State of Play

From the desk of our OBX correspondent, a topic that hits close to home for several amongst the assembled Gheorghies, the role adults play in making youth sports more stressful and less fun than they should be and the associated consequences.

It’s a familiar sight. An athlete sits at a table behind a bank of microphones. He announces that he is retiring from competitive sports. The pressure has become too great at his age. He says that sports are no longer fun. He will miss his coaches and teammates, but it’s time to quit. Except that he is nine.



The commercial, which began running in August, was produced by the Aspen Institute as part of an initiative called “Don’t Retire, Kid.” The average child plays sports fewer than three years and quits by age 11, according to a recent study by the institute and Utah State University. In 2018, only 38 percent of kids age 6-to-12 played a sport, down from 45 percent a decade earlier, according to the Sports and Fitness Industry Association. The reason most often cited is that sports were no longer fun.

The Aspen Institute is a think tank known mostly for convening smart and influential people to discuss high-minded issues – business, education, the environment, justice, global affairs. It also contains a division devoted to Health and Sport. Within that is the Sport in Society program, which began in 2011 and whose mission is, in its words: to convene leaders, foster dialogue, and inspire solutions that help sport serve the public interest, with a focus on the development of healthy children and communities.

Impediments to that goal are rising costs and, far too often, the adults in charge. On average, parents spend almost $700 per year on one child’s sports participation, according to the institute’s 2019 State of Play report. Plenty of parents spend thousands per year, depending on the sport and level of competition, with travel accounting for the largest outlay.

The report is interesting reading, 32 pages of trends, problems, charts, recommendations, and initiatives both local and national. Among the report’s troubling findings were that fewer than 20 percent of youth coaches have been trained within the past three years in CPR, basic first aid, concussion management and injury prevention. Parents surveyed that their kids’ greatest source of pressure comes from coaches. Specialization causes early burnout and repetitive stress injuries in still-developing bodies. Some parents push their kids behind the idea of earning college scholarships and perhaps professional careers. Some parents who wish to dial back from increasingly competitive and costly situations fear they can’t because to do so would cut off outlets and opportunities for their kids.

Kobe Bryant, who the institute enlisted as a spokesman in its effort, says in a spot, “Sports used to be something that kids go out and do for fun. But now it’s become so regimented where parents start to inject their own experiences or past failures onto their children, and it just takes the fun out of it.”

Granted, sports aren’t for everybody. But studies show that being active and playing sports as a kid can have physical, social and psychological benefits. Kids who play sports are less likely to be overweight or develop Type 2 diabetes. They are less likely to suffer from stress and depression, and more likely to be academically successful and attend college. They are more likely to remain active as adults and at least sweat a little between beer sessions.

(Ed Note: The institute may be rethinking its choice of spokesperson after Bryant publicly chastised a sixth-grader on Instagram for missing a playoff hoops game in favor of a dance recital. Hear the message, disregard the messenger, or something.)

For me, the most disheartening trend is the widening gap between the haves and have-nots, and how it relates to youth sports. One-third of kids age 6-to-12 in households with less than $25,000 income were physically inactive in 2018, compared to fewer than 10 percent of kids in households with income greater than $100,000. In households with incomes between $25,000-50,000, almost one-fourth of kids (24.5 percent) did not participate in a sport. The most promising and gifted kids are always going to be helped and subsidized, but this is about the vast majority being systematically excluded.

The report’s first recommendation is: ask kids what they want. In surveys where kids are asked to rank different components of playing sports, having fun, hanging out with friends, and learning new skills rate very highly. Elite level competition is generally way down the list.

Other recommendations include: reintroduce free play, so that not all activity is regimented; encourage sport sampling, and cut back on specialization and overtraining; revitalize in-town leagues, so that activities are available for kids and families of modest means; train coaches in basic first aid practices, as well as age- and talent-appropriate methods and messages.

It’s kids and sports. How did we muck it up this badly?