coached basketball, soccer, tennis and baseball teams of all ages over the past 25 years. I've seen it all -- from parents reducing their kids to tears on the field to a coach who put duct tape over a parent's mouth to shut him up -- and I keep coming back for more.
But I'm increasingly troubled over the need to force children to make decisions about their futures before they are emotionally and intellectually ready to make those choices or deal with the consequences.
Especially when they involve my own daughter.
A couple of weeks ago my 10-year-old, Laura, popped out the front door and offered to help me bring in groceries. All my antennas were instantly extended. This was her third offer to help in an hour. As any experienced parent knows, that could mean only one thing: She wanted something and wanted it bad.
Sure enough, less than a minute later, she screwed up her courage and here it came: ``Daddy, can I try out for volleyball?''
I wanted to give her a big hug and say: ``Volleyball is great. Of course you can play.'' But Laura loves soccer and for the past three years has played on a year-around, competitive club team with an unforgiving, mandatory practice schedule that leaves little time for playing school sports.
So I told her we needed to think about it. Disappointment swept across her face.
Laura knows her mom and I have a hard-and-fast rule against playing any more than one sport at a time. We don't want her (or our family) overwhelmed by after-school activities at the expense of her homework and family time. But if she is committed to year-around soccer, that precludes her playing another sport. Ever.
I wouldn't object if she wanted to drop soccer, even though it's been a positive experience and I enjoy being an assistant coach on the team. But she doesn't want to -- and she knows that if she did, even for a quarter of the year, she would probably be dropped from a team that includes many friends.
A dilemma
What to do?
I ventured a call to an expert, Jim Thompson, founder of the Positive Coaching Alliance at Stanford University, an organization that strives to teach coaches and parents how to keep the fun in playing.
He knew exactly what my daughter and I were facing.
``I was at a meeting with people who study youth sports and everybody around the table felt the increasing professionalism of youth sports and travel teams is a bad development,'' said Thompson. ``There are no comprehensive studies that I'm aware of on the subject. It just feels like a bad idea.''
To get a sense of what we are losing in the quest for perfection, we need only look back at why some of the country's youth leagues got started -- and how they were run.
Joe Tomlin started Pop Warner football in 1929 to take kids off the streets of Philadelphia and instill in them a sense of personal and community values. Carl Stotz founded Little League baseball in Williamsport, Pa., in 1938 because he wanted to provide his nephews with a field to play on and to teach the ideals of sportsmanship, fair play and teamwork.
Both groups accepted as many players as possible, guaranteed playing time for all players and established a set playing season that didn't conflict with school teams.
Stotz later divorced himself from the league he created over the advent of the Little League World Series. He never attended a single World Series game, saying in 1989 that it ``takes away from the sport what Little League is all about, a chance to play neighborhood baseball.''
Travel teams and competitive club sports teams are the natural extension of Little League's development of its World Series. They generally have fewer rules on playing time, place a higher emphasis on the development of players and teams and see year-around competition as a virtue. They also rob school sports teams and organizations such as Little League of the best players.
`Tremendous trend'
The director of the National Alliance for Youth Sports, Fred Engh, calls the trend toward year-around sports and travel teams the ``most notable thing that you'll see about youth sports today. There aren't any numbers to quantify this, but I can tell you it's a tremendous trend.''
And it's likely to get more pronounced if people like Robert Ziegler have their way. Ziegler, a soccer advocate and founder of Top Drawer Soccer, wrote last year: ``The top players, 1,800 of them or so, MUST NOT play high school soccer. . . . I know there are some good high school coaches and teams out there, but the fact remains the top player enters a lower overall talent environment when he enters high school soccer.''
That kind of attitude only serves to further justify many parents' actions to help their children hone their skills. Parents now pay an estimated $4.1 billion annually on private sports instruction for their children, and they are increasingly expected to dole out thousands of dollars a year for coaching and weekend jaunts to games and tournaments.
``If what we're trying to do is prepare kids for success in life, I think that for the vast majority of kids, playing in a variety of sports is the way to go,'' said Thompson. ``One of the things we advocate is asking parents where the drive for athletes to play comes from. . . . Is it from the child?''
In my daughter's case, I like to think that's definitely true.
Dubious motivation
But too often the instigators are parents with unrealistic visions of college scholarships and professional sports careers for their children.
Too few parents understand that there are far more academic scholarships available than athletic scholarships. Nor do they appreciate the odds against their child playing major college or professional sports.
Only one Little Leaguer in about 3,000 ever makes it to the major leagues. Basketball is no better. Only one out of every 10,000 youth basketball players makes it to the NBA.
Soccer? There isn't much money in the men's pro game in the United States; the women's pro league died last year. College scholarships are relatively scarce -- and many parents discover too late that foreign players are also recruited along for those scholarships that are available.
Nor do pushy parents and coaches seem to have a good handle on the increased risk of injury to children who play the same sport year-around. Thompson cites an American Medical Association report revealing an increase in the number of repetitive stress injuries in youth sports as athletes have shifted from playing 15 to 30 games in a season 20 years ago to upward of 40 to 50 games a year.
Armed with all that knowledge, I went back to see Laura for a father-daughter talk.
I told her that the decision was hers. My wife and I would bend our rules and allow her to try out for the school volleyball team if that coach was amenable to her missing practice when it conflicts with soccer.
I told her that as she progresses in volleyball, she will probably have to make a choice about which sport she prefers.
And I told her the story about a conversation I had with my dad when I was a boy.
My father was a parent in a generation that believed in the value of ``trying a sport out for size.'' Find something you're good at and enjoy, he'd tell me and my three brothers.
He loved to shoot baskets with us in the driveway and play catch with us in the back yard (baseball is his favorite sport). I remember vividly how proud he was when I made the Little League All-Star team at the age of 12 as a left-handed pitcher.
On summer nights, during games of catch, I'd tell him how much I idolized Sandy Koufax and that when I grew up I wanted to be a big league pitcher. I know my dad shared that dream because of how much he encouraged me to work hard.
Which made it that much harder three years later when I screwed up my courage and told him I was giving up baseball to try out for tennis .
The disappointment on his face was obvious. But he never tried to talk me out of it. He loved me more than he loved baseball, and it was never clearer to me than it was that spring day.
We all want the best for our children, as I do for Laura. As a parent, I lament how difficult the choices are in today's hyper-competitive world. But this I know: I may be disappointed if Laura ultimately gives up soccer, which she still loves. But the joy on her face when I told her the decision was hers will remain with me long after her playing days are over.
Thanks, Dad.
ED CLENDANIEL (eclendaniel@mercurynews.com) is an editorial writer at the Mercury News and a longtime coach of youth sports.
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