Smaller Towns Produce More Female Athletes: Discovery News

Interesting findings from this study that strike a similar them with the results found in the Relative Age Effect stuff. As far as athletic development, it's somewhat surprising that the attention effect may put a dent in the "big fish in a small pond" knock.

This quote speaks volumes, IMO. Apparently, results follow.

"If you have early success it changes your self-concept -- you believe you have talent."
Abernethy said this belief is nurtured because the talented regional athlete is picked in all the representative teams and gets more attention from coaches.


Smaller Towns Produce More Female Athletes: Discovery News:

Dani Cooper, ABC Science Online

Hometown: Chapel Hill, N.C. | Discovery News Video

March 5, 2009 -- When it comes to developing elite female athletes size makes a difference, a team of sports scientists has found.

Smaller towns and cities produce a disproportionate share of professional sportswomen, a recent paper published in the Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport shows.

The Australian-Canadian study looked at the place of birth of all American-born female athletes playing in the Ladies Professional Golf Association and the Women's United Soccer Association.

Using U.S. Census and the sports association data, they found that about 57 percent of all female American adolescents were born in cities with a population less than 500,000.

However, almost 85 percent of professional female golfers and about 80 percent of professional female soccer players were born in these less-dense communities.

The discrepancy was even greater as the size of the cities and towns grew smaller."

While 26 percent of females were born in cities of less than 50,000 population, these same centers accounted for 38 percent of all professional female golfers and 40 percent of all professional female soccer players.

Co-author Bruce Abernethy, of the Institute of Human Performance at the University of Hong Kong, said the findings support their earlier work that found elite male athletes are also more likely to come from smaller towns and cities.

Abernethy, who is also attached to the University of Queensland's School of Human Movement Studies, said however place of birth is unlikely to be the critical factor in developing sports expertise.

Rather it is "a proxy for describing different types of developmental environments, experiences and opportunities."

Abernethy points to the virtuous circle created for talented sports people growing up in a small town.

"It is much easier to be the best 13-year-old hockey player if you are living in a town with a population in the thousands, then it is in Sydney or New York," he said.

"If you have early success it changes your self-concept -- you believe you have talent."
Abernethy said this belief is nurtured because the talented regional athlete is picked in all the representative teams and gets more attention from coaches.

Their success also encourages them to practice more, which enhances their skills.

He said an equally talented child in the city will be in the middle ranks of their sport so will not get the same attention or develop the same self-concept.

Abernethy said other environmental factors also play a role.

"Smaller communities provide an environment that allows children a greater amount of independent mobility and physical safety," he and his colleagues write.

"When coupled with an abundance of space to play, these factors may facilitate diverse types of sport participation, a characteristic associated with the acquisition of sport expertise."

Abernethy said young athletes in country areas, because of less safety concerns, are not dependent on parental supervision to practice. This allows them to undertake what he calls "deliberate play," which is unstructured play that develops innovative skills they then use in their sports.

He said in country areas young players are also more likely to play against adults at an earlier age.

As a result they have to enhance their strategic thinking as they cannot rely on physical size to help them win, he said.

Abernethy said city-based sports administrators need to think how they can "create the environments that happen more naturally in towns." This could include rethinking the age-based structure of most junior sports.

The flaw in this system is that the physically bigger players are often picked as being talented, when it is only their size that allows them to dominate.

Once they hit grade sport and play against adults, they no longer have the size advantage and have not developed the strategic skills to go on.