If you haven’t been paying attention you might be surprised to learn that many of the recreation sports once offered in your town are no longer available today, instead replaced by elite clubs and travel leagues that are more time-intensive, expensive, and serious. Things have certainly changed, and not all for the better. With fewer recreation youth sport offerings, increasingly more kids are losing invaluable developmental time and the opportunity to try different sports and positions, and instead being placed in hyper-competitive situations that many kids are simply not ready to do. For example, if your town no longer offers a recreation version of Little League baseball/softball, then your son or daughter — who might not yet be able to even throw and catch successfully — will likely play travel ball against other more talented kids with goals to play college/pro baseball. When this kind of disparity exists, competition suffers, and the risks for injury and mental health issues like sport burnout increase. Is this what we would consider an ideal situation for kids in America who love to play sports, build friendships, and learn life skills, but are now forced to sign on to intense travel sport experiences more focused on winning and marketing kids for future D1 scholarships? While this approach might work for a select few kids, most kids do not benefit holistically from a serious sport experience so early in their lives — and some kids even quit sports prematurely because travel sports feel more like a job than fun. With fewer recreation youth sport offerings, more kids are being forced to play at an uber-competitive level, or not play sports at all.
Why so serious?
When examining youth sports the most pressing question today might simply be why have things become so serious? Rather than allowing kids ample time to develop basic skills and increase self-confidence, recreational sports are being replaced by serious travel leagues that focus on playing against the best competition and prioritizing winning over life skills development and having fun. Drilling even deeper, we must ask ourselves why have we morphed into this kind of a hyper-intense youth sport experience today? While you might think there are more college athletic scholarships and professional sport opportunities, the reality is there are roughly the same today as there were years ago. The reality is only about 5% of all high school athletes will play college sports, and that a far smaller percentage of college athletes will ever go pro.
So if we are not increasing sport intensity for a better chance at eventually making it to college or pro sports, what is the reason why we are putting kids in travel leagues so early and often these days??
As a reminder, every sport survey that has ever looked at why kids play sports from a mental health standpoint has found that the #1 reason is to have FUN. Ask yourself, if having fun is most important to kids, how “fun” is it to play an super-busy sport schedule filled with pressure and intensity rather than healthy recreation sports built on fun, learning sport and life skills, and developing great social relationships?
Sadly, one big reason why so many families have left recreation sports in exchange for travel sports has to do with perceived stigmas and “keeping up with the Joneses.” Who wants to play recreation sports when everyone else is doing travel? In these examples parents don’t care about the long odds of making it in sports, or how intense travel sports are compared to recreation, the only thing that seems to matter is keeping up with other families in the neighborhood.
Recreation sports are not trophies & streamers
As travel sports grow in popularity, a byproduct of the movement is the inaccurate view that recreation youth sports are nothing but giggles, participation trophies, and balloons and streamers falling from the ceiling. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. No, recreation youth sports do not typically conduct intense daily practices, traveling to neighboring states for competition, or purchasing multiple sets of uniforms and expensive elite training equipment, but what recreation youth sports do offer kids are healthy opportunities to play hard, have fun, and create lifelong memories they will never forget. No, recreation sports are not just “everyone plays and gets a trophy” experiences for kids, but instead exciting life endeavors for kids where they still have to learn how to work with fellow teammates, develop focus, manage anxiety, and develop personal resiliency. Sadly, increasingly more parents are beginning to equate recreation sports to being soft, boring, and unfulfilling, when recreation sports are really none of those things at all.
As increasingly more families race to sign up for travel sports, you might want to evaluate the decision around recreation-travel sports similar to regular and advanced classes in school. Most kids in school take the general curriculum of studies, with only the most academically talented kids taking honors and advanced classes. With sports the same is true — most kids do very well in recreational sports, with only the most talented needing advanced competition in order to reach their full potential. You would not make your child take honors classes just because others are doing it, so why would you sign your kid up for travel sports just because others are doing it?
Final thoughts
The decline we are currently seeing with recreation youth sport offerings for kids is both noteworthy and alarming, and if this trend continues we will essentially turn youth sports into mini-professional sports from a very early age. The laughs and high-fives witnessed around recreation sports will be replaced by even more serious competition, pushing kids harder and harder to “make it,” and impacting their mental health as a result. Recreation sports offer a healthy balance between fun, competition, and learning, whereas travel sports emphasize training hard, seriousness, and winning. Why steer your child away from sports by going too hard, too early, when you can instead use recreation sports to help kids learn about new sports, identify athletic transferable life skills, meet new friends, and have an amazingly fun time going out to compete? As a bonus you will also experience less risk of injury and sport burnout, all while providing your child an invaluable life experience.
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