One of the age-old arguments in youth sports revolves around the question of when should kids begin to participate in sports competitively?
Are we "playing to win" or do we "just let them have fun and be kids"?
Many old-school, traditionalists feel like sports have become emasculated by the current "everyone gets a trophy", no winners or losers philosophy that has infiltrated sports recently.
Some question whether this helps kids make the transition to competitive situations they will certainly face later in life. Teens will compete for the limited numbers of placements in a favored college, for summer jobs, etc. Is sports the proper venue to teach kids how to compete? And if it is when is the proper time, if there is one?
As is true in many areas, experts continue to differ:
Rachael Lever of the Salt Lake City Parenting Examiner says “fun policy” leagues are wrong and teaching children that everything has to be fair sends the wrong message.
“It doesn’t teach them about being a gracious loser. It doesn’t teach them about being a gracious winner. They gain a false sense of fairness. If no one ever gets out, they don’t learn the real rules of the game.”
“People lose games. People have accidents. People die young. You don’t always get an equal portion of ice cream. Sometimes your words are misinterpreted. Sometimes you get blamed for something you didn’t do. Life is not fair. But it’s a great learning experience, and we are taking that away from our children.”
From the same article child psychologist Tamar Chansky, Ph.D., says children are more resilient than we give them credit for.
“If we want kids to see how they can ride out disappointment we need to let them stay on the ride.”
On the other hand, the “just let them have fun” advocates feel that serious competition should not be introduced until age 10.
Before age 10, sports should be about fun, skill development, coordination, and physical fitness.
Before age 10, children should be introduced to the concept of rules and how to cooperate.
Jay Coakley, professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Colorado, told the magazine. By age 10, most kids are ready to keep score and compete to win.
“Cooperation is the foundation of ethical competition. Unless they have those kinds of experiences, they’re going to turn into difficult-to-coach 12-year-olds.”
“Kids are going to lose in life. If we explain that that’s a terrible thing, they’re going to become competition-avoidant. Instead, use the opportunity to instill meaning in winning and losing and that the way we improve at anything is by trying.”
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The consensus seems to be that somewhere around nine or ten years old is the pivot point where competition can be introduced. The best work I have seen on the subject has been the concept of Long Term Athletic Development popularized by Dr. Istvan Balyi of the National Coaching Institute in British Columbia, Canada.
A summary of Balyi's work provides a common-sense outline for youth sports that I hope catches on south of the border.
- Balyi believes that from ages six to ten the objective should be for kids to have FUN in sports, participate and concentrate on general motor skill development.
- Learn to run, jump, hop, skip, climb, fall, tumble.
- Competition and results are not a priority.
- One or two practice/games per week for six to twelve weeks.
- If the child participates in other sports/activities 2-4 times per week, all the better.
- From ten to twelve fourteen old, INTRODUCTION to competition can begin.
- Some form of general training or sports specific conditioning can begin.
- The season can extend from the 6-12 weeks to as long as 20-30 weeks.
- Training and practicing should occur over game competition at a 3:1 ratio.
- 3-4 games/practices per week is preferred
- Participation in other sports/activities should still be encouraged at this age.
- From fourteen to eighteen years of age, the objective and focus turns more to athletic and sports skills development with competition an increasingly important issue for players and coaches.
- Coaches are focusing on developing and consolidating the physical, mental, technical and tactical skills and abilities of each player so they can compete at the appropriate level.
- Length of seasons progress to 35-45 weeks in length.
- Training/practicing and competing occur at a 1:1 ratio.
- As many as 6-9 games/practices per week are preferred.
- Participation in other sports would still be encouraged, but not during the same season.
- After 18 years of age, competition and high level performance are the objectives. Competing to WIN.
- Physical abilities should continue to be developed and maintained at a high level.
- Mental, technical and tactical skills are improved and developed according to the level of competition.
- Program length can extend to 45-50 weeks.
- Competing and sports specific practice is conducted over training at a 3:1 ratio.
A long-term outlook and commitment to both training, practicing and competing is required to produce elite athletes in virtually every sport. The good news is that the late specialization sports--like baseball--do not require a manifestation of immediate results for success at an elite level.
Your son does not have to be Tiger Woods, demonstrating precocious skills at age 3, to reach the top of the sport.
In sports like baseball, if you have the basic, fundamental athletic skills, you can be up to 16 years old before you start learning the technical aspects of the game itself and still reach your peak.
It is easier to teach an athlete to play baseball than it is to teach a baseball player to be an athlete.
Think Long-Term Athletic Development and not Short-Term Specialization.
It takes ten years of extensive training to excel in anything - Herbert Simon, Nobel Laureate
- Current research indicates that it takes between eight and twelve years of training for a player to reach the elite/expert level.
- Those involved in developing expert performance in sports believe that it generally takes up to 10 years or 10,000 hours of focused practice to achieve elite level of performance in sports activities (as well as playing an instrument, chess, etc.)
- Parents should avoid the tendency to push kids into "peaking by age twelve". Nothing is fundamentally determined by this age that is going to impact the players future.
Conclusions:
- Parents and Players are always searching for the magic drill or the magic coach that is going to take them to the promised land. It's a fallacy.
- There are no short-cuts to success in athletic development.
- An over emphasis on competition in early phases of training or development will always lead to shortcomings in an athlete's abilities later in the process.
- Due to the wide variation in development or maturity for athletes between the ages 10 through 16, any attempts to rank or order players are basically meaningless in the long-term. Some kids are early bloomers, others are late developers.
- Multi-sport participation should be encouraged over early sports specialization in order to develop a wide, solid base of motor skills in young athletes. Guys like Cal Ripken, Carl Crawford, Joe Mauer and many others have not been hurt by multi-sport participation.
I will also say that the biggest fallacy that exists is that some coach or instructor was responsible for a specific player making it to the major leagues. Nothing could be further from the truth, in my opinion. And parents shouldn't rest their hopes and expectations on any one coach or team to elevate the player into being anything he is not capable of being based on his work ethic or love for the game. Those two qualities will overcome a multitude of mistakes.
It is the player who gets himself to the major leagues. In my opinion, the people most responsible for helping a player succeed are his parents. Getting to the major leagues is a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week, 365-day-a-year task. No coach or instructor is capable of making that happen individually. Unless, of course, the coach/instructor is the player's parent. Players will go through many different coaches in their climb up the ladder of success, they will only have one set of parents.
Sadly, in sports it seems as if success has many parents, but failure is an orphan.
The parent-child relationship is more important than any parent-coach relationship in determining the child's future development in and love for the sport. If that relationship is tainted or dysfunctional due to unrealistic or unhealthy expectations, no expert coach will be able to repair the damage.
