Study: Kids burn out with focus on sports

0 Comments | Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Jan 8, 2006 | by Tom Withers Associated Press

WESTLAKE, Ohio -- Ponytails bounce to the unsteady rhythm of multicolored balls thudding off dozens of tiny knees, heads and feet. As parents watch from nearby bleachers, the girls enjoy themselves in the shrinking sunlight, kicking and giggling as they move around orange cones like a swarm of bees.

For some of the 7- and 8-year-olds, though, play soon will become more serious.

Their names have been whispered to area high school coaches and local top soccer clubs with travel budgets and paid instructors. Next spring, independent consultants, hired by the city's soccer association to avoid favoritism, will supervise tryouts and separate the kids based on talent.

The snapshot is of an American youth sports culture that has grown more extreme in recent years. There are huge benefits that can come with being a child athlete -- learning leadership and social skills, teamwork and physical well-being, to name a few. But, increasingly, athletic achievement has come at a steep price: burnout, serious injuries, steroid use, growing inequity between poor children and those better off, and less enjoyment.

"Kids say they aren't having fun anymore," said Dr. Bruce Svare, director of the National Institute for Sports Reform. "Sports for young kids should not be about building better athletes or winning every game. We need to be building better people, and we're not."

Studies show that by the time these girls reach age 13, 70 percent of them will quit soccer and other team sports, shelving them for good like once-loved dolls from their childhood.

The kids who abandon organized sports will say they've been turned off by too many practices, too many games, too many tournaments and in some cases, overbearing parents.

A counterrevolution is under way in several states. From Ohio to Maine to New Jersey, leaders have begun efforts they hope can contain parts of a youth sports environment that experts believe has strayed dangerously out of bounds.

Tennis became a sports oasis for Amanda Chartrand. Now 16, she wasn't ready for the intensity or competition of a select basketball team while in elementary school.

From October until spring, it was basketball nearly around-the- clock as her team practiced four times per week and played in weekend tournaments.

"The practices were really hard," said Chartrand, of Miamisburg, Ohio. "My mind and my body weren't exactly ready for it. Going into it, I was overwhelmed."

She had joined the team in second grade, quit, and returned as a sixth-grader.

Chartrand's tale is typical of American kids being funneled into sports programs almost as soon as they can walk.

"Parents buy into two myths," Svare said. "One is that their kids need to be specializing in one sport early on because that will give them a jump. And two, is that early success is not an indicator of athletic success later on."

Chartrand grew to love the travel, her team's expensive warmups and other perks. But the intense competition took its toll. Eventually the demanding practices, academic pressures, extracurricular interests and a desire to pursue tennis soured her on basketball.

If she had to do it all over, she would have chosen not to start playing basketball so young.

"I was so burned out on it from doing it repetitively year after year," Chartrand said.

As educators and others work to fix problems, they hope to re- educate parents.

"We look at these kids with the stars on their helmets and pinstripes on their uniforms and we think they are miniaturized adults," said Gregg Heinzmann, director of the Youth Sports Research Council at Rutgers University. "But they don't think like we do, they don't understand like we do. We've professionalized youth sports to an excessive level."

The stakes are high for parents. As college tuition skyrockets, some push their children to work hard in the classroom and in the gym while chasing scholarships, dreams of Olympic medals or the infinitesimal chance that little Johnny or Susie will become the next Tiger Woods, LeBron James or Michelle Wie.

"Parents are under tremendous pressure," said Dr. Frank Smoll, a sports psychologist at the University of Washington who has been studying youth athletics since the 1970s.

"Kids can't just be good academically and athletically. They have to excel and be great athletes, musicians and computer whizzes, and it's starting as soon as the kids are out of the cradle."

Shari Wahl entered into soccer motherhood with trepidation.

Covered with a blanket on a drizzly, damp October evening, Wahl is one of several soccer moms -- and dads -- dotting the sideline as their little girls practice dribbling, passing and other skills.

Wahl had heard frightening tales of out-of-control parents, three- days-per-week practices, families running nonstop and kids getting seriously hurt. She signed up her 7-year-old daughter, Natalie, for Westlake's popular soccer program anyway, not wanting her to miss the fun.

"I was a little worried at first," Wahl said. "I don't like all the competition for such little kids."