Children and Youth Sports - The Catch-22
Sports programs are not doing so hot these days. Children and youth are dropping out, or they don’t want to return after the Covid-19 pandemic because their interests have shifted to TikTok and other social media. In contrast, parents had “a break from being a taxi service” to training sessions and competitions and ‘kinda like it!’
Where have we gone wrong? Do you say I am too pessimistic? I was accused years ago by a Canadian National Coach Administrator in Ottowa because I called it out way back then!
February 28, 2023… here it goes, and there you have it…
…It’s no secret that America’s military is struggling to find people who are fit for service these days. Maintaining health and wellness among its existing members has also become a challenge.
A Department of Defense report cited during a Feb. 16 Congressional hearing offered a hard pill to swallow: 77 percent of Americans between 17–24 are now physically unqualified to enter the armed forces. This represents a 6 percent increase from 2017.
Accentuating this was last year’s battle to find new recruits in every military branch…
…One of the major hurdles recruiters now face is obesity, which has become a dominant health challenge for Americans. As of 2020, the prevalence of obesity in the adult population hit nearly 42 percent…
Whether it is the military or sports participants or students, the lack of personal fitness level is shocking! Despite the Canadian ‘hullaballoo’ over Long-term Athlete Development and Physical Literacy, Canadian children recently got a “D minus” for physical activity and fitness. No wonder any young participant joining a sports program is less fit than ever before.
Furthermore, it is no surprise to me that children as young as 12 years, teens, and young adults are suffering from a dramatically increased rate of anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts, and actual suicide. Plato, the famous Greek philosopher during the 5th Century, stated, “Sound mind – in a Sound Body,”…His slogan became the driving philosophy for modern Physical education, enhanced by John Locke, the British philosopher during the period of Enlightenment. During the 1950s, a heavy debate arose about the “meaning of physical education:”
Physical Education: of the physical (the body) – through the physical (the activities) – in the physical (the science)… (holistic approach)
Physical Education: is an integral part of the total education process and has as its aim the development of physically, mentally, socially & emotionally fit citizens through the medium of physical activities that have been…
Physical Education: is an integral part of education that deals with movement and its related responses to the development of the physical. mental, moral, and social qualities in an individual…
Again… Where have we gone wrong, and where have we failed?
The Crisis Stage in Youth Sports
Nowadays:
Is it just about a specific sport, winning, and establishing one’s coaching reputation? Or is it about more? That is, developing children and youth and helping them to become functional members of society, as stated previously? Training physical, technical, and psychological skills, as well as mental and wellness skills, are considered to be critical, as they have now been discovered in the ivory tower of sports administration. I strongly believe that children and youth sports are heading toward a crisis stage unless we, as coaches, start to change our approach to the development of younger athletes.
According to sports sociologists, children and youth want to participate in sports and have FUN simultaneously! However, sports training has become far more complex than in the past decades because the greater emphasis is placed on the '“winning at all costs” strategy. Pressure to reach elite-level sports starts as early as possible, creating stress not only at the developmental level but also among striving Elite athletes because “winning – keep winning – and setting records” is the ultimate goal. As a result of such demands, it has become acceptable and common for younger athletes to train year-round to ensure their success and thereby leading to physical and mental issues.
Current research points to an increase of anxiety, depression, mental and physical breakdown, suicide attempts, and actual deaths among the elite and even among the lower-level athletes. Stanford University reports that their female soccer Star, goalie Katie Meyer (22), died by suicide in her dormitory room on March 4, 2022, while twenty-one-year-old Star cross-country runner Sarah Shulze, University of Wisconsin, died on April 13, 2022. Her parents revealed that she took her own life because balancing athletics, academics, and the demands of daily life overwhelmed her in a single, desperate moment, the posting said. At least four more NCAA athletes have died by suicide in the two months since Meyer’s death, three of them young women. Several Highschool volleyball players committed suicide within months of each other in the Fall of 2021, and school administrators were perplexed! Really?
For athletes, mental health is as important as physical health, according to Australian researchers, who encourage sports organizations to use a ‘three-pronged approach’ to supporting High-performance athletes by equipping them with skills to manage distress and to train coaches to be able to recognize and identify signs of mental health concerns early (Purcell, Gwyther & Rice, 2019). They suggest that mental health literacy and early-sign recognition of mental ill-health are imperative for improved sustained high performance. In my opinion, age-group coaches should start early to work with such issues, not wait until athletes are teens because by then, it is too late.
Recently, researchers have also asserted that sports participation is most likely to drop off as children and youth, forced to stay at home and be idle, have turned their attention more and more to social media (TikTok), with noticeable effects on their emotional, psychological, and social well-being. In order to attract participants, quality programs must be age and developmental-appropriate, athlete-centered, progressively challenging, well-planned, and provide a safe training environment to ensure gratifying sports experiences (The Sports Information Centre, Canada, May 13, 2022 [SIRC]).
I have proposed since the beginning of my career that coaching is an ‘art and science’ and that aspects such as hydration, appropriate and suitable sports nutrition, as well as healthy sleeping patterns are ignored many a time because coaches tend to focus more on training methods and technical components to be successful. These factors have to be addressed not just prior to competition but rather become part of athletes' lifestyles.
Since the mid-1980s, elementary schools have either totally deleted physical education or conducted programs sparingly with rotating district instructors, usually not well-versed in multi-physical and sports activities. Therefore, coaches have their work cut out not only to draw former athletes back to programs but also to attract new participants, who obviously lack physical and functional fitness as well as gross motor skills and movement competencies. Subsequently, sports programs may be the only opportunity for children and youth to develop and enhance their general athleticism and movement competencies. This is by no means an easy task, given the lack of general fitness as documented in current research.
The Old Method – Using Physical Activity as Punishment
This is a disturbing issue that has received more and more attention because verbal, physical, psychological, and emotional abuse in children and youth sports is reported at increasingly higher rates. Using physical activity as a form of punishment for lack of concentration or focus, training errors by younger athletes (common due to their low attention span), or poor performance by older ones has been reported in numerous sports. Verbal abuse and humiliating vocabulary create anxiety and depression and have led to suicidal thoughts and, indeed, actual suicides among teen athletes, according to research. Abusive behaviour is not only violating modern coaching ethics but also infringes upon the ‘Bill of Rights for Athletes’ as they are entitled to a safe training and competition environment.
Physical abuse was the “common and accepted thing to do” in the past! Running punitive laps around the track ‘till you drop’ or ‘killer laps’ at Xmas swim camps, 200 sit-ups, or X-number of push-ups are some examples. Maybe some of you remember those PE classes, running around the field on a cold day because “it is good for you!” It was considered a form of ‘character building and mental toughness’ driven by such slogans, No pain – No gain! Nobody loves a loser, or winning isn’t everything – it’s the only thing!’ Sports media kept validating these phrases, crediting the late coach Vince Lombardi (Green Bay Packer Football). However, it is a misquote … he actually stated, “winning isn’t everything, but the will to win is everything!” Such hyped coaching is no longer tolerable! “How one thinks or feels about the athlete” as a person and human being shape the foundation for one’s coaching philosophy, i.e., training the holistic person versus a “human performance machine.” Such a personal outlook or coaching attitude, of course, plays a major part in your subsequent program planning process.
Enable and Empower Athletes