ARE WE PROFESSIONALIZING YOUTH SPORTS?

Years ago (too many years ago to count…LOL) when I was involved in youth sports, my friends and I participated in different sports all year long. My organized sports of choice were soccer in the fall, basketball in the winter (although I retired from organized basketball at an early age as frankly, I just wasn’t that good, but I did continue to play with my friends after school and on weekends in my uncle’s driveway on the hoop that he put up for my cousin), baseball in the spring and swam during the summer months. In addition to the organized sports, my friends and I also played touch and tackle football, whiffle ball, street hockey, tennis and just about anything else that we could think of playing throughout the year, often making up our own rules to ensure that the game could be played (and sometimes changing the rules as we went along). Each sport, whether played organizationally or on our own were generally played during a particular season (fall, winter, spring and summer) and seemed to coincide with the school calendar. When I moved up to high school, I played soccer and baseball and ran some winter track (more to stay in shape for baseball than competitively) and most of my friends who participated in high school sports also did so in more than one sport. Basically, we were out playing multiple sports year round whether they were organized or just neighborhood pickup games.

By the time my children started playing youth sports there were local travel teams, the most notable was Little League, who’s teams were playing for the right to go to Williamsport, and these teams were generally made up of children who were involved with the league that the travel team was associated with and all the children generally lived in the same town. However, over the years, this has changed and more and more children are specializing in one sport at younger and younger ages and playing on teams that are traveling further and further from home to play in tournaments and select events. Why is this happening? Why are youth sports being “professionalized” and what is this doing to our youth and youth sports organizations? And finally, is it good for our youth?

As I stated in an earlier post, TIME magazine published articles involving youth sports nearly 20 years apart discussing the same subject, the crazy culture of youth sports. While the 1999 article “Inside the Crazy Culture of Youth Sports” focused more on the developing shift in youth sports from being a seasonal recreational activity to an activity that is a single sport, that included/required year-round participation with parents seemly driving the change. The 2017 article, entitled “How Kids Sports Became a $15 Billion Dollar Industry” focuses more on exploring the costs associated with and the specialization of youth sports.

In the August 2017 article, Sean Gregory stated that the simple recreation youth sports leagues of yesteryear have become a $15.3 BILLION industry based on information from WinterGreen Research, a private firm that tracks the industry. Further, WinterGreen provided figures exclusively to TIME that the nation’s youth-sports industry has grown by 55% since 2010. To put those $15.3 billion dollars in perspective, according to MarketWatch, the top 10 sports leagues by revenue are as follows:

· The National Football League $13 billion in revenue

· Major League Baseball $9.5 billion in revenue

· Premier League (English Football) $5.3 billion in revenue

· The National Basketball Association $4.8 billion in revenue

· The Bundesliga (German Football $2.8 billion in revenue

· La Liga (Spanish Football) $2.2 billion in revenue

· Serie A (Italian Football) $1.9 billion in revenue

· Ligue 1 (France Football) $1.5 billion in revenue

· Nippon Professional Baseball $1.1 billion in revenue

(NOTE: these numbers are dated and could be higher as of this writing)

Simply put, youth sports make $2 BILLION more per year in revenue than the National Football League, a professional sports organization that pays players, coaches, staff and ancillary individuals who work for the league. Mr. Gregory’s article also stated that while travel and elite teams have become bigger, the neighborhood Little Leagues, town soccer associations and church basketball squads that bonded kids in a community and didn’t cost much have lost luster and local leagues have been nudged aside by private club teams that are a loosely governed constellation that includes everything from development academies affiliated with professional sports franchises to regional teams run my moonlighting coaches with little experience. And then there are other teams that are elite in name only, siphoning expensive participation fees from the parents of kids with little hope of making the high school varsity team let alone going pro.

So, people will ask what is wrong with this? Why shouldn’t parents find the best situation for their children to play in, especially if they show some talent and ability? While I feel parents should do what’s best for their children, and if they feel that elite play is best for their child, then they should go for it; however, I also feel that thought needs to be given to what we are doing to our children, are we trying to make them little professionals, and if so, why? John O’Sullivan, the founder and CEO of the Changing the Game Project, writes in a January 2019 article that youth sports is a race to the bottom doing more and more at younger and younger ages, in the name of “preparing them for the next level”. But sadly, in trying to “prepare them for the next level” we often simply replicate the physical, cognitive and physiological load faced by adults at that level and we forget that CHILDREN are not MINI-ADULTS and the question that should be asked is not “could we create the professionalized environment, but SHOULD we”? Mr. O’Sullivan answers that question with a resounding NO.

In July 2017 Dr. Frank Small wrote that he is often asked what the biggest problem is in youth sports and his response was “the professionalization of youth sports”. He stated that professional sports are a huge commercial enterprise where success is measured in wins and dollars. In the professional model, the goals are entertainment and to make money, while youth sports are a developmental model used for learning and where success is measured in terms of personal growth and development. Children are not “professionals” and should not be treated that way and although winning is sought after, it is by no means the primary goal and profit is not measured in terms of dollars and cents, but rather in terms of skills and personal characteristics that are acquired.

Another issue with the professionalization of youth sports and the rising costs to play are the unattended costs to the families that cannot afford these types of travel and elite teams. Gregory’s article states that a growing body of research shows that fees and travel costs are pricing lower income families from participating and some kids who do not show talent at a young age are discouraged from even participating in organized sports. Due to this professionalization of youth sports, we are pushing some youth out of the youth sports arena before they ever have a chance to participate based on either income or talent levels and this is being done at an early age before some children mature and develop. I saw this first hand with the Travel Division of our youth soccer association. Many times, we had children who just could not play travel due to the costs of joining the team, which at the time were approximately $300, not an unreasonable fee considering that other clubs in our league were charging over $1,000 for children to play in their organizations.

An additional issue is how does specializing affect the child’s health and body? Gregory and O’Sullivan both comment on this in their articles. Gregory, states that there is a growing body of research that shows early specialization in a single sport increases the risk of injury, burnout and depression while the O’Sullivan article states that:

· Children who specialize in a single sport account for 50% of overuse injuries in young athletes according to pediatric orthopedic specialists;

· A study by Ohio State University found that children who specialized early in a single sport led to higher rates of adult physical inactivity. Those who commit to one sport at a young age are often the first to quit, and suffer a lifetime of consequences;

· In a study of 1,200 youth athletes, Dr. Neeru Jayanthi of Loyola University found that early specialization in a single sport is one of the strongest predictors of injury. Athletes in the study who specialized were 70% to 93% more likely to be injured than children who played multiple sports;

· Children who specialize early are at a far greater risk for burnout due to stress, decreased motivation and lack of enjoyment; and,

· Early sport specialization in female adolescents is associated with increased risk of anterior knee pain disorders including PEP, Osgood Schlatter and Sinding Larsen-Johansson compared to multi-sport athletes, and may lead to higher rates of ACL tears.

As I have stated in earlier posts, I am a big proponent of children participating in youth sports and I feel that youth sports, if done correctly can be very important for the lessons/skills that can be taught/learned for use in later life; however, I also feel that the race to professionalize youth sports, and the rush for our children to specialize at earlier and earlier ages is doing more harm than good and is causing overuse injuries and mental health issues while causing nearly a 70% dropout rate by the age of 13 and possibly robbing our children the joys of childhood. So, in my mind the question still remains, should we be professionalizing youth sports? My answer to that question would be NO?

Next week I will look at how the professionalization of youth sports is affecting our communities as some communities are investing much needed tax dollars building multi-million-dollar youth sporting complexes to attract youth sporting events and tournaments and examine if the expenditures that these communities took were the right risk.