On Tuesday’s Ten-Minute (ish) Topic we discussed the epidemic rise of youth sports injuries and what parents need to be thinking about and doing to protect our kids. We were joined by Dr. Tommy John, who has dedicated his life’s work to helping young athletes with performance and injury prevention. Dr. John has devised a 4-prong attack, RETHINK, REBUILD, REPLENISH and RECOVER. This post will focus on RETHINK and we will have him back for separate discussions for each of the other topics.
On Tuesday’s Ten-Minute Topic we discussed the epidemic rise of youth sports injuries and what parents need to be thinking about and doing to protect our kids. We were joined by Dr. Tommy John, who has dedicated his life’s work to helping young athletes with performance and injury prevention. Dr. John has devised a 4-prong attack, RETHINK, REBUILD, REPLENISH and RECOVER. This post will focus on RETHINK and we will have him back for separate discussions for each of the other topics.
ILTWYP: What is causing such a dramatic rise in youth sports injuries?
Dr. John: So, it’s not single faceted. There’s not a single sport out there that is responsible. Concussions are up a couple of hundred percent, ACL surgeries have increased three percent per year over the last 20 years in six- to 18-year-olds, Tommy John Surgeries 50 percent, with more than half happening to athletes between 15 and 19 years old. There’s so much going on in all sports. So it’s not a sport specific problem. It’s a cultural problem that we’re looking at. The soft-tissue repair industry, surgeries, is expected to hit 17 Billion by the year 2022 with the main source being youth sports participation.
ILTWYP: What are the three real causes behind the injury epidemic?
Dr. John: 1) The business of youth sports. It’s an over $15,000,000,000 a year industry. 2) The American lifestyle, the American dream that we want it now, we want it fast. Who cares how long it sustains; we’re over-stimulated, less aware, over coached and under developed. It’s a culmination of all these. 3) Parents. Parents need to realize they are pushing and driving too hard and they need to learn how to help create a healthier athlete.
ILTWYP: What are coaches doing wrong?
Dr. John: We want to be bigger, faster, stronger, right now and there is no natural progression to develop because it takes time. All we’re doing is getting the athlete to express their best self earlier, and then they can’t sustain. They’re also over-analyzing skill. They’re putting so much pressure on skill and not the chain of development leading up to the skill. I equate it to throwing a baby down a hallway and yelling at it to run.
ILTWYP: What is the natal reflex our kids hold onto that’s holding them back?
Dr. John: So, there are reflexes that are ingrained innately in the body to help survival in the early part of life until we acquire some of the skill sets that will allow us to survive on our own. One of those happens to be the sensitivity strip of the spine. It’s supposed to be diminished. Integrated as the child grows. But we see some 10-, 11-, 12-year-olds in my office and they’ve retained it and even in some 50- or 60-year-olds it’s still present. It means that there are patterns in the brain that aren’t developed. So coordination, balance, agility, also cognitive retention are being affected because these reflexes aren’t integrated. And one of the big ones is when the chairs at the schools stimulate the back/spine of the kids, they’re fidgeting and they’re told to sit still and now they’re labeled with some sort of attention syndrome and all they are doing is just responding normally to something that should’ve been integrated well before then.
ILTWYP: How can you measure everything you need to know about an athlete regardless of age, gender, or sport?
Dr. John: I’ve worked with a lot of NFL, NBA and NHL players and you see that they’re able to perform at that level from a lot of things that are God given, but they can’t sustain it. There are certain very basic tests to see if a person has developed the basic steps and strength since childhood to maintain a high output of performance. For example, a simple pull-up test, a plank across, crawl kind of patterning, test standing on one leg. There’s a lot of these things that, again, you don’t necessarily have to be a professional, but I’m giving to parents to be able to evaluate their athlete and get an idea of where we’re starting from and then a reevaluation later on to see how they’re progressing. And a chance to go back to some of the basics if they have missed a part of their development.
ILTWYP: How do high tech devices and cell phones sabotage young athletes?
Dr. John: It’s not just the inactivity, although that’s part of it, but it’s the bits of information that are coming through cell phones into kids’ eyes and their brains are having to interpret these bits of information that increase a fight or flight response. The fight or flight response increases the immune system and takes it away from what it’s supposed to be doing – fighting bacteria and viruses, cancer cells and repair tissue. So technology and staring at a phone is fatiguing the person in ramping up and lowering the immune system and it’s more profound than just, my kid’s kind of hunched over and he’s inactive. It goes far beyond that.
ILTWYP: How are parents’ desire to help their child by over-analyzing their performance actually doing the exact opposite?
Dr. John: If you think about it in a pyramid form, the skills at the top of the pyramid where evaluating a skill that is just a culmination of a bunch of movements done in an athletic setting to express a skill because kicking a soccer ball is really just a bunch of selection. Extension, abduction, adduction, raise, push, pull it … to the brain is just this collection of movements. We’re evaluating these skills but the kids aren’t prepared to express them. So we’re criticizing something that they can’t change anyway. And then it increases that stress response that we were talking about. Now it’s like I, I, I can’t make the change. It’s not that you’re just defiant or you take a little longer than others. We’re measuring things that we should not be measuring in youth. The child thinks, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know how to get there yet.”
ILTWYP: What are the weekly warning signs that a child may need to dial back on their sports?
Dr. John: Are they enthusiastic? How’s their sleep? How’s their eating? Subconsciously the brain is an interesting thing because I’ll see kids move their bodies in a certain way and it’s what their brain wants them to do and you can pick up on some of these things and then just have a conversation with them. Developing these athletes to get more connected to themselves and not just the athletic portion of their lives.
ILTWYP: Why do parents need to say no to sports specialization?
Dr. John: Sports specialization is playing a sport for eight months or more a year. Statistics have shown that most elite athletes, Olympians and NFL players alike, that the majority of these top athletes were multi-sport athletes. The brain does better in development, playing on different surfaces, different rules and different types of coordination, if it’s a group activity, if it’s a one-on-one activity. They are all needed for development and not just for sports, but also to develop emotionally and socially.
Dr. John’s book, Minimize injury, Maximize Performance, A Sports Parent’s Survival Guide. And you can pre-order it on Amazon, Barnes and noble and Google play and will be released on June 5th.
Brady, Brees, And What Really Matters
Tom Brady And Drew Brees Viral Family Video…
John Wooden said it best, “The true test of a man’s character is what he does when no one is watching.” Well, in this case, almost nobody. The stadium was nearly emptied after the Buccaneers’ 30-20 victory over the Saints in what is most likely Drew Brees’ final season after 20-years in the NFL. And as the lights went down on Brees’ career and the lights in the stadium, a lot about these two men was on full display.
A lone journalist, James Palmer, captured video showing Tom Brady and Drew Brees embracing went viral, with over 7 million views. The highlights; Brady throwing a touchdown pass to Brees’ son in the end zone and Brees’ daughter doing flips and cartwheels on her Dad.
What we can learn from Saints QB Taysom Hill
Brees of course was not hoping to end his career that night. But in doing so, it gave fans a glimpse into something even more important to these men; family, being gracious, and respect for the game and those who play it.
The final words heard on the video…Brady telling Brees’ son “Be nice to your sister”.
Perfect.
By Alex Flanagan
This Sunday, Father’s Day, Golden State Warrior Head Coach Steve Kerr could win a seventh NBA championship, his 2nd as a head coach. He’s already been named the NBA’s 2015-2016 Coach of the Year after leading his team to the most wins ever in an NBA Season. But if the streamers fall in Oakland on Sunday, don’t expect Steve to cut loose in the confetti. He’ll be the one pushing his players to the forefront and shying away from the spotlight. It’s a practice that hasn’t gone unnoticed by Kerr’s daughter Maddy, a volleyball player at the University of California, Berkeley, who says it’s her dad’s humility, not his accomplishments, that has had the biggest effect on her.
There are a lot of lessons fathers can teach their kids through sports. A lot. But which ones will resonate with your children and be remembered long after they become adults? Along with Kerr’s daughter Maddy and his son Nick, in honor of Father’s Day, we asked some of the sports world’s most influential figures to share with us the most important sports lessons they learned from their dads.
THE MOST IMPORTANT SPORTS LESSON I LEARNED FROM MY DAD
Indianapolis Colts quarterback Andrew Luck (AP Photo/Kathy Willens)
TREAT PRACTICE LIKE A GAME: “Best sports advice from my father … I remember in fifth grade football, we had practice. I don’t think I ate anything all day. I maybe had one tortilla. I showed up to practice light headed. He was the coach. Obviously, I couldn’t practice. He yelled at me in front of all the kids, made an example of me. He made me sit on the sideline, hydrate and go home. Then gave me a lesson in the car ride home about, ‘Hey, practice is important. You have to show up. You have to eat. You have to do everything important you would do for a game. For practice, you must respect that.’ Treat practice like you would a game.” Andrew Luck, Quarterback, Indianapolis Colts
YOUR BEHAVIOR OFF THE FIELD MATTERS: “My father was in public life and he traveled frequently when I was growing up, but he always made time to come to my games. It was incredibly meaningful to me to have his support. The fact that he was there on the sidelines gave me the confidence that I had his support in everything I pursued off of the field. That is something I have carried with me in life, and I work hard every day to give that same level of support to my daughters. … I just wanted to make him proud. But I also knew that how I conducted myself off the field mattered more to him than what I did on the field.” Roger Goodell, NFL Commissioner
DO THINGS RIGHT THE FIRST TIME: “The biggest thing that I learned from my dad was discipline and how important it was to do things correctly. I worked for my dad at his service station and there was a standard of excellence, a perfection. If we washed a car and there were any streaks, my father would have you do the whole thing over again. The navy blue and black cars were always the hardest because the streaks were so hard to get off when you wiped them off. There are probably a lot of things that carry over to what I do now in coaching that I learned from working for my dad years ago. I learned that it was a lot better to do it the right way the first time.” Nick Saban, Head Football Coach, University of Alabama
Photo Credit: hdnux.com
IT DOESN’T MATTER WHO GETS CREDIT WHEN YOU’RE PART OF A TEAM: “I’ve watched my dad listen to every member of his coaching staff, to the players and to countless people in lower positions than his. He keeps an open mind and doesn’t care where a good idea comes from; if it works, he will use it. He is secure enough in his ability that he stands out of the limelight and lets others shine. I am definitely not as humble as my dad, but I do try to be a team player. When you’re on a team, everybody has the same goal: to win. If you achieve that goal, who cares how it happened? I’m a million times happier if my team wins and I have a horrible game than if we lose but I play great. Though we’ve never explicitly had this conversation, I can attribute these characteristics to my dad’s influence.” Maddy Kerr, University of California Berkely volleyball, Daughter of Warriors Head coach Steve Kerr
Photo Credit: hdnux.com
IT ISN’T ONLY ABOUT YOU: “My dad has always stressed the importance of playing hard even when shots weren’t falling. He taught me that I have a responsibility to my teammates even if I was frustrated with my own play.” Nick Kerr, University of California, Berkely Basketball player, son of Warriors Head Coach Steve Kerr
IF YOU ARE GOING TO DO SOMETHING, DO IT ALL THE WAY: “From mowing the grass to making the bed to practicing football. Don’t do anything just with half effort. That applies in football and life and anything you do, family, faith; if you want to do something, do it all the way and more specifically from a football and quarterback perspective it was, rather clearly – don’t throw the ball to the other team.” Philip Rivers, Quarterback San Diego Chargers
Photo Credit: NFL.COM
I LOVE TO WATCH YOU PLAY, BECAUSE … I LOVE YOU. “There are so many valuable lessons that I learned though competing in sports and my Dad was so instrumental in that learning process. He taught me that anything a Lynch was going to do, we would do 100%; he taught me how to be a good teammate, to win and lose with class, to always dream big and that with hard work anything I set my mind to was possible. All of those are invaluable lessons. Having said that, the most valuable lesson my Dad taught me through sports was that he loved me. He did this by always being there. He always was my coach. He was working incredibly hard to build his company when I was growing up, traveling a lot, but he managed always to show up when I had a game. That let me know he loved me! That effort, that commitment is the greatest lesson my father taught me that I try to parent by today … to always let my kids know that I love them and the best way to do that is to be there for them. Happy Father’s Day, Dad and Thank you!” John Lynch, Jr., former NFL player and current Fox Sports broadcaster.
Building An Injury-free Athlete From The Ground Up
In an effort to vault their children into athletic success, many parents have hopped on board the 10,000-hour rule made famous by Malcolm Gladwell in his best-selling book, Outliers. That is the benchmark for the amount of time, Gladwell argues, to make kids experts in their sport. Kids play year-round on competitive travel teams and their parents pay lots of money for specialized training, with the promise of reaching an elite level of play in a specific sport.
The study found that athletes specializing in one sport – and especially those who train for that sport year-round – are 70 percent more likely to sustain a lower extremity injury
What often happens however, is that instead of hastening their success through specialization, children who over-focus on a specific sport at a young age often end up injured or burned out or both! The National Federation of High School Associations released the results of a study conducted by researchers from the University of Wisconsin measuring injury rates for student-athletes in conjunction with sport specialization. The study found that athletes specializing in one sport – and especially those who train for that sport year-round – are 70 percent more likely to sustain a lower extremity injury, as they are putting undue stress on a concentrated group of muscles, bones and ligaments. It was also found that 57 percent of all Tommy John surgeries are being performed on 15-19-year-olds. (Typically from overuse of ligaments in your elbow for pitchers)
So, what are parents to do?
Dr Tommy John, author of Minimize Injury, Maximize Performance, A Sports Parent’s Survival Guide, knows a thing or two about Tommy John surgery as it was named after his father, a former MLB pitcher who was the first one to have the surgery. Dr. John has been critical of specializing at such young ages, and he has spent the last 15 years combatting the injury epidemic plaguing youth sports athletes.
Laying the foundation
According to Dr John, the root of today’s injury epidemic in youth sports starts early, when children are developing their motor skills. They are supposed to build the foundation of motor movements that translate into a healthy, long-lasting athletic life. Nowadays, there is not nearly enough emphasis on this crucial period in physical development. Kids aren’t allowed as much free play time; technology and well-intentioned parents have limited the amount of time kids play outside and, of course, there’s also early sports specialization.
“These primary years (0-11) need to be focused on those basic, fundamental movements in order to have a good foundation for the future if a child is to have a rewarding, injury-free experience not only in sports, but in life.” As David Epstein, NYT best-selling author of The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance noted, our sports-crazed society is creating amazing 14/15-year old athletes with no regard for the long term.
The problem with hyper-specificity
Today’s model of sports development is focused more on the development of a particular skill at an early age: kicking a soccer ball, throwing a football, shooting a basketball, et cetera.
“It should be 10 percent skill-specific at ages 9,10,11 and 90 percent devoted to the development of functional movements.”
Without a good foundation of functional movement (i.e., coordination, balance, agility and kinesthetic awareness) the specific actions of a particular sport open up the possibility of trauma to the body.
“These days it is common for kids to get into major specifics at 9, 10, 11 years old, which can end up being counter-productive. Instead,it should be 10 percent skill-specific at that age and 90 percent devoted to the development of functional movements.”
How to build a strong base of functional mobility
Before deep-diving into the specifics of a particular sport or activity, children first need to have a strong base of basic motor movements, then once those are established, a child can go on to weight bearing, and finally, skill. Dr John sees this construction as a sort of pyramid, with functional movement at the bottom and skill at the top.
Building a good pyramid
So what kinds of exercise – or better yet, activities – should parents be getting their children to do to build this foundation of functional movement? Dr John advises that it can be developed through some pretty basic activities.
Learn More About Specific Activities You Can Do With Your Kid
“If we can try to promote free play, then that’s number one,” he says. “If we can really try to promote playing as many sports as we can, even if we don’t know how to do it, if the sport is approached appropriately, all the general movements will be taken care of.”
Also, a parent’s approach to getting children to do household chores can help. By simply engaging in chores like carrying, cleaning, etc., a foundation of functional movement will construct itself organically.
Another important thing is how to define these actions to children. Oftentimes, if we call them ‘exercise,’ children will have an adverse reaction to that word. If we define it more along the lines of fun or in the case of chores, ‘can you do this to help mom?’ then kids might be more willing to comply.
Bottom line, to make your child a better long-term athlete, go back to the basics; movement of any kind, albeit different sports, chores, or free-play will all help to create a strong base for an athlete.
For more on this subject, watch our interviews with Dr. John.
I felt lost, confused, and overwhelmed
In 2015, I was standing on the soccer field watching my third youth sports event of the day when my phone rang. A morning basketball game and two scorching hot soccer games in, and seeing my former sports television colleague and friend’s name pop up on my cell was a welcomed opportunity to step away from the madness of parents – and sometimes myself, screaming ‘kick it’ at 8-year-olds across the field.
At that time, we each had three kids – all the same ages: 12, 10, and 8. We were in the thick of it. Every weekend, I had a spreadsheet to keep track of all our sporting events, not kidding, and two coolers packed with snacks, water, hairbands, band-aids, Neosporin, ice, and wraps – I was armed and ready for anything the day called for.
She was in the same boat, and I remember what she said that day, ‘This is wild, right? We should do something to help youth sports parents.” I was feeling lost, confused, and overwhelmed, and the idea of helping others on the same Journey was appealing. I had played sports my entire life, earned a D1 basketball scholarship, and spent two decades as a sports journalist, interviewing the greatest athletes and coaches in the world and the experts who work with them. We both felt we had something to offer other parents. And so it began that day on the soccer field. I didn’t know it then, but what I would learn from my work on Ilovetowatchyouplay over the next few years would change my life forever.
It’s all in the name…
It took us a long time to pick the name.
Team Sports Moms
Raising Athletes
Playing Up
Game On
Championing Parents
Parenting Athletes
Nothing seemed just right, and most of the good ones were taken or didn’t capture what we hoped to do: provide a roadmap for parents navigating youth sports. That’s when we stumbled onto John O’Sullivan’s Ted Talk. He references a study by two former longtime coaches, Bruce Brown and Rob Miller of Proactive Coaching. After three decades of informally surveying hundreds of college athletes, they determined that all the athletes wanted to hear from their parents was, “I love to watch you play.”
That phrase encapsulated everything we wanted our site to be about. It was perfect. It was what sports parenting should be, boiled down into one simple phrase. I am so grateful for Bruce and Rob from Proactive Coaching; I have recently been digging into their work, and it is a treasure chest of insight for parents, coaches, and athletes. I highly recommend it!
I needed the site more than it needed me
So, for the next several years, we worked our day jobs in sports television and poured all our extra time and passion into building Ilovetowatchyouplay. It was challenging and rewarding in many ways, but there was so much to learn. Eventually, we parted ways, and my former colleague moved on to do other amazing things, but my work on I Love to Watch You Play was not done, not even close. And what I didn’t know then was that I needed the site as much, or more than it needed me.
I wasn’t a ‘crazy’ sports parent
It’s been almost 9-years since that day on the soccer field, and I have grown right alongside the site. I recently wrote this article about parenting my oldest daughter through her sports experience: “My daughter quit sports, and this is what I want youth sports parents to know.” It took me several years to be able to share our story. Several years of mulling over my role in her decision to quit and my role in how I allowed sports to cause a wedge in our relationship. It was a difficult journey, but one I couldn’t have taken without my work on ILTWYP. And I’m afraid to think of what might have happened had I not been able to own my role in all of it, apologize, and start to repair my relationship with my oldest. Or how I may have continued down that same path with my other two daughters. I have always had good intentions; I love my kids and would do anything for them. I wasn’t a ‘crazy’ sports parent; I wasn’t a big screamer; I didn’t interfere with the coaches or overcoddle my kids or think they were the best, and I knew the character-building value of sports. Yet, I still lost my way. I was knowledgeable, had many resources, and wrote, read, and interviewed experts about what good sports parenting is. Yet, still – I LOST MY WAY. For me, losing my way meant crossing a very fine line between support and pressure. I could be negative and critical at times. I began to care more about her sports than she did; I hijacked her youth sports experience with my own agenda and expectations.
How can you blame the parents?
Sports parenting is like regular parenting but on turbocharge. And it’s not a big mystery as to why. Think about the fervor with which we follow our college and professional teams. It borders on the religious; victories or defeats can sway the emotional state of entire communities. This fanatic zeal cements athletes as heroes and intertwines their successes and failures with our personal identities and local pride. Now add into that mix – your own child. That child becomes a ‘hero’ in our own sports documentary; yes, our flesh and blood or someone we love more than life itself now gets the leading role. And pile on top of that – ROI. All the time and money parents are putting towards youth sports – we better get something out of it…a scholarship or, at the very least, a lot of playing time. It’s easy to understand how and why youth sports have become a pressure cooker for our young athletes and why sports parents need compassion, guidance, and information to thrive and find their way.
Being a good and positive sports parent takes work. And you don’t necessarily change how you feel inside or what your innate reactions are to their sports. But you realize the damage it does to your child, so you learn what it means to be a positive sports parent, and then you practice. You practice it over and over and over. And when you mess up, you forgive yourself, apologize to your kids, and keep practicing.
My hope is that Ilovetowatchyouplay can be a small part of that journey for sports parents, sharing my experiences and the learnings from experts, authors, and other parents to help inform and guide their decisions. The goal is to empower parents to help their kids love sports longer, stay healthier, feel happier, and experience more success. And if we can help you do some or all of those things, then that is everything.
Asia Mape
Founder – Ilovetowatchyouplay
A few articles I recommend to become a positive sports parent:
Tips For Being A Positive Sports Parent
Youth Sports Parents Come To Your Senses
Why Kids Are Quitting Sports In Record Numbers
The Youth Sports Epidemic: Overuse Injuries in Talented Young Athletes
It starts early.
Walk by any park, and you’ll see children as young as three and four being “herded” through cones and ordered about by a coach. By five, many have moved on to a year-round club team, and by 8 or 9, maybe a second club or rec team trying to be a ‘multi-sport’ athlete. By then, most have added private training to their week, and on top of that, there are the middle school and high school teams. By the time these kids reach double digits, they will definitely have gotten their 10,000 hours and some. In this current system, talent is identified early and skill honed by incessantly playing as much as possible, and for what? So that maybe the elusive college scholarship could be within reach.
But there’s a dark side to this overzealous pursuit of success. It’s in the stories of shattered knees, stress fractures, and injuries that derail too many young people’s careers.
It’s a well-documented phenomenon, with studies revealing a rapid increase in a ballooning soft-tissue repair market among children and teenagers. Research from the American Orthopedic Society for Sports Medicine found that 60% of pediatric anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries happen in females between 6 and 18, athletes at an incredibly tender crucial juncture of growth and development. The pressure to excel and the hyperfocus on a singular sport are dangerous precursors to such statistics. A National Athletic Trainers’ Association study reported that overuse injuries (like stress fractures, tendonitis, and growth plate injuries) account for nearly half of all sports injuries to middle and high school students. Johns Hopkins Medicine indicates that yearly, more than 3.5 million children under 14 receive medical treatment for sports injuries and A recent study published by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) sheds light on the prevalence of overuse injuries caused by repetitive stress, revealing that children and adolescents are particularly susceptible due to the intolerance of growing bones to excessive strain. Meanwhile, STOPsportsinjuries.org says that young athletes who specialize in just one sport before age 12 are at a significantly higher risk of severe injuries that may impend their athletic capacity in the long term.
Injuries are wreaking havoc on college programs, but this year, the women’s game has been hit especially hard. TCU women’s basketball team, a top D1 program, had to hold ‘open tryouts’ mid-season because they couldn’t field a team due to injuries. The Guardian reported that over a recent 18-month period, more than 195 elite women soccer players were sidelined by ACL injuries. The University of Connecticut’s storied women’s basketball program saw five star athletes sidelined this season, including Azzi Fudd with an ACL tear, Jana El Alfy with a ruptured Achilles, and Ayanna Patterson with patellar tendonitis. Their star guard, Paige Bueckers, was out for for several weeks after an MRI and CT scans revealed a tibial plateau fracture from a non-contact injury. Bueckers, following her stellar freshman season, was limited to 17 games by a knee injury and then tore an ACL in August 2022, sidelining her for the 2022-23 season.
Although some are contact related, most of these aren’t freak accidents; they are symbolic of a youth system that primes and pushes young athletes far too quickly, with scant regard for the physical toll it takes on their still-developing bodies.
“When a young person is 16 and says, ‘I’m having knee pain,’ something is wrong.”
Even Uconn Coach Auriemma, who has seen and sculpted the careers of female basketball icons, expressed his concern over the trajectory that leads a once-healthy recruit to miss half of their college career: “When a young person is 16 and says, ‘I’m having knee pain,’ something is wrong. They’re not supposed to have knee pain.” This isn’t a localized anomaly but rather symptomatic of a sports culture that demands more and more, too early and too often. The issue in men’s basketball was well documented in this ESPN article, ‘These kids are ticking time bombs’: The threat of youth basketball. But It isn’t merely a basketball problem; it’s a crisis that spans all youth sports. Orthopedic surgeons outline the damage as “a train heading down the wrong track,” manifesting in ill-equipped bodies not able to handle the stress applied to them by constant and repetitive play. And it’s not just physical, it’s also mental. The Advisory and Oversight Committee (AOC) of the NCAA research suggests that overuse and early specialization heightens injury risk, fatigue, and psychological burnout.
Delay year-round single sports participation. Incorporate more free, unstructured play and early diversification, playing multiple sports, and sampling different activities – hiking, biking, skateboarding, surfing, or just playing at the playground, can all help fortify a budding athlete by cultivating a range of movements and skills to counteract a singular sport and repetitive movements. Engaging in activities involving varying planes of movement and surfaces reduces the risk of injury and creates a more well-rounded and adaptable athlete.
The adage that champions aren’t made during games but in the hours of practice that precede them stands true, but one factor often overlooked is rest. Athletes at the highest levels prioritize rest as much as they do training, recognizing it as an essential cog in the wheel of peak performance. Young athletes need to allocate time for their bodies to recover and recuperate, to counteract the stress they are putting on their bodies and to revitalize themselves mentally and physically.
Possibly, the most important change that needs to occur is that we need to redefine success. When winning or a college scholarship is the sole yardstick, we miss the subtler and more important victories from nurturing an inclusive, enjoyable, and lifelong relationship with sports. We’re at an inflection point, we need to change our approach to youth sports. A system fixated on single-sport specialization and competitive edge without care for holistic athlete welfare is destroying our kids. Take agency parents, our kids deserve it.
