In less than a week, the never-ending lists of extracurricular activities that many American families are accustomed to have come to an abrupt halt. For the foreseeable future, there will be no pick ups, no drop offs, no racing to and from practices, games, or any extracurricular. Right now, there are no practices, no games, and no weekend tournaments. Nothing.
This is the new normal with no definitive end in sight. What are we to do? Might this hustle hiatus heed better judgment around which activities might be worth pursuing when we get back to the bustle? Perhaps, this extra time spent at home will lead to some real thinking about how we prioritize our time, time that otherwise had been spent playing catch-up on an unrelenting schedule.
Being a 30-year old bachelor, admittedly, I haven’t the first clue as to what it’s like to scramble from work to errands to school to practice, all while coordinating multiple drop-offs and pick-ups. However, having earned a Master’s degree in Sport Psychology, worked with student-athletes - and done a fair bit of coaching - I’ve become increasingly familiar with this world. It seems that the school day has become a warm-up for everything else that follows: multiple multi-hour practices, leaving little to no time for an at-home meal or even homework.
We’ve bought into this arbitrary ideal to swap drills for play b/c we want to be a “step ahead”…
….The reality is that play fosters creativity, communication, ingenuity, autonomy, and movement. Kids are kids, not mini-adults.
Then, there are the weekends. If one game isn’t enough, some scramble to and from multiple tournaments. I’ve seen scores of parents voluntarily buy into this idea that more is better for their children. More, in this case, is not the number of activities; rather, it’s the number of hours directed towards a single activity and this is trickling down to younger age groups. Structured practice, training, and drills have all but replaced free play. This trend is not leading to a good outcome. Sport specialization is defined as year-round participation in a sport at the exclusion of others. Such exclusion is comprised of a high training volume per week (high meaning the number training hours per week exceeds one’s age. The logic here is the Gladwellian to accumulate those 10,0000 hours as fast as possible and, if not, more because more equals better. Better, then, might result to a scholarship, a shot at the Olympics or a professional career. It’s far more likely that none of these scenarios will play out than they will.
There is not a shred of evidence that correlates success in youth sports with a professional sports career, let alone a college scholarship. While earning MVP at a weekend showcase or tournament for 10-11 year-olds is no small feat, it’s rarely indicative of what’s to follow. There’s so much developmentally that hasn’t even happened yet. According to the NCAA, less than 2% of high school athletes receive a college athletic scholarship (<1% to Division I) and only 2% of college athletes will continue to play a sport professionally. Even then, if young athlete’s talent stands above the others, so much so that they will land a scholarship, consider them lucky if they can get to that point without having incurred serious injuries.
The data connecting sport specialization to physical injuries is staggering and these aren’t the types of injuries from kids being kids. Moreover, they’re from kids training like adults. This is problematic because of the dramatic physiological differences between children and adults. Researchers captured data from five different studies focusing on around around 5,600 athletes ages 18 and younger found that those who specialized were 81% more likely to develop overuse injuries. In a 2015 study published by the American Academy of Pediatrics, ACL injuries increased at an annual rate of 2.3% between 6-18 year olds in high-impact sports such as soccer and basketball over the past 20 years. Kids getting Tommy John surgery used to be unthinkable, unfortunately, now it’s not. These injuries are developed from muscle imbalances attributed to repetitive motion. Overuse injuries are just one subset of detrimental outcomes associated with specialization.
Psychological burnout, a much less tangible but more impactful one, is another. It’s worth noting that this was something that only used to be discussed in conversation around adult professions, not children playing sports. When kids burn out on sport, they burn out physical activity in its entirety. Recently, research conducted by Utah State University in conjunction with the Aspen Institute revealed that age 11 is the average age of a child who quits sports. For many, that’s because sport is no longer fun. There are lessons to be learned from winning and losing, but when our obsession with these outcomes takes precedence over everything else, kids quit - and for good - meaning they’ll never have the opportunity to learn those lessons we say we value. Rhetoric and action are not the same; while we might not feel the effects of such high levels of inactivity now, it won’t be long until prolonged inactivity leads to a whole host of other problems, often in the form of diseases, many of which you and I will be paying for.
Who is specialization really about? The parents (egos) or the kids? Attend one of these weekend “showcases”; you be the judge.
Then, there’s the monetary aspect, which extends well beyond a uniform, shoes, and post-game snacks. Today, costs include (but are certainly not limited to): home uniforms, away uniforms, new gear, travel, food, hotels, tournament(s) expenditures, and other fees. It’s a lucrative business, which explains the proliferation of “specialists” or “gurus” chomping at the bit to train your child because they claim there is no off-season. On the low-end of the spectrum, the annual costs associated with sport specialization costs round out to about $2000 - $3000. Repeat this for consecutive years and there’s a college scholarship or two before your child has even stepped foot on a college campus. But, if it makes you feel better, you can still call it a “scholarship”.
Fortunately, more people are being made aware of this information and it’s permeated beyond the world of sports science. Former and current professional athletes – the very career many parents believe sport specialization participation will lead to - have started vocalizing their opposition towards specializing in a single sport. Perhaps, this is because many of them never specialized and, ironically, still went on to thrive at the highest levels in sport. Each year, TrackFootball – a football scouting service that independently evaluates data on football teams and athletes – conducts surveys on the total number of players on both Super Bowl rosters who participated in multiple sports in high school. For the last 4 years, over 90% of each roster (8 teams of around 60 players) has been comprised of athletes that participated in multiple sports in high school. There are countless examples of this, many of which extend beyond the sporting landscape within the U.S.
In the 2018 Winter Olympics, Norway – a country of under 6 million people – won with a total of 39 medal. For comparison, the United States finished fourth with 23 medals. Sport specialization is unheard of in Norway. They don’t even keep score of games until the age of 13. Over 90% of children grow up playing sports. Travel teams don’t exist until a child’s teenage years. Even then, it’s not until 13 that coaches begin to separate the noticeably talented from the rest of the pack. Granted there are plenty of differences between Norway and the U.S., but that doesn’t diminish the fact that their model is working, or in the very least, that their structure at the youth level is far superior to ours.
One moment captured amongst many in 2018
For most, specializing in a single sport is not a ticket to the big leagues or even a scholarship; rather, it’s the fast track to unwarranted injuries, prolonged physical inactivity, and considerable expenditures. Games, matches, tournaments, along with winning and losing are all off the radar. It’s my hope that this extra time might allow us to reconsider how we quantify success in sport for our youth. Winning and losing offer many lessons, but when they become the focal point – a mere result – then we’ve missed the mark, plus, opportunity for learning will have long been eliminated because kids quit long ago.
Specialization has turned into its own rat race. Regarding rat races, there are two distinguishing features: first, the chase never ends and, second, nobody wins. Right now, the chase has come to a standstill. It’s to re-evaluate how we quantify winning and losing because those are metrics that extend well beyond any scoreboard.
Shoutout to Chandler Maciel for providing feedback and some much-needed grammatical edits. Onward.
