Logo

The Fun Factor

November 14, 2014

My experience with school-age young people is that what they seek most from sports participation is fun and friends. More sophisticated research from many sources consistently has affirmed my less formal findings.

The Journal of Physical Activity & Health added a July study to the body of research. This work was conducted by George Washington University in Washington, DC, and focused on organized soccer.

What was so surprising about this study is not that winning was not at the top of the list of what makes sports enjoyable for youth, but that winning ranked 48th of 81 factors measured. Winning didn’t even make it in the top half!

The lead author of the study, Associate Professor of Sports Psychology Amanda Visek, was quoted by the Chicago Tribune to say “the fun experience is not determined by the result of a game but rather by the process of physically engaging in the game.”

Tribune writer Danielle Braff quotes this research and other expert commentary that coalesces around the consensus that it is parents, not athletes or coaches, who are most hung up on the outcome of the game, as well as the issues that create the pressure on young people that ruins the pleasure of play: position, playing time and prospects of making an elite team or earning a college scholarship.

That’s the stuff parents worry about much more than their kids. And, according to a growing body of research, some of which we've cited in this space before, that’s the stuff that causes many kids to quit organized sports. It’s not fun anymore.

An Unsustainable Trend

February 10, 2015

Decades ago there was much criticism from college and university physical education departments that schools were sacrificing broad-based programs of intramurals and recreation for higher-profile programs of interscholastic sports teams.

Today, broad-based intramural/recreational programs have all but vanished from schools; and the criticism now is that elite community club and travel teams threaten the broad and deep interscholastic athletic program schools have been providing students.

In my lifetime, I’ve seen the image of school sports go from elitist to egalitarian. From a few sports teams for boys in the 1950s, to teams on multiple levels in many sports for both boys and girls today.

Over the same period when the public profile of school sports has been diminished by many societal trends but especially the ascendancy of major college and professional sports riding the proliferation of television sets and rising profits from sports broadcasts, the breadth and depth of school sports was busy expanding the circle for which it provides opportunities to play.

The irony is that in this time of school sports’ greatest inclusion, school sports is on its weakest financial footing. When it is doing the most, school sports is being supported the least.

It’s an indefensible, unsustainable trend that must be addressed by those who control the purse strings of state government and local school districts.