Youth Sports Burnout an Ongoing Concern
By Ken Reed
Young athletes, ages 10-14, are often putting in more time on their sport than professional athletes do.
Pediatric orthopedic surgeon, Ron J. Tucker, who’s done a plethora of ACL knee surgeries on young athletes, says the paradigm has changed from kids growing up “playing” sports to becoming professionalized athletes.
Pick-up games, where kids organize the action by calling all their friends and telling them to meet in the park in a half-hour for a game, have been replaced by super-organized adult-driven youth sports leagues and tournaments. Kids that show some talent for a sport are pressured by coaches, parents, league administrators, sport trainers, etc., to show “commitment” by specializing in a single sport.
As a result, Tucker is seeing a lot more repetitive stress injuries in young athletes. These type of injuries were once quite rare in children.
Once again, as is the case with virtually every contemporary sports issue, the reason for this problem is WAAC and PAAC: win-at-all-costs and profit-at-all-costs mentalities.
Youth sports are now big business. More and more adults are making their livings off of kids playing games. And a lot of these adults are pressuring kids to specialize in a single sport in order to excel and earn college scholarships — and maybe pro sports riches. This despite evidence that shows that specialization is counterproductive to those very goals.
“Counter to the prevailing notion that early specialization is key to a pro career, studies show that future elites actually practice less on average in their eventual sports than near-elites and that most U.S.-born big leaguers play multiple sports through high school,” wrote Alexandra Fenwick in a September 1, 2014 Sports Illustrated article in which she interviewed David Epstein, author of The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance. Epstein contends that the research shows that elite athletes typically play multiple sports in their youth.
Studies show that kids who specialize in a single sport before age 16 experience more overuse injuries, more emotional burnout (often resulting in the child giving up the sport completely), and have less time for family activities. When you add on the fact that kids that specialize in a single sport don’t have a better chance of becoming an elite high school athlete that earns a college athletic scholarship, the question becomes “Why are we doing this to our kids?”
The answer may just be that what we’re doing collectively as parents in the United States when it comes to youth sports is a case of cultural insanity.
— Ken Reed, Sports Policy Director, League of Fans
Sports Forum Podcast
Episode #30 – League of Fans’ Sports Forum podcast: The State of College Athletics with Dr. David Ridpath: Problems and Potential Solutions – Ridpath is a sports administration professor at Ohio University and a long-time member of The Drake Group, a college sports reform think tank.
Listen on Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Anchor and others.
Follow on Facebook: @SportsForumPodcast
More Episodes on Apple Podcasts; Spotify; Google Podcasts; PocketCasts; & Anchor
Episode #29 – League of Fans’ Sports Forum podcast: The Honorable Tom McMillen Visits League of Fans’ Sports Forum – McMillen is a former All-American basketball player, Olympian, Rhodes Scholar and U.S. Congressman. We discuss the state of college athletics today.
Episode #28 – League of Fans’ Sports Forum podcast: A Chat With Mano Watsa, a Leading Basketball and Life Educator – Watsa is President of PGC Basketball, the largest education basketball camp in the world. We discuss problems in youth sports today.
Episode #27 – League of Fans’ Sports Forum podcast: Kids’ Sports: How We Can Take Back the Game and Restore Quality Family Time In the Process – Linda Flanagan is author of “Take Back the Game: How Money and Mania Are Ruining Kids’ Sports and Why It Matters.” We discuss how commercialized and professionalized youth sports are hurting kids and their families.
Episode #26 – League of Fans’ Sports Forum podcast: How Can We Fix Youth Sports? – John O’Sullivan is Founder and CEO of Changing the Game Project and author of “Changing the Game: The Parents Guide to Raising Happy, High Performing Athletes and Giving Youth Sports Back to Our Kids.”
Episode #25 – League of Fans’ Sports Forum podcast: Physical Education Should Be a Critical Component of K-12 School Design – Michael Horn is co-founder of the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation.
Media
"How We Can Save Sports" author Ken Reed appears on Fox & Friends to explain how there's "too much adult in youth sports."
Ken Reed appears on Mornings with Gail from KFKA Radio in Colorado to discuss bad parenting in youth athletics.
“Should College Athletes Be Paid?” Ken Reed on The Morning Show from Wisconsin Public Radio
Ken Reed appears on KGNU Community Radio in Colorado (at 02:30) to discuss equality in sports and Title IX.
Ken Reed appears on the Ralph Nader Radio Hour (at 38:35) to discuss his book The Sports Reformers: Working to Make the World of Sports a Better Place, and to talk about some current sports issues.
- Reed Appears on Ralph Nader Radio Hour League of Fans’ sports policy director, Ken Reed, Ralph Nader and the New York Times’ Tyler Kepner discussed a variety of sports issues on Nader’s radio show as well as Reed’s updated book, How We Can Save Sports: A Game Plan. Reed's book was released in paperback in February, and has a new introduction and several updated sections.
League of Fans is a sports reform project founded by Ralph Nader to fight for the higher principles of justice, fair play, equal opportunity and civil rights in sports; and to encourage safety and civic responsibility in sports industry and culture.
Vanderbilt Sport & Society - On The Ball with Andrew Maraniss with guest Ken Reed, Sports Policy Director for League of Fans and author of How We Can Save Sports: A Game Plan
Sports & Torts – Ken Reed, Sports Policy Director, League of Fans – at the American Museum of Tort Law
Books