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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.
Second Half by MHSAA

Our Times

November 11, 2011

It is in fashion to say that schools (and also school sports) are operating in a time of unprecedented austerity.  This is not true.  Not even close.

While it may be true that recent times in Michigan have seen a deeper and longer recession than most people have lived through before, it is not true that these are the worst times ever for school sports.

Imagine the austerity, and imagine yourself administering school sports during the Great Depression when unemployment was three times today’s rate.  Or during World War II when gasoline was rationed and MHSAA tournaments were cancelled.  Now those were tough times!

What may make us think at this moment that these current times are the worst times or are unique times is that these are our times, and we don’t yet see light shining at the end of the tunnel through which we’re traveling.

Because it affects us now and isn’t something we’re reading about in history, we tend to believe these times are somehow much worse and that today’s problems are somehow of such a different type that our programs are at greater risk than ever before.

It is possible, of course, that our reaction to these times will be unique and will make these times the worst ever.  In other words, it’s not the troubled times per se, but our reaction to them that might set these times apart from all others.

It is possible that we will chop and change school sports so much that we never get the program back on the course of truly school-sponsored, student-centered educational athletics – a brand of sports unique in the world.