Analytics have become a big part of sports, even trickling down to the youth level. While supporters of sports analytics argue that the data revealed helps athletes efficiently isolate trouble spots and improve their game, there are criticisms that over-reliance on analytics creates mental health concerns including unnecessary anxiety, as well as steals from the natural fun of playing sports. For example, it wasn’t that long ago that hitters in baseball focused on simple statistics like batting average, HR’s and RBI, but today’s baseball players (including youth level) now talk about things like launch angles, spin rates, WAR, wRC+, and BABIP. Confused? You are not the only one, and you can only imagine how exhausting it must be for kids to constantly think and worry about their sports analytics.
Does data help, or hurt, kids trying to improve at sports?
Generally speaking, the more we learn in life, the better we are as it applies to self-improvement. For example, when you miss a question on a test, and then later learn the correct answer, you are in a much better position to get the question right the next time around. With sports, however, there are legitimate concerns that the data discovered may actually lead to a counter-force that offsets the value of the data. Specifically, when kids begin to feel anxious about what data you are observing and how you are using it to help with future improvement, the anxiety experienced often mitigates the potential value of the data being used to help a kid succeed.
Applying this observation to a real-life situation and you can see how this plays out — after a coach applies analytic techniques to gather data and then uses the findings to help a kid improve, many kids begin to feel anxiety when directing their attention to, say, their batting launch angle rather than simply getting into good hitting situations and allowing their talent to guide their progress (in other words, the approach baseball players have used for almost 200 years). Instead, I talk to many kids who feel completely bogged down by their spin rate, launch angle, and various other obscure statistics. Kids want to have fun, swing the bat, and enjoy the experience, not stare at an iPad and try to figure out how they can add a few more revolutions to their fastball.
Remember, we are not machines that you simply plug in numbers and receive the output you desire. This is important to remember, especially in youth sports, where kids can quickly feel bombarded and overwhelmed trying to figure out how to make their statistics move in a desired direction rather than going with traditional instruction and gaining a feel for the game. While it makes sense to examine all the ways we can help kids improve at sports, it’s important to balance that pursuit against unintended consequences — especially potential (and avoidable) mental health issues.
Final thoughts
Sure, gathering data to help your child succeed makes sense in a lot of life situations, but there does appear to be a special concern applying this approach to analytics in youth sports. When kids feel increased anxiety trying to “measure up” by means of improved launch angle and/or spin rates, we might want to take a few steps back to examine if we have inadvertently made youth sports a little less fun, and a lot more like a job. Instead, encourage kids to have fun, play hard, and objectively measure their improvement by means of general coach feedback, video, and even daily journal entries detailing their training.
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