Youth Performance

On this episode of the podcast/newsletter, we decided to tackle a new study that came out in the Journal of Sports Medicine that was making it’s way through the performance community. The study, listed here, was compelling because it argues that it’s findings conclude that junior performance had little predictive value to senior performance. We thought this would make for an interesting conversation on the topic of athletic performance.

So this study is a systemic review and meta-analysis, which basically means they were looking at a bunch of studies. The study looked at a wide range of Olympic sports from both international samples as well as national samples. They were looking to find the extent to which junior performance (under age 18) was predictive of senior performance (roughly over age 20). The major finding was that junior performance had little predictive value. Almost all (89.2%) of under 18 successful junior athletes did not achieve similar results as a senior. This was obviously music to the ears of those in the anti early sport specialization crowd.

We had a good discussion on this topic on the podcast. All three of us are sympathetic to the point of view of not getting carried away with early childhood sports performance. Many things can change as you age and conclude puberty. However, sometimes it is hard when studies conflict with what you observe with your own two eyes. We have been in the sports performance/sports medicine world for a long time now, and it is pretty hard to not notice that the athletes who reach the Division 1 level and beyond were also the best players in middle school and high school.

We feel the findings of this study are a little deceiving. They are most likely explained by a number of variables. The kinds of sports that were included, the performance metrics that were measured, and the life cycle of the typical athlete can all factor together to produce results like this.

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Simplified Takeaways…

1. A new study came out stating that after looking at a number of studies on athletic performance, under age 18 performance has little predictive value on over age 18 athletic performance.

2. In our discussion, we have a hard time reconciling this with what we have observed.

3. It may depend on which sport you are looking at as some sports have a higher tendency to recruit athletes at a later age, thus skewing results.

4. It seems pretty undeniable that if you are playing Division 1 baseball or basketball, you were probably a pretty darn good high school player.

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