Friday Thread: What’s the Biggest Issue in Youth Sports?
Join the convo!
Happy Friday Good Gamers, and welcome new subscribers. Hope all your fall sports seasons are churning along nicely in the face of important times.
If you hadn’t noticed, there are polls flying around everywhere these days. Well, here’s one that is much less anxiety-inducing but quite prevalent to our world.
The issues permeating youth sports are endless. Many like exorbitant costs and unsavory parental behavior are regular topics here at Good Game. Some have yet to be distilled in this space. Last week I let you all know what I believe is youth sports’ greatest crisis.
Now let’s discuss what YOU believe to be the most catastrophic issue in youth sports. Bonus points if you want to posit a solution. Look forward to seeing what’s on your mind.
The floor is yours!
Similar to Ed’s comments on club and travel teams, my biggest concern is the plague of specialization. And at such young ages.
If your child doesn’t pick a single sport to play year round, by age 10, he or she will be left out of the top teams. This is a travesty for the bodies and minds of young people.
David Epstein wrote about this in his book RANGE. Top athletes used to play multiple sports up through high school. There’s data that shows it’s healthier for the body. I understand when kids get to college the need to specialize makes sense at that level.
The solution?
IMO, the biggest issue the is the P4P model has resulted in pricing a lot of kids out of sports.
Kids don’t need year round clubs and travel teams before puberty. We don’t need to make sports such a huge financial investment (of time and money) that family lives revolve around a child athlete’s schedule.
It’s all a big cash grab now under the guise of ‘development’.
We need to reinvest in quality recreational sports that kids from 5-10 can play with quality competition and coaching at a modest cost.
Let all kids learn and enjoy sports early. I shake my head watching parents spend thousand of dollars on U8 sports to see puberty hit and suddenly even the playing field or limit their little star athletes actual potential.