The State of Youth Sports is Not Amazing

We take a look at some of the key findings from Aspen Institute's State of Play 2023.

I don’t yet have a real elevator pitch for Good Game. Let’s make youth sports better is certainly succinct but how we get there, well, that’s a massive rock to keep chipping away at. At the heart of Good Game are conversation starters rooted in relatability, advice, anecdotes and maybe just a wee bit of complaining (but not without attempting actual solutions, even if it’s just to resist tempatation!). We ultimately aim to educate and empower parents, coaches, athletes and administrators to make decisions that, yes, will hopefully in the long run, make youth sports better. But to do so, we need to understand the behemoth we’re dealing with. We need real data.

Luckily, the great folks at Aspen Institute’s Project Play published its annual youth sports State of Play last week, and per usual it is chockfull of fascinating market research and trends.

I highly highly recommend reading State of Play 2023 in its entirety. I spent ample time last week doing just that, and here are several takeaways that I thought you all should know.

Participation in team sports continues to drop … except for one

In a trend surely exacerbated by Covid, less kids are participating in team sports on a regular basis. Participation in regular team sports for kids ages 6-12 dropped 5% from 2019-2022. Some sports have taken more severe hits than others in that time span. Baseball has seen a 20.1% drop in participation. Not surprisingly, tackle football participation rates are down 13.1% since 2019. Flag football has held steady; so has basketball.

The only team sport with a healthy growth rate year over year is ….drum roll….soccer. The beautiful game in the US is up 4.3% percent in the past three years with the total number of youth players in 2022 totaling 2,272,176.

There is hope for the sports losing participants because at least kids are trying sports. 63% of kids age 6-12 played sports at least one day; they just aren’t signing up for full seasons. But hey, exposure is better than nothing. If your community doesn’t have a try-it-out day, please talk to your local parks and rec dept. stat.

Youth sports coaches continue to mostly be men

This may not be surprising but it’s disheartening none the less. In 2019, women made up just 23.7% of youth sports coaches. The number has slightly improved up 25.8% in 2022 but it’s still wildly disproportionate. Even a female-oriented sport like softball has 4-in-10 coaches that are men.

Also interesting, 40% of youth sports coaches make over $100,000 (yeah, yeah, mostly volunteer). But that poses another barrier for some would be female coaches. Even if they’ve reached a certain level in their career, the work-life balance never disappears and devoting time to coaching may not be feasible.

Luckily, there are organizations out there like Women’s Coaching Alliance, run by our friend Pam Baker, bolstering female coaches. WCA’s model is training young women to coach rec sports, setting them on a path of leadership well beyond the sideline. There are other models but ultimately there needs to be a widespread shift in the notion that men coach and women are the team managers.

An increased emphasis on mental health

Over the summer, Ohio legislatures passed a bill requiring all school athletic coaches to undergo mental health training, with refresher courses every few years. I’m not entirely sure how this will be enforced but it’s a huge step toward normalizing mental health in the youth sports sphere. Hopefully more states will mandate mental health training and provide resources for its youth athletes.

An increased emphasis on mental health is also a key gateway for increasing participation. A regionalized versions of State of Play focusing on Takoma County in Washington state found that 25% of youth who said they had zero days of physical activity reported feeling depressed or hopeless nearly every day. Just 11% of kids who are physically active every day felt the same. Seems like the more we reinforce how mentally healthy playing sports can be, the more pull for otherwise sedentary kids.

The private equity money is bonkers

The more money flowing into youth sports means that organizations are consolidating and creating mega-businesses via private equity. State of Play cited several examples including IMG Academy, the boarding school in Florida for aspiring athletes, that was sold in April 2023 for $1.25 billion to Hong Kong-based private equity group BPEA EQT. Varsity Brands, the cheerleading and spirit operator, was acquired by Bain Capital for $2.5 billion in 2018. Great business decisions but I’m not sure how these massive deals benefit kids.

While it’s easy to feign a positive impact on recreational sports in the sense that these organizations have the resources to streamline, the reality is this just widens the gap. And for kids that are part of these “national” outfits, the expenditures and pressure only continues to mount as training for the possibility of playing in further away destinations on regional or national teams is dangled.

The number of ACL tears are rising

If you have a high school soccer player, you likely know some poor athlete who has suffered an ACL tear. The number of ACL tears has increased 12% since 2017 and has impacted girls soccer the most, followed by tackle football, girls basketball and girls lacrosse. Our resident PT Yukiko Matsuzaki had some culprits behind the frequency of this devastating injury in girls vs. boys: “There are several different factors like the female anatomy (wider hip/ pelvis, and knee anatomy relating to the ACL); hormonal influences, and improper movement patterns (e.g. a tendency for females to be more knock-kneed when they land jumps/ hops, and tendency to land jumps with a stiff knee.” The pressure to keep up with the joneses and overtrain certainly isn’t helping matters.

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So there we have it. We’ll keep covering the various angles of youth sports and will hope for better news in State of Play 2024.

Wishing you all a very happy Turkey Day. A holiday that celebrates stuffing your face. With football to boot! It really doesn’t get any better.