Youth Sports Research Paper

According to a recent statistic by The Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies, only 1 in 3 coaches for youth sports are trained to be competent in safety and how to teach a sport. This means that about 66% of coaches are incompetent and do not know the procedures to keep a child athlete safe while playing and the coaches are not taught right the way to instruct a sport. This is one of the many reasons why children should not play competitive sports, the three reasons being presented in this essay are competitive sports cost a lot, sports can impact the athletes in a negative way mentally, and sports can injure the athletes. To begin with, competitive sports cost a lot. An article on HuffPost claims that parents spend a lot of money on youth

One article about the pros and cons of youth sports states that many athletes are pressured overly about their sport performance, when young athletes step on the field to play a sport, their coach, parents, team and school pressurize them to perform well and succeed in the game and due to this sports psychologists are in great need (Lindholm). This evidence suggests that young athletes receive undue pressure about performing well and might have to go to a psychologist about their anxiety as an athlete. In the same article Lindholm reminds parents that coaches may not pay attention to a young athlete’s mental well being, “it would be naïve to expect all coaches to have your child’s psychological interests at heart. Too often, a win-at-all-costs mentality devastates young athletes” (Lindholm). In other words the author of this article is saying that coaches that may want to win no matter what will have a negative effect on the young players, this will not help children develop any skills but may lead the child to think that winning is necessary and losing is no good. A study by Matthew Bowen, a clinical assistant professor at the University of Texas, shows the link between how creative a person is and how their childhood was spent in regard of sports. 100 undergraduate and graduate students were asked to complete a survey about their childhood leisure activities.

An article on ABC News by Serena Gordon quotes a medical director named Dr. Cynthia LaBella who claims that young children can get overuse injuries because of the way sports are played today, “‘Any sport can produce an overuse injury,’ explained Dr. Cynthia LaBella, medical director of the Institute for Sports Medicine at Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago. ‘Overuse injuries are increasing for a couple of reasons. Sports are much more competitive at an earlier age, and many children are playing one sport year-round now. They're not getting enough time off for their bodies to recover. Or, they might be playing three sports at once, and what that amounts to is that they never get a day off’”(Gordon). As suggested by this evidence children are being signed up for sports with hectic practice schedules and children are not able to spend any time relaxing for their muscles and bone to repair. When this happens children or adult athletes are prone to weaken their bones or muscles and develop an overuse injury. The same article cites LaBella once again on her answer to the parents who claim that they had active childhoods and were not injured much. LaBella claims that when these adults were children, they would play their own games in backyards and were the bosses of what they played and how they played. They also paced themselves and took breaks when they needed them. But kids are now playing sports with structured and