Youth Sports: are They Really for the Youth?

A 42 game schedule for 9-10 year olds! Tournaments every Saturday and Sunday where 9-10 year olds play 3 games on each day with 20 minute halves!

Did your jaw drop at these revelations? It should. These are 9 & 10 year olds playing in a tournament league, in games that are longer than 32 minute high school games and in a schedule that would test any college team.

I just moved to Oregon and in talking with an acquaintance here learned that his ex-wife just signed their son up to play in the league described above. A couple of questions came immediately to mind—no, make that numerous questions.

1. Is this schedule for the adults or the kids?


2. Do the parents realize that all day, each Saturday & Sunday, all they are going to do is sit waiting for the next game?


3. Would any sane high school coach allow their players to play in three games in one day? In fact, the rule book will not allow it.


4. Twenty minute halves—that means a 40 minute game, even if it is a running clock. High school games are 32 minutes.


5. 42 games in a season! Colleges may play 45 games over a 4 month period.

I have written many times in my articles about youth sports being for the youth—not for the adults! Here is a quote from an article I wrote earlier this year: “Youth basketball is for the youth. A child must be allowed to be a child. They should be allowed to have fun with learning and playing the game and experience the joy.”

Young players have so much pressure placed on them to participate, and often to win in sports, that is just unnatural for kids to be subjected to. Add the expectations of parents and coaches to this mix and we’ve eliminated much of what being a kid is all about. With all the angst causing things coming at them, from every direction, related to school, clubs and other activities—now add all this time a kid has to be a kid being tied up in a tournament every weekend. (Oh, I forgot to mention—these teams also practice 3 times a week.)

Where were the sane and clear thinking adults while all this was being planned and passed into action? Didn’t anyone involved stop to think of what injuries can be inflicted upon developing young bodies from all this over-vigorous activity? Didn’t anyone care? There are many precedents for how to set up and run a youth sports program that is for the youth’s enjoyment and safe physical development. Obviously, these kinds of programs were never looked at, or if they were, they were dismissed.

This is so much of what is wrong about youth sports in today’s society. We have been bombarded with sexual abuse issues, anger issues, and over-reaching programs and schedules like the one I describe here, plus sports burn-out at an early age.

When will the parents wake up fully to the fact that these types of programs are not in the best interests of the kids they so willingly put at risk. What tragedy must befall some unsuspecting child in order to awaken adults to the injustice of what they are pushing at their kids?

Unfortunately, just about every kind of tragedy one could imagine in youth sports has already occurred. Because of these, many organizations and communities have recognized the horrors of youth sports and taken wonderful remedial steps toward offering programs that have helped to bring joy, wonder and FUN to their youthful participants. For the rest, what will it take before the realization dawns on them of the harm that is being visited on today’s youth and the repercussions that will be brought forward in the future as these kids mature?