In youth sports, just let kids play
Since the beginning of March, three women’s collegiate athletes have died by suicide — 22year-old Stanford soccer player and team captain Katie Meyer, 21-year-old Wisconsin track athlete Sarah Schulze, and 20year-old James Madison softball player Lauren Bernett — and these are just the ones we are aware of. Sadly, these suicides are only the most tragic tip of the student-athlete pressurecooker iceberg. Numerous other high-profile athletes have recently alerted us to the stress associated with high-performance sports, including Olympic gymnast Simone Biles, tennis star Naomi Osaka, and Olympic swimmers Michael Phelps and Caeleb Dressel.
Making the mental health issues of athletes public has helped normalize what has long been swept under the rug. In response, numerous sports organizations and colleges have instituted programs to address a raft of student-athlete mental and emotional ailments, including anxiety, depression, eating disorders and suicidal thoughts. Many athletic departments have hired mental health professionals and devoted significant resources to address the overall mental well-being of student-athletes.
Young athletes don’t die by suicide because of one reason. There is invariably a constellation of factors that render athletes susceptible to ideations of suicide — abuse by coaches, the need to perform with chronic pain, the loss of a social life, the stress of athletic and academic demands, the quest for excellence and perfectionism, and the pressure to perform in front of thousands, if not millions, of spectators.
But, there is one factor we all fail to take account of in this emergent stressor-cooker epidemic — the encroaching professionalization of formal youth sports programs and the loss of the play ethic. Children’s informal play and games have been replaced by a win-at-allcosts competitive ethic. According to psychologist Edward Deveraux, what he calls “Little Leaguism”
is threatening to wipe out the spontaneous culture of free play and games among children and replace it with a formalized model of adult-driven sport, not only robbing children of their childish fun but establishing an environment that emphasizes all the dimensions of adult sports — quality of performance, game outcome, and adherence to rules and regulations.
Perhaps, the most troubling trend in formal youth sports is the increasingly dominant emphasis on the “performance ethic.” Participants in youth sports, even recreational programs, are encouraged to measure their experiences in terms of technical skill development and progress into higher levels of competition. Furthermore, parents are becoming increasingly involved in and concerned about the participation and success of their children in organized youth sports. Youth sports have become serious business for adults and children. Winning matters. Making the All-star team matters. Getting a national ranking matters. Specialization begins at an earlier and earlier age. Privatized programs and facilities proliferate, threatening the long-cherished democracy of sport. Elitism reigns. Creativity, joy, expressiveness, interpersonal skills and moral development are sacrificed on the altar of the performance ethic. Youth sports is now more of a proving ground than a playground. It has become an enterprise saturated with purpose and intensity. The hopes of nations now ride on teenagers. Should we be surprised that, by the time they reach college, athletes face severe emotional and mental challenges?
Like most fathers, I loved many years ago watching my son play youth baseball. But, at the tender age of 12, he told me about how, on game day, the team’s pitcher and best player, a perennial All-star, could not eat for the entire day if he was slated to pitch that afternoon. He would routinely throw up before the game and even after it. He lost focus in school and ignored friends. I was too naïve then to recognize what was right in front of me — the insidious effects of professionalized youth sports. Like 70 percent of youth sports kids nationwide, my son’s teammate quit before he turned 14.
So, rather than address the symptoms, let’s address the problem. Here’s one good model that maximizes the strengths of adults and kids. First introduced in 1987 and updated in 2017 by the Olympic and Paralympic
Perhaps, the most troubling trend in formal youth sports is the increasingly dominant emphasis on the “performance ethic.”
Commission and Confederation of Sports in Norway, the Children’s Rights in Sports stipulates that children “must be granted opportunities to participate in the planning and execution of their own sport activities.” They may “decide for themselves how much they would like to train,” and can even “opt out of games if they would prefer to practice or just play for fun.”
Let’s give youth sports back to the kids. Ultimately, this will benefit our college athletes, too.