Sports Specialization
June 21, 2012
Since the 1950s, when high school sports was the “talk of the town” much more than so-called higher levels of sports, before television put college and professional sports on its shoulders and lifted their profiles above local high school teams, it was commonplace for students to participate in multiple sports and for coaches to coach a different sport each season. Neither is the norm today.
It is likely that the natural tendency to keep testing one’s talent against the next greater challenge is a significant factor in the trend of students practicing and competing in a single sport year-round, but the introduction of non-school youth sports and the zeal of those programs (often commercially driven but sometimes more purely motivated) to expand those programs to every day of a child’s life has greased the skids toward runaway specialization.
Much of youth sports is well grounded in philosophies which provide safe participation for maximum numbers, but too much of youth sports makes distinctions between the abilities of children too early, and schedules children for too much competition in too-distant locations at tournaments that are too lavish and where trophies are too large. All of which gets their parents thinking too soon about how special their children are and how far they might go in sports, thinking college scholarships and beyond. In pursuit of this dream, they push their children harder, drive them further and pay increasing amounts to get them on the most elite teams.
Some youth sports programs – especially in ice hockey and soccer but also volleyball as well – will require nearly year-round play by students as a condition to be on the club or travel team, promising college scholarships to those who commit to this schedule, but ironically, with the costs of this non-school participation far exceeding the value of the partial athletic scholarship only a few will ever see.
Non-school youth sports is not the sole cause but it is a primary enabler of specialization, an addiction to a single sport that, like all addictions, puts a portion of life out of balance, generally to the detriment of the individual and the people around that person. The research is convincing that while specialization can be positive for a few young people, it is far more likely to have negative than positive consequences, most frequently physical and emotional for the child, and financial for the family.
Urgency
November 8, 2011
I still have in my files and in my mind Joe Klein’s Newsweek editorial of Sept. 21, 1992, that took Bill Clinton to task for his “small themes” during the closing months of his campaign for the U.S. presidency.
Never one to be shy in his bully pulpit at Newsweek (or in his then anonymously published novel Primary Colors based on the 1992 Democratic presidential primary), Klein wrote that Clinton’s late campaign efforts were “rhetorically flaccid, intellectually unadventurous, morally undemanding.”
In response, Clinton’s campaign strategist, James Carville, resorted to a sports metaphor: “The way to the goal line is to keep running off tackle. Four yards and a cloud of dust.”
This “take no chances, do no harm, run out the clock” spirit and strategy that so infuriated Klein will not be seen at the MHSAA. Expectations and efforts will be in continuous crescendo no matter how close the goal line gets. In fact, as it is with any good football team in the “red zone,” the closer the goal line looms, the greater the sense of urgency there will be.
There is no greater proof at this moment to our most inner circle of constituents – high school athletics directors – than the MHSAA’s work with ArbiterSports to become the first state high school association in America to develop, and to deliver at least initially at no cost to all member high schools, a comprehensive suite of electronic tools for athletic department administration. This is a responsibility, and risk, that could have been left to others; but we’re being motivated by undertaking the task here and now – first in the nation – so that the product is tailor-made for high school sports, Michigan’s way.