guest blog by mike arace

There are approximately 45 million children between the ages of 5 and 18 playing youth sports in America. Around 3 percent of them will play in college. A smaller percentage will make it to the professional ranks.
To all of them, we should say: Expand your horizons.
Focusing on just one sport is about the worst thing a young athlete can do. It mitigates the developmental benefits that come from playing, it is physically dangerous and, for the vast majority, it is actually a hindrance to their primary athletic pursuit.
• A summary of studies that appeared in the January 2012 edition of Psychology Today asserts that intensity, continuity and balance are the most important developmental aspects of youth-sports participation. The article, written by Marilyn Price-Mitchell goes on to say that balance — between sports and other activities — is probably the most important of the three. Children who vary their experiences rather than focus on one sport make for healthier adults because their world is wider than winning and losing.
• A Dispatch series on youth sports (printed in 2010 and still available at Dispatch.com) highlighted many concerns about a burgeoning, unregulated youth-sports industry. Among the biggest concerns is the rising number of injuries. The sports-medicine clinics run by Nationwide Children’s Hospital and Ohio State have seen an exponential increase in patients over the past decade. These local trends align with national trends.
According to the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons, the number of children treated for sports injuries in 2010 was 3.5 million, up from 1.9 million in 2002. Nearly half the injuries are “ overuse” injuries to children who place stress on the same muscles and tendons in year-round, single-sport pursuits. A 2011 study out of Loyola University-Chicago concluded that single-sport athletes are almost twice as likely to be injured as multisport athletes.
Those who have concentrated on reducing sports injuries in children — such as Dr. James Andrews, the famed Tommy John surgeon — are unanimous in their belief that playing more than one sport actually serves as a preventative measure. It is to an athlete’s benefit to work different muscle groups and joints, learn different skill sets, change scenery and teammates, and be afforded proper rest.
As more data concerning the potential psychological, developmental and physical dangers of single-sports specialists have accrued, a certain movement has begun to coalesce. It is being led by people like VJ Stanley, a former longtime college hockey coach, youth coach of multiple sports, stand-up comic and Zen philosopher, among other things.
“If winning is so important at an early age,” Stanley said, “why don’t elementary teachers with master’s degrees in education teach winning to the little kids?”
Stanley is founder and president of a foundation called Frozen Shorts, which is based in Rochester, N.Y. His mission is to shift the American youth-sports paradigm, as the title of his new book suggests: Stop the Tsunami in Youth Sports: Achieving Balanced Excellence and Health while Embracing the Value of Play for Fun.
Stanley’s view — and that of others, such as Douglas Abrams, a University of Missouri law professor, part-time hockey clinician and an early crusader for change in youth sports — is that we have created a system that is geared toward specialization, and that this system is a long-term disservice to our children. On some level, the kids know it.
The peak of participation is age 10. By 13, some 70 percent of kids quit. Why? A raft of recent studies indicate that the fun is sucked out of it by overzealous parents and undertrained coaches who place far too much emphasis on winning. Specialization breeds such an environment. When costs rise and time commitment increases, joy dissipates in proportion — for the kids, if not the parents. (Some researchers, by the way, are beginning to link quitting sports to the child-obesity epidemic.)
“Children are better at their chosen sport when they do not play it all the time, and we can quantify that,” Stanley said. “We have to remember, these are not mini-professionals — these are children. Their creativity is to be found in a spectrum of experiences. When we push them to specialize, they lose their balance, and they have a skewed view of everything.”
We push them, or allow them, to play basketball, soccer or volleyball 11 months a year, and we tell them how great they are. We should be telling them the odds are they’ll never even play at the Division III college level, so try everything — and have a good time.
On some level, the kids know it. As Stanley points out, in the U.S., the fastest-rising sport in terms of popularity is Wiffle Ball, and kickball is No. 2. Are they the only sandlot games left?
Michael Arace is a sports reporter for The Dispatch.
marace@dispatch.com
@MichaelArace1