Sports cancellations are causing stress

There’s no sports. No peewee football, no Major League baseball, no pickup basketball games. Maybe there’s a little tennis, as long as you don’t shake the other player’s hand at the end of the match. Maybe you can bump rackets.

That fact is causing people some stress, according to a poll released by the Global Sports

Institute at Arizona State

University.

When asked if “the inability to play sports has caused your child stress or anxiety,”

72 percent of respondents said that yes, it had.

A full 62 percent of people said they would not be putting their kids back into their sports of choice due to COVID-19 fears, even when those sports resume. About the same number of people said their kids would remain sports-free until there is a viable coronavirus vaccine.

It’s not just children’s sports. Most respondents, 82 percent, said halting live sporting events was a necessary step to halt spread of the coronavirus.

Half, 54 percent of people believe that live sporting events should not restart until a coronavirus vaccine is distributed, and a smaller number, 37 percent, said that sports could continue with no fans (though the same percentage disagreed with that statement).

The study was international, so we get interesting nuggets like this: “South Africans dedicate the highest percentage of screen time to following sports, compared to Australia, United Kingdom, and United States.”