Kurt Krueger
Mr. Baksa
ELA 10
27 January 2023
Multi-Sport vs. Single-Sport Athletes
Did you know that there are only two days out of the entire year that a professional sports contest is not played in the United States? Proffesional sports are a staple in American culture and are watched by millions of Amercans every year. Many young athletes aspire to one day become a professional athlete. In pursuit of their dreams, they are faced with the decision of specializing in a single sport or being a multi-sport athlete. Specializing in a single sport has become increasingly popular because people think the more they play a sport the better they will become, but unfortunately there are negative consequences to this trend. Multi-sport athletes
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Athletes who play multiple sports gain more skills and experience that make them a better overall athlete, and make them more competitive. An article by Jamie Duffek states,”Multisport athletes gain different kinds of skills that they can apply from one sport to the next. This enhances hand-eye coordination, balance, endurance, explosion, communication, and athletic agility.” For example, a skill learned playing basketball could translate over to the football field, or vice versa. Some might argue that athletes will gain more experience by playing a single sport year round to obtain their goal of playing at the college level. They argue that a single-sport athlete is able to gain more skills and experience because they play their single sport far more compared to their multi-sport counterparts. This idea is easily disproved because several succesful collegiate coaches disapprove of sport specialization and instead recruit multi-sport athletes for their acquired skills. Successful Clemson head football coach, Dabo Swinney, is known for recruting multi-sport athletes and has stated,“I just think that the cross-training, the different types of coaching, the different types of locker rooms, the different environments that you practice in, the different challenges — I think it develops a much more competitive, well-rounded type person.” Overal many people believe that multi-sport athletes have a greater skill set that makes them a better well-rounded athlete that can compete at the elite