Thursday, February 12, 2015

Youth Sports: Work vs. Play and the Impact of Club Sports

Today's blog was written by Allison Griffith, a sophomore at the University of Notre Dame.  Allison is an English and Pre-professional studies major and a student in the Social Foundations of Coaching course taught by Play Like a Champion Founder Professor Clark Power and Kristin Sheehan.  Allison is also the manager on the Notre Dame Women's Basketball Team.  


Johnny is an eleven-year-old boy who has grown up playing basketball, soccer, and football for his grade school. Johnny’s sport experience thus far equates to playing with his classmates, who are now some of his best buds. He has always been talented at all three sports and enjoys playing them all, but he has recently grown to be a definite stand out on the soccer field. Together with his teammates, Johnny has even led the Perry Panthers to a few championships.

Seeing that Johnny could be a special player, Johnny’s parents learn of Elite, a club soccer program an hour from their home, which works with the most talented soccer players in the area and exposes them to other competitive clubs across the state at weekend tournaments. Johnny makes the team, and thus begins Johnny’s transition from “school athlete” to “club athlete.” Elite holds two practices a week, in addition to speed and agility training on Fridays and foot skills on Mondays. Weekends are spent at tournaments across the state filled with back-to-back games, usually 4-6 per weekend. The huge time commitment forces Johnny to quit football and basketball, his other two sports.

Johnny’s situation is all too familiar in the world of youth sports, and demonstrates the conflict of work versus play, and how this is both amplified and complicated by the popular trend of quitting school-sponsored sports and joining AAU or Club teams. At increasingly younger ages, kids are being convinced to move from playing for their school teams to playing for elite clubs that consist of rigorous, demanding schedules for both the athlete and his or her family.

What are the implications of this transition? What will happen to Johnny as he leaves his school teams to compete for Elite? It is a common situation that young athletes, particularly at the 4th or 5th grade level, are forced to choose between multiple sports due to the demanding schedules of one club team. Johnny was forced to quit playing football and basketball, sports that he also loved. He plays soccer 6 days of the week, sometimes all 7, and his parents spend the majority of their evenings (and practically all of their weekends) shuttling him to practices, conditioning, and games. How does this end?

Well for a few of the young club athletes, and some would even argue many, they will end up becoming solid high school athletes and maybe even be offered college scholarships. Even at the youth level, there are exposure tournaments that college scouts attend. I would argue that an athlete is definitely able to have a great high school career or even receive a scholarship without having played a club sport, but there is definitely something to be said for the higher level of competition and level of play of youth club sports that may increase the chances.

However, realistically, most of these young club athletes will not even go on to have great high-school careers. In fact, many, having had five or more years of playing a club sport, begin to grow sick of it and even end up hating the sport. Many quit playing the sport entirely before they even begin their freshman year.

The point I am trying to make, however, is not that club sports should be eliminated entirely. Done correctly, as I believe my experience was, you could maintain a healthy relationship with a sport on a club team. And it is true that an athlete can be just as apt to quit a sport having only played on school-sponsored teams. Instead, I am interested in answering, what is the point of youth sports at the grade school/middle school level? What is the meaning of sports at this age?

I believe a large part of this answer comes in discussing the difference between work and play.

Kids need to play. Besides psychological/developmental benefits, some of the best childhood memories are formed around play. Play, as Giamatti describes it, is “leisure, that is so important…because it is a form of freedom and is about making free choices” (22).  It is a space that kids can create to assert their agency, not because they are told, but because they want to. In contrast, Giamatti describes work as such: “Work is partner to duty, and brother to obligation. Work is the burden we assume, not the one we choose” (19). For kids who eventually quit his or her sport after years of rigorous club seasons, did the sport become a “burden” he or she “assumed”?

At the youth level, I would argue that many AAU and club teams promote the idea of sports as work. Think how scheduled Johnny’s life has become: he wakes up, goes to school, goes to practice, sleeps. And repeat. Add in games, conditioning, early morning foot skills, and he barely has time for anything else. Physically, Johnny often feels burnt out, and the amount he is playing puts him at a larger risk for injury. His coach seems to be more focused on results then fostering life lessons and camaraderie. He begins to miss his school buddies and winning school championships.

On the flip side, though there are exceptions to every case, I think that school-sponsored teams do a better job at keeping the importance of play in youth sports. There is something special about being able to wear your school jersey. There is something special about playing in your own school gym, changing in your own school locker-room, seeing friends and classmates at your games. With coaching, I have found that in my own experience, my youth coaches tended to integrate our practices with fun drills and positive life lessons. While winning is important, it was more about creating memories with your best friends. School-sponsored teams at the youth level ideally keep the player’s relationship with the sport a healthy one by maintaining that you are a student-athlete, and school priorities come first. Thus, the sport becomes an outlet for physical escape and a privilege, not a duty or an obligation. 

And here is where I would like to thank my parents for encouraging me to play for my school all the way through. The memories I have playing in my school gym and goofing off with my teammates and classmates are unmatched. Although I did play AAU basketball and club soccer here and there, it was kept at a healthy amount that never once made me dislike my sport. I think this is a very large part of why I played 3 Varsity sports all 4 years of high school, whereas I found most of my club friends quitting early in their high-school years.

Why should parents want their children to play sports? Hopefully it is with the intention of allowing them to do something they love, to learn lessons of discipline and hard work, to foster strategies to overcome adversity, to create lifelong memories with friends, and then to ideally win a few games while they’re at it.

Parents of kids- take notice and make sure you are not over-scheduling your children. Make sure their relationship with sports, at the youth level, is a healthy one. One that promotes play, not work. Coaches of kids- winning is fun, but having fun is also fun. Mold your mindset around the idea that these kids are kids, and they are playing. While talent and X’s and O’s are important, it is not and should not be the emphasis at this level.  

I still remember the motto of my school’s soccer team growing up which we cheered before every game and wore on the back of our warm ups:

“Play hard. Have fun. Win.”
In that order.