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- Jason and Nick's Take on Youth Sports
In this episode of the podcast/newsletter, we decided to give our thoughts on the whole travel sports phenomenon and discuss a book that was written on the topic. Our goal was to just have an open discussion around the various aspects that come into consideration during this unique time as families are considering diving into travel sports. The book is titled “Take Back The Game” by Linda Flanagan and it provided many interesting points that Jason and I went back and forth on. Let’s dive in.
We began with a quote from the book by author Michael Lewis who has compared the business of youth sports to the market for addictive drugs: unregulated, full of desperate actors, and fueled by money. The youth sports industry is now worth more than $20 billion dollars, over 90% increase since 2010. During the past 10 years, shoulder and elbow surgeries have increased 5x in youth baseball and softball. A 2019 Harris poll survey of 1,001 select adults found that 36% of people reported taking fewer vacations and 19% added a second job to help cover the costs of travel sports. A TD Ameritrade study found that 21% of surveyed parents were holding off saving for retirement due to the costs of travel sports.
With that background information, the question becomes why do parents choose to get into travel sports. We discuss whether parents believe their child is truly a D1 athlete or if there is more to it. Jason brings up he feels it is more about the fear and anxiety of missing out when they see other kids doing certain things coupled with the pursuit of an athletic college scholarship. I bring up a point from the book which argues it is more of a deeper societal shift that has taken place when it comes to parenting. In the past, it was much more common to have children simply outside playing with other kids and organizing their own games without constant parental oversight. However, in the 1970’s or so, economic decline, higher divorce rates, and an escalating societal focus on stranger danger laid the groundwork for the boom in adult supervised child activities. Today, a bedrock parenting strategy is to get your kids into adult supervised activities as soon as possible, travel sports being one such avenue. Jason and I debate the merits of this phenomenon.
We then dive into some of the pillars that the book argues parents should keep in mind. The first is look at your child and get to know them and what their interests truly are. Stop pushing your own interests on them. The second is to keep your family whole. Too often the burden of travel sports has a way of splitting up families simply due to the schedule demands. This takes a toll on family relationships and is often at least a contributor to divorce rates. The third is to keep perspective. Realize that there is a good chance in 20-30 years that you will look back and conclude that much of this mania didn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. It’s also ok to miss the occasional game here and there and may actually be good for your child. Finally, the fourth pillar is to model the behaviors you want your child to learn. Respect the coaches, referees, and fellow athletes. Children take note of the constant complaining and learn this behavior. Again, we debate these pillars on the podcast.
Finally, we discuss the notion of sports and the idea of character building. It is really never questioned in our society that sports teach character. However, a meta analysis on the connection between athletics and character development does not seem to support this. The study looked at 40 years of research conducted by more than 20 researchers studying tens of thousands of athletes and non athletes from youth, high schools, collegiate, and Olympic levels and found that the research simply does not support the notion that sports build character, particularly as it applies to sportsmanship behaviors and moral reasoning ability. Jason and I dive into this topic during our discussion.
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