Look at Youth Sports Differently
Here we are in the midst of Little League baseball season so it must be about time for more outcry from psychologists, parents and journalists about how our star craved culture is ruining our kids’ lives by driving the little ones too hard in youth sports.
Sure enough, Monday’s WSJ “Bookshelf” section takes a full column to review BusinessWeek writer Mark Hyman’s book “Until It Hurts: America’s Obsession with Youth Sports and How it Harms Our Kids”. Okay, first off Mark needs to slow way down with that title. He makes it sound like we’re back in the 19th Century running our 11-year olds through 14 hour days in the neighborhood sweatshop.
According to the WSJ book reviewer (I obviously haven’t read Hyman’s book — and I don’t intend to), much of Hyman’s focus on youth sports centers around the physical injuries that apparently millions of kids suffer playing sports each year. From the author’s research, he claims that last year 3.5 million kids suffered a sports related malady that required treatment. Sorry, mom putting a band-aid on a skinned knee doesn’t really count here. I’d like to know how many kids actually had Tommy John elbow surgery (one of the actual examples in the article)?
This one sided view of youth sports misses the mark on two fronts.
First, as those who know me well know, two of my favorite movie characters are Vic Morrow as the overly rabid Yankees manager in “The Bad News Bears” and Robert Duvall as the demented military dad in “The Great Santini”. Both roles epitomize the evil wrongness that we all fear about youth sports.
Now if I could point to any real life examples where I saw a coach slap his pitcher like Morrow did in “The Bad News Bears” or if I had even one example of a parent berating and/or embarrassing his or her child on the field of play, I might be receptive to Hyman’s thesis. But I can’t recall a single incident that even comes close. The annual story of the Texas dad who beats up the Pop Warner football ref in the parking lot after the game is an anomaly — but a convenient one for the 11 o’clock news and USA Today’s front page.
Actually, my experiences have been far different. The parent-coaches that I have come in contact with have by in large understood the purpose of youth sports. What’s more, I would reckon that the percentage of kids who even in today’s society zero in on just one sport before high school (e.g. move to Texas to be a gymnast or play on the year-around traveling soccer club team) is pretty darn low. Like probably a very low single digit percentage. Hardly numbers that would lay claim to youth sports being the epidemic that Hyman’s book appears to claim.
The bigger point, however, apparently not addressed by Hyman as relates to youth sports — or at least not highlighted in the WSJ review — is the fact that we have a glaring epidemic afflicting our youth today that youth sports can actually help address. Child obesity and early onset diabetes. And one of the best things we can be doing is encouraging youth sports participation wherever possible.
Again, I would be willing to bet that not a single kid on the team of little leaguers I am coaching will ever play baseball in the majors — let alone in even college or high school. But I do hope that little league is just one of many sports they all try and that eventually they pick a couple (team or individual) that they really like and that this pursuit keeps them off the couch and keeps their hand out of the Doritos bag.
A book like Hyman’s smacks of sensationalism — playing off of corner cases and the easy line that can be connected from any topic to our “star struck society”. Maybe Hyman will do a sequel that tells the other much bigger side of the youth sports story. The one about how sports can have so many positive impacts on the lives of kids not only when they are kids but when they are grown ups too.
Originally published on Medium on March 31, 2009. This Substack version is maintained as the canonical archive.