In August 2010 MomsTeam.com celebrated its tenth anniversary. As we head into 2011, this seems like the appropriate time to look back at where youth sports were 10 years ago, where it is now, and where it is going. Are things getting better, worse, or are they about the same?
As an athlete, a parent of triplet sons who were active in youth sports, a soccer coach, the founder of a travel soccer club, and as a mom, I experienced first-hand the problems in youth sports: the politics, the winning-at-all-costs attitude, the misbehaving parents and coaches, the failure of most youth sports organizations to make injury prevention and safety a priority and to provide an opportunity for all kids to continue playing team sports through high school, and to include more women as coaches and administrators.
I started MomsTeam.com ten years ago because I wanted to put what I had learned - for better, and, oftentimes, for worse - to use: to provide youth sports parents, particularly moms, practical advice on what they could to do in their own families and communities to make youth sports safer, saner, less stressful and more inclusive.
My original plan was to write a book, a "Mother's Guide to Youth Sports." But then I realized the best way to reach the largest number of sports parents, and to keep the information current, was to start a website, MomsTeam.com.
When I started MomsTeam 10 years ago, many of the problems I saw in youth sports (concussions, dehydration, overuse injuries, the trend to early specialization and year-round-play, sudden cardiac death from ill-timed blows to the chest and lack of AEDs, contagious bacterial skin infections such as MRSA, and abuse of youth athletes in its myriad forms (physical, emotional and sexual), unequal playing time, out-of-control parents, abuse of officials by parents and coaches, politics, lack of women coaches and administrators, and the emphasis on sports to the exclusion of family life, weren't being much talked or written about. There was no website like MomsTeam that addressed all of these issues in an objective, practical and informative way.
So where are we today? In some ways, things have gotten better, and some ways they have stayed the same, and in some ways they have gotten worse.
First, the good news. There is a great deal more education being done on safety issues, although, because more and more kids, particularly girls are playing, the jury is still out as to whether it has actually resulted in fewer injuries.
In some ways the problems we saw in youth sports in 2000 are still about the same:
Finally, in some ways, unfortunately, things have only gotten worse.Youth sports have become even more of a big business than it was 10 years ago, and that isn't necessarily a good thing. Some coaches want their players to go to summer camps in which, in some cases, they have a financial interest. Some coaches are only too happy to lead - and in some cases mislead - parents and their kids into thinking that if they don't go to this camp or use that private coach they aren't going to win a place on the high school varsity or get a college scholarship.
There is a whole industry that has sprouted to provide private sports instruction, sports performance gyms are the latest rage, the number of tournaments and multi-million dollar sports complexes have exploded. Programs to provide sports instruction to children [29] as young as six months are sprouting up like weeds all around the country, luring parents with promises that they can give their toddler an edge or accelerate the natural developmental process.
Some schools are spending millions on new football stadiums while their academic programs suffer from budget cutbacks. Almost 4 out of 10 of the country's high schools still lack access to an athletic trainer with specialized expertise in the recognition, treatment of and recovery from sports injuries.
More and more programs have been forced to impose user fees and raise vast sums of money through booster clubs, fundraisers and the like just to keep teams on the field, putting sports out of the reach of low- and even middle-income families.
Media coverage of youth sports - online, in newspapers and on cable - is becoming more and more intense, as has competition for scarce roster spots on high school and elite travel teams, with more and more athletes competing for places.
Childhood obesity is a major problem, with the dropout rate from youth sports just one one factor: poor diet, too many video games, too much television, and not enough after school sports programs for kids who aren't good enough or don't want to play on sports teams, also play a role. A recent study [30] even shows that youth sports aren't providing even those who make the team the hour a day [31] of moderate to vigorous physical activity per day they need to stay healthy and fit.
Yet being an elite youth athlete these days has become even more all-consuming for more families, further crowding out other activities (including good old-fashioned free time) and gobbling up more and more of a family's discretionary income, with school vacations now devoted to traveling to tournaments and the all-around camp experience replaced by with specialized sports camps.
The overuse injury problem has grown into a full-blown epidemic in some sports. More and more athletes, particularly girls, seem to be suffering serious ACL injuries [32].
Are kids just too busy with sports? For most, I would say yes. Very few youth athletes end up playing at the college level. Fewer still make the pros. Yet sports have become a matter of life-or-death for many kids, leading inevitably to early burnout and overuse injuries, and leaving little time for spending time with their families. I have been a strong advocate for many years, and continue to advocate, for a balance between sports and family [33], for kids to have time to just be kids. Studies show that unstructured, free play is vital [34] for a child's development, yet more and more parents feel compelled in a society where jobs are scarce and competition in every aspect of life is all-consuming, to jam their kids schedules with organized activities such as sports.
If anything, the emphasis on winning, by any means, fair or foul, has become more and more pronounced over the past ten years. Parents have so much invested in their child's athletic success that they seem more inclined than ever to believe that rules that result in their child being kicked off the team (such as for hazing or for under-age drinking) should no longer apply [35], even to the point of going to court to try to keep their kids playing.
Yet studies have consistently shown over the years and continue to show today that kids, even at the high school level, would rather play on a losing team than sit on the bench of a winning team [36]. Winning is important, but in the adult-centered world of today's youth sports it has become the only thing. We need to listen to our kids, to make youth sports more child-centered, more about having fun, more about skill development and giving them an opportunity to start a love affair with sports and physical exercise that can last a lifetime instead of ending, as is too often the case, in them quitting sports or being cut from the team by the time they start middle school.
I am afraid we are losing the battle against a win-at-all-costs attitude in youth sports, but MomsTeam and I won't give up trying to stem that tide.
Aggression is something about which I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, there is a certain amount of aggression that is simply inborn, especially in boys, and sports provide them a way to safely channel that aggression. On the other hand, aggressive behavior in sports can turn into violence, both on and off the field [37], and that kind of behavior needs to be controlled, and I'm not sure that it is in all cases.
Part of MomsTeam's mission from the very beginning has been to make youth sports less stressful - for the parents, for their kids, for the coaches, for the officials. Unfortunately, I think we have been fighting against a rising tide of stress that is, more and more, part of everyday life, especially in the last couple of years since the economy went south, with our kids becoming just as stressed, if not more stressed, than their parents.
On the one hand, there are those who argue that subjecting our kids to these stresses is good, that it prepares them for the stresses they are inevitably going to face as adults. On the other hand, I see one of a parent's most important jobs as providing kids some shelter, some respite from the stresses of the adult world, to give them chances to just be kids.
Unfortunately, sports, which used to provide that opportunity, whether it be in a pick-up basketball game at the playground or baseball game on the sandlot, are so highly organized and competitive these days that sports have become just as, if not more, stressful for kids than anything else they do.
So, is youth sports in better shape today than 10 years ago? Not necessarily better, but definitely different, and the overall trends are disturbing.
Safety education appears to be an area where progress is being made, but a great deal more needs to and should be done to educate parents and athletes about the dangers of concussion, heat illness, and overuse injuries.
As far as restoring a balance between sports and family life, the battle may well have been lost and, if I had to make a prediction, things are going to only get more out of whack in the next ten years.
In the final analysis, it is going to be up to individual parents to do what they feel is best for their kids, for their safety, for their development and for their overall health, to enroll their children as much as possible in programs that emphasize having fun, skill development, and using sports to teach life lessons, organizational and time management skills as much as winning, to find the balance between sports and family that works best for them.
All MomsTeam can do is to continue to do what we can to help sports parents achieve their goals, to continue educating parents and coaches on ways to make youth sports safer, saner, less stressful and more inclusive; to be the trusted source for youth sports parents for the next ten years as we have become over the last ten.
Want to share your thoughts on the state of youth sports? Join MomsTeam on Facebook [38] or send Brooke an email at delench@momsteam.com [39].
Posted December 20, 2010; Revised December 21, 2010
Links:
[1] https://momsteam.com/node/149
[2] https://momsteam.com/node/208
[3] https://momsteam.com/node/3015
[4] https://momsteam.com/node/3125
[5] https://momsteam.com/node/112
[6] https://momsteam.com/node/3227
[7] https://momsteam.com/node/301
[8] https://momsteam.com/node/371
[9] https://momsteam.com/node/2644
[10] https://momsteam.com/node/798
[11] https://momsteam.com/node/800
[12] https://momsteam.com/node/881
[13] https://momsteam.com/node/3006
[14] https://momsteam.com/node/867
[15] https://momsteam.com/node/866
[16] https://momsteam.com/node/2697
[17] https://momsteam.com/node/864
[18] https://momsteam.com/node/280
[19] https://momsteam.com/node/282
[20] https://momsteam.com/node/3122
[21] https://momsteam.com/node/1278
[22] https://momsteam.com/node/780
[23] https://momsteam.com/node/816
[24] https://momsteam.com/node/283
[25] https://momsteam.com/node/414
[26] https://momsteam.com/node/407
[27] https://momsteam.com/node/2662
[28] https://momsteam.com/node/2462
[29] https://momsteam.com/node/3245
[30] https://momsteam.com/node/3242
[31] https://momsteam.com/node/3241
[32] https://momsteam.com/node/802
[33] https://momsteam.com/node/1350
[34] https://momsteam.com/node/1474
[35] https://momsteam.com/node/1230
[36] https://momsteam.com/node/3110
[37] https://momsteam.com/node/1121
[38] http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#!/MomsTeam
[39] mailto:delench@momsteam.com
[40] https://momsteam.com/concussion/concussions-in-high-school-sports-study-provides-new-insights-into-causes-symptoms-manage