Youth Sports, Life Skills and Values
 When kids are asked why they play sports, here's what they say:
• To have fun
• To improve their skills
• To learn new skills
• To be with their friends
• To make new friends
• To succeed or win
• To become physically fit
Kids usually get the benefits they seek from sports and more. Kids need attention and respect (in that order), but they have few ways to get them. Kids are good at sports because sports are essentially about speed, strength, coordination, vision, creativity, and responsiveness-the necessary physical attributes are the attributes of youth.
According to researchers at the Institute for the Study of Youth Sports at Michigan State University, kids who participate in organized sports do better in school, have better interpersonal skills, are more team oriented, and are generally healthier. Participation in sports provides opportunities for leadership and socialization, as well as the development of skills for handling success and failure.
Moreover, when playing games, children learn how rules work. They see how groups need rules to keep order, that the individual must accept the rules for the good of the group, that rules entail a consideration of the rights of others. They also learn about competition, but within a restricted and safe system where the consequences of losing are minimized.
Benefits for girls have been of particular interest to researchers. Increased self-esteem and self-confidence, healthier body image, significant experiences of competency and success, as well as reduced risk of chronic disease. Furthermore, female athletes "do better academically and have lower school dropout rates than their nonathletic counterparts."
For females, these include their being less likely to become pregnant as teenagers, less likely to begin smoking, more likely to quit smoking, more likely to do well in science, and more likely to graduate from than female nonathletes. Female athletes also take greater pride in their physical and social selves than their sedentary peers; they are more active physically as they age; they suffer less depression. There is also some evidence that recreational physical activity decreases a woman's chances of developing breast cancer and helps prevent osteoporosis.
The arena is unique for two reasons. First, sports engage the child as a complete human being: all facets-not just physical, but also social, cognitive, and psychological-are engaged harmoniously in striving toward fulfillment. Second, sports involve youths working in an ongoing community composed of their peers as well as their peers' families. Sports, that is, offer children an exhilarating, satisfying, rewarding way to participate in a larger world not generally accessible to nonathletes.
Physical Benefits
• Fitness. Kids who play sports develop general physical fitness in a way that's fun, and they establish lifelong habits for good health.
• Stress relief. Sports allow kids to clear their minds of academic and social pressures, to literally run off the tension that's accumulated in their muscles.
• Mastery. Sports give kids a satisfying, enjoyable way to develop their own talents: through personal effort they get good at something they're interested in.
• Healthy habits. Most athletes value what their bodies can do and want to maintain those abilities. Being an athlete also gives kids an acceptable reason for telling their friends no to drugs, booze, and other high-risk, unhealthy behaviours. (Of course, not all athletes avoid drugs and alcohol.)
Personal Benefits
• Valuing preparation. Sports help kids learn to distinguish between effort and ability. Sports increase self-discipline and the awareness of the value of preparation because kids can see the difference in their performance.
Competitive athletes learn the importance of effort, being prepared (mentally and physically), and enlightened risk-taking. They see that raw physical talent is not always sufficient to win the game, but that preparation is essential. This includes mental preparation (staying focused) and physical fitness as well as practicing the plays with their teammates in team sports. They learn to evaluate risk versus reward. Another invaluable lesson is discovering that mistakes are part of learning; they signal that a particular approach is unsuccessful and you must try another.
Resilience. Sports provide an unparalleled model for dealing with disappointment and misfortune. Young athletes learn to handle adversity, whether it's picking themselves up after losing a big game or not getting as many minutes as they wanted. Athletes also learn to deal with the physical and psychological effects of injury.
Attitude control. Older teens learn that a confident attitude improves their performance, and that they have some control over their attitude. They learn to disregard comparative stats in preparing for an opponent and instead to adopt "attitude enhancers" such as visualization exercises, team or individual rituals.
• Leadership opportunities. Team sports offer kids a rare opportunity to serve as leaders. They can minimize conflicts among players. They can reinforce values-such as fair play, teamsmanship, hard work, mental preparation-by speaking up when appropriate and setting a good example.
• Identity and balance. Being part of a group is inordinately important to kids, and sports make kids feel like they belong, whether it's to the group of athletes in general or their team in particular. Sports also contribute to a teenager's sense of a stable identity with particular values. "I'm a football player" is a very different statement than "I play football." People are complicated, however; no individual is just one thing. It's better to encourage children-and adults-not to assume a single identity to the exclusion of all else.
• Time management. Young athletes learn to manage their time productively. Countless athletes, in school and the workplace, say that being an athlete taught them discipline that is invaluable in their lives on and off the field.
• Long-term thinking. Athletes learn the fundamental lesson of sacrificing immediate gratification for long-term gain. This is the basis for personal success as well as for civilization in general, and no lesson can be more valuable.
Social Benefits
Sports are a social activity. Team sports are obviously done with other people, but even individual sports are often done as a team (tennis, golf, track). All sports, however, are intended to be performed in front of others, and the social ramifications are many.
• Relationships with other kids. Athletes develop relationships with their teammates. For boys, sports are a primary, and unfortunately sometimes the sole, way of socializing with others. For girls, who according to the feminist theorist Carol Gilligan tend to define themselves through their relationships rather than their achievements, sports offer yet another way to make friends and create an alternate peer group
• Teamwork. On a team, kids learn about cooperation, camaraderie, give-and-take. They learn that while their natural position might be wide receiver, the team needs a cornerback, so they sacrifice their personal desires and play defense. They learn that you don't have to like someone in order to work together toward a common goal. They also discover that you can work for people you don't respect and still be productive, improve your skills, and have fun.
• Diversity. The genuinely multicultural environment is of tremendous importance in our polarized society. Kids play on the same team, wear the same uniform, share the same objectives and experiences. Sports are a great equalizer: rich or poor, black, brown, or white, are irrelevant. What counts is talent and heart.
• Relationships with adults. When coaches, parents, and kids see each other at practice and games week after week, year after year, the adults learn to admire and praise the kids' prowess and progress. Sports give kids an opportunity to spend ongoing periods of time with an adult in a shared endeavor. To thrive, kids need to be with adults who want them to do well in a variety of endeavors, who notice their improvements and hard work, who manifest sound values, and who don't pay attention to them solely because of their contributions to the win column.
• Participating in a community. Sports foster a sense of community: they give both participants and spectators the experience of belonging to something larger than themselves, the need for which seems to be hard-wired into the human brain. Playing for an institution or a community gives kids a chance to feel that they are making a genuine contribution to a larger group.
When playing for school or club teams, they can see which adults care about kids, are willing to do their fair share and more, and take a stand for what they believe in. They see which parents are cooperative-pitching in to help with snacks, driving their kids' teammates to games, serving as team treasurer, volunteering to line the fields on cold, rainy mornings. They hear parents screaming at the officials and recognize which ones know the rules and which don't. They see who supports their own children and others, who bullies their children or the officials. They see parents who teach their children to assume they are always right, are better than the other players, and that someone else, anyone else, is always at fault if things go wrong. They also see how the kids in these families emulate or reject their parents' behavior. They think about how they will treat their own children and how they will behave with their friends as members of groups.
One hockey father says, "Part of the benefit of sports is that children observe its complex social dynamic among coaches, parents, players, and officials. There's a wide range of ethics, such as the attitude toward authority. Do you try to abide by the spirit of the rules, get away with what you can, accept what an official says, or do you argue and yell at him, or complain about it? Another major element they encounter is the difference between teammates who are good at communicating and sharing versus those who are out to get what they can for themselves. This is a dichotomy adults face throughout life. Kids involved in sports have to consciously or subconsciously figure out where they fit into those various spectrums."
Participating for years on the same team not only improves the play, because the players learn each other's strengths and weaknesses and where they'll be on the field or court, but it gives kids a wider view of the world and the people in it.
Similarities of Sports and the Arts
Are the benefits of sports unique? Many have noted that the arts produce many of the same benefits as sports, for both participant and spectator.
Sports entail all elements of human life-physical, emotional, cognitive, social-but in a simplified, orderly form. Sports boil life down to competition governed by agreed-upon rules. The arts are the other significant leisure activity that distills life down to simpler forms. They too are intended for an audience. The performing arts, dance in particular, have much in common with sports: they take place outside of everyday life, the activities are physical and demand practice, and performance can produce exhilaration and a sense of community.
What makes sports different from the arts is that they demand a spontaneous response to surprise. A dance is choreographed; the dancers know what they are to do at every moment. A game has set plays, but the athletes must respond to what their opponents do, or to the unexpected bounce of the ball. The denouement of the game is uncertain, often until its final seconds. This combination of total human exertion with an environment that balances control, spontaneity, and uncertainty leads to the unique excitement and satisfaction of sports, for both athletes and spectators.
As with most spheres of human endeavor, the benefits of sports can easily turn into deficits. Moderation is, as the Greeks pointed out, the key to wisdom. Many in the athletic community worry that youth sports have become too serious, and that the win-at-all-costs mentality has become the reality today. Sports should be just one arena of many in which kids have a chance to express themselves and have fun.
When winning is overvalued, the idea of sportsmanship and fair play disappears, as does concern for the whole child. When only a kid's athletic talent is important, her character development, her academic performance and needs, her long-term physical health, the development of her skills at other positions on a team are neglected.
Being a member of a team can become destructive if the players turn arrogant and fall into an us-them mentality, seeing opponents as the enemy and treating their nonathletic peers as inferior or contemptible. Furthermore, if a teenager overidentifies as an athlete, he will be ignoring other interests at a time when he should be broadening rather than narrowing his horizons.
Professional sports have become corrupted by the win-at-all-costs mentality, and this corruption is intensified by big-money contracts for winning players, coaches, and organizations. Loyalty, camaraderie, sportsmanship, the joy of mastering skills- these values all too often disappear when "winning is the only thing." If they remain uninfected by the toxins of winning at all costs and instead focus on effort and fair play, youth sports can be beautiful, exciting, and fun.
The job of parents and coaches of young athletes is to maximize the benefits and minimize the deficits of youth sports by keeping a long-term perspective and helping kids do the same.
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