There is an article almost every week in major publications concerning the evils, myths, and horrors of youth sports in America. This is something we have attempted to go public with for some time. Adults are killing the competitive hearts of our young people.
In its August 7 issue, PARADE magazine featured an article, "Who's Killing Kid's Sports?", David Oliver Relin relates one of the horrors.
In the summer of 2003, Jeret Adair, a 15-year-old pitcher from Atlanta, started 64 - yes 64 - games with his elite summer baseball team. He pitched more innings than most major league pitchers will in a season. After the ligament in his elbow snapped - well, dah - he had to undergo reconstructive surgery. In 2004, his doctor, James Andrews, performed similar surgery on 50 other high school pitchers! Folks this is one of the highest forms of child abuse. This should be treated the same as beating a child. These parents and coaches should be prosecuted. You tell me why not.
"Across America millions of children are being chewed up and spit out by a sports culture run amok", says Relin. Too many parents are more than willing to subject their kids to almost anything to follow the myth of the college athletic scholarship. According to NCAA statistics only 2.9% of high school athletes receive a college scholarship offer.
Too many club sport coaches lie to parents about the promise of a scholarship. It is usually in the form of, "if Bobby concentrates on soccer year-round he will get a scholarship". That club coach wants Bobby to stay on his team so his parents will still pay the coach. The coach generally knows good and well that Bobby will never get a scholarship.
Club coaches in all sports have this "ownership" thing and they need to project to parents that they are the experts. Unlike school sports that are structured, have game limits and pitching limit rules, club sports do not have to abide by such limitations. The kids are not protected. AAU basketball and traveling teams in soccer and baseball are guilty of child labor. Generally these teams are not at all about sportsmanship, team play or similar sport ethics. The name of the game is WINNING.
Most are not even concerned with teaching fundamentals of the game. They are made up of the elite/most talented players who can overcome fundamentals at that level with their talent and the coaches of these teams don't know enough fundamentals to teach.
School sports are administered, organized and coached by trained professionals. High school sports associations have rules to protect the well-being of the athletes. There are academic standards to be met as well. Summer league baseball, softball and soccer coaches and leagues have gone wild. There are 10-year-old girls who play over 60 softball games during the summer.
"if I had to sum up the crisis in kids' sports," says J. Duke Albanese, Maine's former commissioner of education, "I'd do it in one word adults."
"There is a terrible imbalance between the needs kids have and the needs of the adults running their (non-school) programs. Above all, kids need to have fun. Instead, adults are providing unrealistic expectations and crushing pressure."- Dr. Bruce Svare, director of the National Institute for Sports Reform.
More than 70% of those who begin playing sports in elementary school will have quit by high school, according to the Institute for the Study of Youth Sports at Michigan State University.
Big hurt for little athletes
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A plague of adult-size injuries sidelines kids as competition ratchets ever upward
Julie Deardorff
July 30, 2006
He's still a fresh-faced 10-year-old, but Daniel Freitag of Westmont already has been sidelined by an adult-size sports injury: a tear in a major knee ligament.
Too young for surgery by most standards, Daniel toiled like a pro in physical therapy. Today he wears a brace when he wrestles or plays lacrosse, but he expects to have his anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) repaired after he reaches puberty.
If Daniel's case were unusual, his doctor, Cynthia LaBella, might pass it off as extremely bad luck for a 4th grader.
But LaBella and her colleagues are treating a whole new class of injuries in children: preteens with adult-type ailments such as ACL tears and overuse injuries, including chronic tendinitis, stress fractures, knee pain, heel injuries, cartilage damage and Little Leaguer's elbow or shoulder, a result of overthrowing.
"Over half of what we see [in kids] are overuse injuries," said LaBella, medical director of the Institute for Sports Medicine at Children's Memorial Hospital. "And they're preventable."
LaBella, who is overseeing a study on the connection between mechanics and pitching injury, said she believes that the rising injury rate in her pint-size patients largely stems from the trend of early specialization. Children who focus on one sport too early either burn out or lose the benefits of cross-training and are more vulnerable to injury. Other factors are the rise of travel teams, year-round competition and internal and external pressure, she said.
"Sports are becoming more competitive at younger ages, and as a result, kids are training harder and playing harder," LaBella said. "Kids are pressured to train like adults instead of like kids. They have long workouts followed by insufficient time for rest and recovery. The result is more overuse injuries."
Baseball, once a summer sport, now jams up the entire calendar. In Evanston, for example, the regular, or "house," season for children ages 5 through 15 begins in April and ends in June or July, depending on the league. Travel baseball, which requires a tryout, runs from June through August. Fall Ball opens in September and lasts through October.
After that, serious players move to an indoor location through the winter to work on pitching or batting. Short clinics are held in January, February and March.
New research shows the year-round play might disproportionately affect the youngest participants. Last year children ages 4 through 14 suffered twice as many baseball injuries as those 15 through 24, according to data compiled by Pietro Tonino, chief of sports medicine at Loyola University Health System.
And it's not just baseball. More children under 14 were hurt playing golf, soccer and swimming last year than those between 15 and 24. Doctors are also seeing problems with young runners as well as those who play football, basketball, softball and volleyball.
"It has become more of a problem as people realize performing well could be a scholarship to college," said Tonino, noting the rise in the number of children in need of ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction--or Tommy John surgery, named for the pitcher who first had it nearly three decades ago--because of overuse injuries to the elbow cartilage or elbow bone.
"You don't see the three-sport athlete anymore, and a big reason is it's getting too hard to organize the schedules," Tonino said.
Pitching injuries, one of the most common youth problems, can be caused by too many throws, the type of pitches or the mechanics, said Nicholas Gryfakis, the manager of the Motion Analysis Center at Children's, which LaBella helped develop to combat the increased youth injury rate.
Young Jocks need variety
Having kids as young as five years old specialize in just one sport is 'damaging'
Krista Charke , The Daily News
Published: Monday, March 03, 2008
It used to be that children would change sports with each season or balance two or more sports at the same time.
Nowadays, it's more common for children as young as five years old to train in one sport year-round.
Rick Bevis, sports psychologist and professor of sport, health and physical education at Malaspina University-College, thinks parents are the main force behind the growing trend.
"Parents have stars in their eyes. They treat their kids like little professionals," said Bevis.
What the parents aren't taking into consideration, Bevis says, are the technical, physical and psychological damages limiting a child to one sport can cause.
Early specialization can lead to physical and psychological burnout, loss of transferable athletic skills, a greater risk of overuse and repetitive stress injuries, higher levels of pre-competitive anxiety and difficulty coping with athletic failure.
"Children who play one sport for a long period of time don't get to use different muscle groups, obtain an uneven body balance and their movement patterns become rigid and uniform," he said.
The Journal of the American Chiropractic Association says that the period between the ages of five to 13 should be "sampling years." A time when children can try a variety of sports with a de-emphasis on competition and winning.
Bevis suggests parents need to take a closer look at the long-term athlete development model. The seven-stage Canadian model of long-term athlete development looks at a training, competition and recovery programs based on developmental age rather than chronological age.
Frank Klemencic, head coach and manager of Nanaimo United men's soccer club, used to consider himself a sports nut when he was younger.
He played anything and everything he could, even if it was just for fun.
Over the past 10 years, he's seen a huge evolution in the dynamics and attitude around participation in sports. Just to get out and play a sport isn't enough anymore, says Klemencic.
"Nowadays, if a kid doesn't start or get the minutes they want they eventually disappear," he said.
It has become about winning, being the best and parents push as hard as they can to get their child to the top.
"Parents don't realize that if their child has pro potential in them, it will come out on its own," said Klemencic.
The potential to earn a university scholarships or spots on varsity, elite or even professional-level teams have become driving factors behind earlier specialization.
Studies have shown that elite performers often require more than 10 years of practice to acquire the skills needed to compete at top levels. But studies have also shown that early sport specialization is not necessarily the key.
"Almost every professional athlete like Michael Jordan talks about how the other sports they played helped improve their game," said Bevis.
PacificSport will be hosting an XploreSportz Spring Break Camp in Nanaimo from March 17-20.
Participants between eight and 13-years-old will sample a variety of sports including: swimming, waterpolo, synchronized swimming, volleyball, ball hockey, wrestling, judo, curling, rugby and lacrosse.
