Navigating the Modern Youth Sports Terrain

Enough.

That’s a request targeting youth and high school sports coaches requiring way too much time from young athletes, and the complicit parents mindlessly following along. Such time demands can wreak havoc on the well-being of kids and their families.

Organized youth athletics used to abide by seasonal boundaries. Hockey stayed in the winter, soccer in the fall, and baseball in the spring/summer.

Not anymore.

Sports have become a year-round, coach-coerced commitment. Now we have fall soccer, winter indoor soccer, spring and summer “club” soccer, and Christmas morning soccer.

More, More, More

For obsessed youth coaches there’s never enough practices, scrimmages, games, etc. Many kids end up spending more compulsory time in their sport than professional athletes. Does that make sense?

One pressure-laden result of never-ending athletic seasons is overlapping schedules for kids attempting to play more than one sport, forcing attendance at multiple team activities on the same day, several times a week. Stress and burnout often ensue.

Many young athletes end up quitting their sport(s). Data generated from the National Survey of Children’s Health found that between 2016-17 and 2021-22, youth sports participation in the United States dropped 7.6%. Burnout from too much time commitment was identified as a major contributing factor.

That’s an avoidable consequence if sports organizations exercised better reasoning, and parents put their foot down and prioritized their child’s best interests.

A New and Treacherous Youth Sports Landscape

The blurring of traditional sports season boundaries is a new hazard on the youth athletics landscape resulting from emerging trends that have turned a formerly fun journey into an unpleasant, never-ending plod. A “jungle,” as one parent described the new territory.

One contributing factor to this “jungle” is youth sports entrepreneurship. Some ex-high school and college athletes are attempting to turn youth athletics into a career business. Many of those people are so obsessed with their sport, brand, and financial bottom line that the well-being of kids is comprised. The net result? Endless practices (and exorbitant fees) that turn off kids and their families.

What Young Athletes Have to Say

A 14-year-old high school athlete enlightened my take on this element of youth sports madness in a conversation shortly after he won a state high school wrestling championship. It was late winter, and I inquired about his travel baseball plans. He informed me that he had quit that activity. Here’s his explanation:

Sports should be a motivated, fun activity, not an upward, never-ending struggle.

Source: Cartoon/CartoonStock

“Travel baseball programs burn kids out. They practice, indoors, all fall and winter long, two or three times a week. By the time they get a couple weeks into the summer season after playing school ball, they (the athletes) have had it and are just going through the motions. They’re toast.”

“Wait,” I responded, “you’re one of the hardest working athletes I know, doing almost daily off-season wrestling training that is far more demanding than baseball. How is it that doesn’t burn you out, but travel baseball does?”

His reply:

“I’m CHOOSING to wrestle every day. Many ‘travel’ baseball kids are going to off-season training because coaches, and/or their parents, force them. A lot of those kids are just going through the motions. I go to off-season (wrestling) training because I want it.”

His choice, not coaches or parents.

Lesson learned. Let kids decide what they will do in the offseason, not coercive coaches and complicit parents forcing it.

Here’s additional enlightenment from a 16-year-old athlete.

“Ever since I started playing soccer it was a fun sport, but once it started getting into ‘state’ travel soccer, it started to be stressful with practices being more frequent and longer. I’d be playing soccer five times a week with tournaments almost every weekend. Coaches were pressuring us in all kinds of ways.”

“I hated it. It was too much.””

“I could never spend time with my family. I’d walk to practices to play a sport that I was burned out from. It really took a toll on my mental health. It made school harder for me. I was SO stressed out. I resented the sport so much because I had to do it.”

“When COVID hit in seventh and eighth grade, and having a break from soccer, after five practices a week since third grade, it made me realize how burned out I was. I started to play in high school and knew, very soon, that I did not see a happy future in it.”

“Once I quit it was like freedom. I really do like soccer, but it was no longer fun.”

Then a switch flipped for him.

“I started playing high school tennis. The coaches kept things within season. There was an extra month of OPTIONAL training before the season started. Come season time I wasn’t as stressed and burned out (as with soccer).”

He now diligently practices tennis—independently—fueled by his passion, not a coach’s obsessive pressure. As he expressed it:

“I’m deciding what to do. I’m the one in charge. There was so much less pressure (than travel soccer), and it made it so much more fun and enjoyable. I actually could think of the sport as something that I’m doing for me, and something that I’m doing for exercise, and something that I’m doing to have fun with peers. Not like soccer where it was so forced and pressured. I practice all the time, now.”

“It feels so much more for me and makes me want to pursue it. I want to take tennis lessons when the tennis season isn’t happening so I can maintain and improve my skill. Because it’s optional it makes me feel excited to do it.”

Untangling The Youth Sports “Jungle”

Take the wisdom of the 14-year-old high school state champion wrestler and the 16-year-old tennis enthusiast.

Empower kids by allowing them to decide, and voice, what they want for the off-season. Coercing or forcing them to comply with absurd practice and training demands kills enthusiasm and self-motivation.

Coaches need to cut back on obsessive training. Let kids do what they want during the off-season. Stop coercing kids with devious manipulations to come to supposedly “optional” off-season practices.

Parents can help by listening to their young athletes to understand what they want to do. Mom and dad can step in to prevent coaches from commandeering their child and family. Doing so will keep athletics in a proper perspective and allow kids to play other sports, engage with non-sport activities, focus on school, and spend quality time with their friends and family.

Finally, it’s critical for families to carefully evaluate and choose a youth sports program that puts their young athlete’s best interests first, not the program brand, reputation, and money.

Buyer beware!

Sound parental choices will keep family priorities in order. What’s more important—family, school, friends, spiritual connection, or sports? No parent has ever answered “sports” when I’ve asked, yet family vacations, dinners, study time, social life, and religious attendance all revolve around year-round sport scheduling.

Restore proper priorities and remember that sports are intended to be a chosen, fun passion, not a forced, stressed obsession.