As we continue to train young kids as though they are mini professional athletes, an important byproduct to note are the kids who are cut from a team at a very early age. When we develop youth sport teams based on perceived talent (i.e. the A and B teams), we create unnecessary mental health issues that generally lead to more harm than good. For the better kids who make the A team, they become vulnerable to over-training, staleness, and youth sport burnout — and often voluntarily quit sports prematurely because they grew tired of playing, not because they lost their athletic abilities. For kids who are cut early in life — almost always before physical growth spurts and puberty — we not only send them an unfair message that they are not good enough, we don’t even give them the chance to see if they like the sport and can develop into it as they grow. As a result, kids who are cut rarely come back to the sport. Is this an ideal sport paradigm for most kids?
Why are we pushing so hard?
The question I have in this moment is why are we continuing to professionalize youth sports? There are no more additional opportunities at the professional and college levels (meaning roughly the same, small number of athletes progress to these levels). Is it because more parents today see the value of youth sports, and think by cranking it up to be serious their kids will gain from the experience even more? Possibly, but it feels like it is more than that at play. Is it a combination of more “elite” youth sport organizations and coaches available, and more parents ripe to have their child selected for such an experience? This potential reason has the most legs from my view, as I think it is indeed flattering to have your child selected for something, especially something perceived as prestigious.
While more of these serious sport opportunities emerge for kids, and we push away the kids who don’t look too good at earlier and earlier ages, we set up a number of potential problems and mental health issues:
- The kids who are cut no longer have sports, and in essence, physical activity. When you push kids out of sports, you are pushing them away from their friends and the benefits experienced from physical activity. If we want kids to spend less time on screens, youth sports are a great way to go!
- The kids cut early rarely, if ever, come back. When you cut a kid from a team early in life, rarely does the child return to the sport years later. This can be especially problematic for high school coaches when there simply aren’t enough kids to field a team.
- The kids who are selected early are often the early physically developing kids, and these differences almost always even out over time. Don’t overlook kids who haven’t hit their growth spurt yet, and don’t put too much into the kid who grew early in life! Instead, keep all kids involved in sports!
- Sport burnout is real, and when we over-train kids we leave them vulnerable. When we divide kids early in life based solely on talent, the kids in the better group run a significantly greater risk for sport burnout, and eventually leaving sports prematurely.
- Perhaps more than anything, we lose sight that kids benefit most from sports when they find sports to be FUN, not a job! Kids have fun being with their friends, laughing, and learning how to play together as a team. It is not fun for kids to feel like their practices are like boot camp, and that they constantly have expectations placed on them to perform. How do I know this? Because I have personally treated, coaches, or worked with in some capacity literally thousands of kids like this over my career.
As someone who regularly examines sport psychology research, I have yet to find any empirical evidence that supports cutting kids from sports early in age for better overall development, nor have I read any research that supports removing the “fun” part of youth sports in exchange for training kids as though they are being prepared for pro sports. In fact, talk to any elite athlete who has played college or pro sports and they will tell you to keep kids involved, make it fun, and always prepare for plans beyond sports with such long odds of making it.
Final thoughts
When we talk about how to improve youth sports, it is important to note that by getting away from mini professional sports we do not mean balloons, streamers, and participation trophies for simply signing up. There is a healthy middle ground where kids can be both empowered to compete and be part of a team, as well as be taught sport skills and encouraged to succeed and play their best. Unfortunately, in this moment we have erroneously dichotimized youth sports into either highly competitive, or playful recreation leagues that are only about making everybody happy. With so many reasons for kids to tether to technology and not get outside and play, it is important that adults take full advantage of youth sports and the holistic development kids experience as a result.
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