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🏃‍♂️⚽️🏀 Did you know that about 60 million kids in the United States participate in organized sports? That's huge! But lately, there's been a lot of debate about whether youth sports have become too intense and competitive. Some parents and coaches push kids to specialize in one sport super early, while others worry about burnout and injuries.

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Youth sports weren't always like they are today. They started as simple neighborhood games and school activities. But in the 1960s and 70s, things began to change. Travel teams emerged, private coaching became popular, and suddenly kids' sports became BIG business. Today, youth sports is a $19 billion industry! 🤯

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More Than Just a Game: The Birth of Organized Sports in America

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📚 Here are some important vocabulary words:
- Sport specialization: focusing on only one sport year-round
- Burnout: physical and emotional exhaustion from too much training
- Travel teams: competitive teams that travel to play in tournaments
- Recreational leagues: less competitive, focus on fun and participation
- College recruitment: the process of being scouted for college sports
Make sure to use these terms in your argumentative essays!

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Alright class, check this out! Competitive sports teach AMAZING life skills. Athletes learn leadership, teamwork, and how to handle pressure - just like you'll need in your future careers! Studies show that 94% of women in C-suite positions (that's top management, kids!) played sports in their youth. Competition prepares you for the real world! 💪

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For example, athletes recognize the importance of teamwork and trust, they know how to deal with adversity and conflict, and they know how to think strategically and shift course when necessary.

In the workplace, the prevailing wisdom seems to be that athletes have skills that are useful in their careers. Most of this wisdom is anecdotal, but some academic research has delved into the ways athletes learn to be leaders with more research on the horizon aimed at this topic.

One published in Human Kinetics in 2017 looked at how athletic participation and other factors affect students' leadership skills. Student-athletes scored significantly higher than non-athletes in overall transformational leadership, particularly in two indicators of transformational leadership: management of self (including attitudes toward oneself and consideration for others' well-being) and management of feelings (including motivating coworkers to elicit feelings of competence and meaning from their work).

"Participation in sport built confidence and character in high-pressure situations. Student-athletes needed to manage change and failure on a continuous competitive basis. They needed to encourage and influence team members to pursue team goals rather than individual praises," the study authors wrote. "Relatively, non-student-athletes have less of an opportunity to put these concepts to practice in real-life scenarios."

That study reinforced the results of one published in Adolescence in 1999, which f ound high school athletes outscored non-athlete peers on a measure of leadership ability. "It adds further evidence to the theory that the types of personal and social behavior associated with athletic training and participation may indeed increase, or at least strengthen, high school students' leadership potential," the study noted.

Research from Ernst & Young has focused on how women build leadership skills through sports. Ninety-four percent of women in the C-suite played sports; 52 percent of women in the C-suite played at the university level; and 77 percent of C-suite women think women who played sports make good employees, according to one from EY and espnW.

In another report, " Why Female Athletes Make Winning Entrepreneurs, " EY and espnW interviewed women entrepreneurs around the world who had played sports, and they said they developed leadership, confidence, single-mindedness, passion and resilience as athletes. Regarding leadership, the report noted: "The athlete entrepreneurs explain that playing sport has given them a strong grounding in what it means to be on a team - on both practical and emotional levels. And they are using that sports mindset to establish the high-performing teams required to grow their companies."

In a 2014 of women executives by EY Women Athletes Business Network and espnW, 74 percent said a background in sport can help accelerate a woman's career, and 61 percent said involvement in sports contributed to their career success. The top leadership skill the respondents said sport developed was the ability to see projects through to completion.

A published in the Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies in 2014 looked at men who had participated in varsity-level high school sports decades earlier. The study found they "appeared to demonstrate higher levels of leadership and had higher-status careers."

These studies offer useful insight. But more comprehensive research on leadership lessons from sports is lacking. The Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics hopes to fill some of that void. Sandy Hatfield Clubb, senior partner of the Pictor Group and consultant to the Knight Commission, is collaborating on a proposal for academic research on student learning outcomes, related to leadership learning through sport.

Assessing what athletes learn about leadership is difficult, in part because getting access to student-athletes and measurable data can be complicated, Clubb noted. A former athletic director at Drake University, Clubb has seen how sports develop leaders.

"I think all student-athletes pick up extraordinary leadership skills, whether that's analytical and critical thinking, teamwork, or - probably the biggest one - persevering through adversity. It's the capacity to get to plan B when plan A isn't working," she said.

Sport offers powerful lessons on accountability, Clubb said. If you're an athlete, "we put you out in the middle of a field - or whatever your playing field is - and then a whole bunch of people watch, and we keep score," she explained. "It's a much different type of accountability than other types of experiences that you might have on a college campus."

"With every play, you're earning your opportunity to play or not in the next snap or game," Clubb said. "It's a highly accountable, performance-driven activity."

Student-athletes gain all these skills, but the problem is that many of them are not taught how to use them outside of sports, Clubb said. "We just expect them to go out and use it, versus intentionally helping them understand what they're learning, how to articulate it, and then how to leverage that as they start to build on their career."

Clubb said that at Drake, the athletic department was trying to help student-athletes "actually see their student-athlete experience as something that was fundamental to their learning," so they could articulate their skills to prospective employers and grad programs. Clubb recalled a softball player who applied to medical school with an essay that explained how, "for four years, she learned what it meant to act with integrity, and this is what it looks like: It means to be true to my word - it applies to systems, to organizations, and to people - and how a person stays in integrity is staying true to their word."

How well are athletic departments and teams enabling athletes to internalize these lessons? Athletes gain emotional toughness, balance, integrity and the ability to have difficult conversations, said Matthew Davidson, Ph.D., president of the Institute for Excellence & Ethics (IEE), which assesses and builds leadership development and organizational culture. But athletes don't automatically pick up these lessons, he said. "There's no reason to believe that it just naturally happens. Sure, these are partly 'caught,' but they also must be intentionally taught."

So IEE works to build strength of character and intentional culture, to ensure "that the espoused values of the department form the foundation of the lived experience of the student-athlete through each individual team," Davidson said. It provides tools and strategies for individual and collective practice. This approach includes talking about what integrity and leadership look like in regard to hazing and sexual assault, for example, he said.

Athletes gain experience having tough conversations, which teach them how to "manage conflict, challenge a fellow team member, how to listen, but also how to lean in and make their voice heard," Davidson noted.

There's no shortage of anecdotal evidence that sport helps equip leaders. A ." In " Fast Company article lays out " Why Your Next Employee Should Be a Former Student Athlete article offers " ," and concludes athletes are achievement-oriented, team-oriented, resilient, strong communicators and good time managers. An 7 Reasons Athletes Make the Best Employees Game On: Leadership Lessons from Athlete-Executives," four nonprofit executives explain the nuances of the lessons they learned as athletes. And upcoming academic research may provide more empirical evidence of what sport teaches.
Allison Torres Burtka is a freelance writer and editor based in metro Detroit. You can read more of her work here.

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Studies Show Athletes Bring Leadership Skills to the Workplace - Global Sport Matters

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Want to hire someone with the ability to change course quickly? Someone with leadership skills? Who can work on a team? Hire a former athlete.

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Listen up, future college students! 🎓 Competitive youth sports can lead to fantastic opportunities. Each year, over $3 billion in athletic scholarships are awarded to college students. Plus, student-athletes often have higher GPAs and graduation rates than non-athletes. The discipline from competitive sports totally pays off!

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How A Small Town Athlete Earned 3 College Football Scholarships

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Y'all know how I always say growth happens outside your comfort zone! Competitive sports push kids to set goals, work hard, and overcome obstacles. Just like we revise our essays to make them better, athletes improve through practice and competition. This builds resilience and grit - super important life skills!

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Oh my goodness, we need to talk about this! 🏥 Doctors are seeing more and more young athletes with serious injuries. About 3.5 million kids under 14 get hurt playing sports each year. Many of these are overuse injuries from too much training. Should we really be pushing our young athletes this hard?

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Naif M. Alqahtani naif-454hotmail.com ✉Corresponding author.

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Sports-Related Injuries in Adolescent Athletes: A Systematic Review

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Sports participation among adolescents is increasing, offering numerous health benefits and exposing them to the risk of sports-related injuries. This paper aims to understand that the prevalence and risk factors associated with these injuries are…

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Let's do some math, friends! 💰 The average family spends $692 per child per sport each year, but some spend over $10,000! Private coaching, travel teams, special equipment - it all adds up. This creates huge inequalities and leaves many talented kids unable to participate. Is that fair?

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Are Youth Sports Too Intense and Competitive? | Jersey Watch

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Are youth sports too competitive? Some parents say yes, some say no. And they both make good points. Here are both sides of this ongoing debate.

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With more kids than ever in organized sports, experts in sports medicine and youth athletics say they are increasingly concerned about the pressures put on young children to excel at sports.

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Study shows that for young athletes, winning is not everything

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Over 70% of kids drop out of youth sports by age 13. Learn what happens when youth sports become too competitive.

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Practice makes perfect: That's the message kids, their parents, and coaches have internalized regarding sports. Today, around a third of school-aged athletes focus on a single sport, according to some estimates, participating in intensive, year-round training regimens, sometimes on multiple different teams. And they're narrowing their focus at a pretty young age, too. Many kids are starting to zero in on a single sport between 10 and 12 years old, says Neeru Jayanthi, a physician at Emory Sports Medicine in Atlanta.

Youth sports weren't always like this. "What used to be a way to have fun with your friends turned into 'how good can you get and how quickly can you get there'," Jayanthi says. Around two decades ago, Jayanthi was among the first researchers to raise the alarm on what he called "youth sports specialization."

Today, a body of literature suggests that this trend comes at a cost to young athletes. Hyper-focused, year-round training is associated with increased rates of burnout and injury in kids. Sports medicine doctors and other experts agree that kids lack the neuromuscular control and aren't physically developed enough to repeat one action over and over, and that encouraging them to do so could have long term consequences to their physical and mental health.
[Related: The best ages for kids to learn to read, speak new languages, and other skills]
How much practice is enough?

Tiger Woods famously began golfing at two years old; Serena Williams first picked up a racket at four. Stories of famous athletes beginning as toddlers have fueled a perception that to become successful, you have to start early and train hard.

The 10,000-hours rule, popularized by writer Malcolm Gladwell in his 2008 book, "Outliers", only encouraged that belief, Jayanthi says. The idea suggests that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to achieve mastery of a complex skill. (As it turns out, this rule was never for athletes, Jayanthi says. Initial studies that suggested this figure focused on small numbers of chess champions and elite musicians-and more recent data has challenged even those results.)

The result of these messages: Parents and coaches believe that if they don't encourage children to focus on one sport year-round, their young athletes will fall behind, says Elizabeth Matzkin, an orthopaedic surgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. "It's actually not true," Matzkin says, "but that fear of falling behind is real." In a survey of 201 parents of child athletes, more than half hoped that their child would go on to play sports professionally, or at least in college, a feat which less than one percent of kids actually achieve. Those parents were more likely to encourage their children to specialize in sports.

As it turns out, there's no scientific evidence that focusing intently on one sport in childhood promotes later success. A group of physician scientists, including Jayanthi, reviewed twenty-two different studies on the training history of elite and non-elite adult athletes. Their results, published in 2019 in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, were clear: "Zero out of twenty-two studies demonstrated that there was any advantage to specialization," Jayanthi says. One of the studies included in the review, published in 2013 in the Journal of Sports Sciencesfound the opposite to be true: Among more than 1000 athletes, those who had played three sports at 11,13, and 15 years of age were between more than twice as likely to play at a national level by late adolescence, compared to their peers who had played only one sport.
[Related: Want your kid to be an elite athlete? Let them play the field.]
How specialization hurts kids

Child athletes aren't tiny adults. The developing brains of young athletes don't have the same control over their muscles, which takes time to master, as older teens or adults. Their bodies aren't as strong or as capable of withstanding repetitive motion, Matzkin says. That leaves them at risk of overuse injuries, like shin splints and stress fractures.

These childhood injuries can have long-term consequences, potentially leading to adulthood degenerative conditions, like arthritis, at the site of the old injury, Matzkin says: "We can get them back out on the field, we can treat them, but we can't prevent the consequences in 15 or 20 years."

Any kid who plays sports runs some risk of injury, but evidence suggests that playing a single sport increases the likelihood. In 2015, a team of sports medicine doctors examined 546 female basketball, soccer, and volleyball players, asking the athletes about their pain levels and training regimens. The results, published in the Journal of Sports Rehabilitation, found that single-sport athletes were four times as likely as multisport athletes to develop knee injuries.

Keeping the fun in the game

Not only does training in multiple sports exercise different muscle groups, giving the others a break, it helps kids develop the neuromuscular control they need to succeed and keep from getting injuries like ligament tears, Matzkin says. It also prevents burnout-mental and physical exhaustion that can put kids off physical activity well into adulthood, she adds.

Some experts point out that sheer training volume and pressure to compete at a high level, rather than just the number of sports, plays a role in injury and burnout, too. Most studies examining sports specialization are retrospective, and don't control for factors like training hours. Jayanthi says it is possible to be a healthy specialized athlete, but it requires a consistent, careful watch of the young athlete's training regimen. Making sure that the kid is happy with the training volume and doesn't feel too much pressure to win is important, too. And if a young athlete does want to play a sport at a high level, there is an age where specialization is appropriate. "It's not a bad choice for everyone," Jayanthi says.

For most kids though, Jayanthi says, parents should not consider letting their kids specialize in a sport before they're fourteen years old, even if a coach encourages it, and even if a kid begs to quit their other sports. By mid- or late-adolescence, it's safe to reconsider. "You have to do what you know in your heart is best for the kid," he says.

Ultimately, parents and their kids should keep in mind the point of youth-sports: to have fun, Matzkin says. "When we look at all our youth athletes, less than one percent are going to make it to an elite level," she says, "so finding more enjoyment in the game in the sport is probably way more important than striving to be elite."

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Young athletes are training too early, too hard, and with too little variety

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Practice makes perfect: That's the message kids, their parents, and coaches have internalized regarding sports. Today, around a third of school-aged athletes focus on a single sport, according to some estimates, participating in intensive, year-round training regimens, sometimes on multiple different teams. And they're narrowing their focus at a pretty young age, too.

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COMPETITIVE YOUTH SPORTS may be as American as apple pie, but we know a lot less about youth sports than we do about apple pie.

The problem is that while the FDA takes responsibility for knowing everything about our food (as the EPA does with the environment and a group called ARDA does with religious life), no one agency or organization monitors youth sports either as a central part of American childhood or as an industry. (And it is an industry. The Columbus Dispatch reviewed tax returns in 2009 and found that nonprofit sports groups alone, from the AAU to the thousands of cash-strapped parent-run community leagues, have $5 billion a year pass through their coffers.) So we are left with a Wild West of local and regional organizations in dozens of sports and no better odds of getting pinpoint data than of counting all the tumbleweeds blowing across the land.

Yet research has been done; there are smart academics and organizations in search of answers. As part of ESPN's summer 2013 Kids in Sports focus, we mined the often hidden-away data to paint as comprehensible a portrait of the nation's competitive youth sports landscape as we could.

1. Youth sports is so big that no one knows quite how big it is.

How many American kids play competitively on teams or clubs? No one has ever conducted a census. Still, it's worth looking at the various counts, even if they all are flawed.

For starters, the Sports and Fitness Industry Association (SFIA), which employs tens of thousands of online interviews, tallies how many kids between 6 and 17 are regular/frequent (or what it calls "core") players of different sports. These "core" numbers make a decent stand-in for kids who play on organized teams, even though that's not the question asked; what's asked is whether a kid played that sport a minimum of 13 times a year in a sport like ice hockey or 26 times a year in a sport like soccer. SFIA gave ESPN The Mag custom data totaling up its 2011 participation.

That adds up to 21.47 million kids between 6 and 17, or more than the population of Texas in 2000. That's big.

Competitive sports look bigger in a survey of students done by Don Sabo, a longtime youth-sports researcher and a professor at D'Youville College in Buffalo. He queried a research sample of 2,185 students in 2007 for the Women's Sports Foundation and found that 75 percent of boys and 69 percent of girls from 8 to 17 took part in organized sports during the previous year -- playing on at least one team or in one club. Do the math on the 39.82 million U.S. students ages 8 to 17 in 2011 and that would be 28.7 million of them playing organized sports, more than the population of Texas today plus most of Oklahoma. This chart shows the participation rate of Sabo's sample.

Whichever estimate you have faith in, it's far below the actual total, because it doesn't count the millions of kids who start before age 6 or 8.

2. Kids start by kindergarten, unless ...

No research tries to count the 2-year-olds everywhere being taught by their dads to shoot like Trick Shot Titus of Jimmy Kimmel fame or the 4-year-olds playing in Itty-Bitty and Munchkins leagues that let parents stand by their kids during the games. But Don Sabo's research for the Women's Sports Foundation does try to catch early starters, and it confirms what you already sense, either because you're a parent or you drive by fields filled with them: Lots of kids start playing on teams before they start attending school.

But which kids? Sabo's analysis distinguishing the early starters from the students who don't begin until third or fourth grade speaks to several unsurprising truths about youth sports. Girls start an average of half a year later than boys, and kids who don't exercise start later than those who do. But we also see starkly what drives the very earliest action: money. The biggest indicator of whether kids start young, Sabo found, is whether their parents have a household income of $100,000 or more.

And you know where most of those families live, right?

3. The suburban soccer mom (and dad) is based in fact.

Indeed, Sabo's WSF data paints a distinct picture of suburbs where swaths of kids in elementary and middle school, especially boys, play on three, four or five teams, and the culture revolves around their practices, tourneys and getting to their games. In contrast, childhood in cities and rural areas isn't as intensely sports-focused.

The suburbs clearly aren't alone in their obsession: Kids all over America play sports, which means a large portion of families focus on youth sports. Ninety percent of parents with children on a team attend at least one of their kid's games a week. And with youth players mostly at the age when they'll still talk to parents, you can guess what the subject of conversation often is: 68 percent say they talk at least every other day about games and practices.

As involved as they are, though, parents aren't necessarily driving the sports ship. Sabo asked kids whether sports are "a big part of who they are," and the results reinforce just how deeply most American kids care about sports.

4. Hoops is the king because it's for girls too.

Baseball and soccer start off fast, but by the time kids reach age 9, basketball becomes the most popular competitive sport, according to the SFIA's regular/frequent count. Meanwhile, two sports played largely by one gender -- football for boys and volleyball for girls -- grow fast from ages 11 through 14 but never come close to catching up.

Even through age 17, basketball remains dominant because both genders continue to play organized ball. In a study done for the United States Tennis Association Don Sabo looked at data from 2006 to 2010 via an annual survey of about 50,000 students a year and found that 40 percent of adolescent boys and 25 percent of girls play competitive hoops. Soccer and track are the next most popular with both boys and girls, followed by swimming.

5. Dropping out is both the norm and often temporary.

Nervous types appalled by the incessant yelling by adults from the sidelines can be excused for believing that all the competition turns off as many kids as it turns on. Sabo found that 45 percent of the students in his survey who started a sport had quit it. Yet as you can see, the reasons for quitting aren't that youth sports are necessarily bad.

Indeed, most of their reasons relate more to temporary concerns: The kids weren't having fun playing, were hurt, didn't get along with the team or wanted to focus on their studies. That sheds light on the report's next finding: 33 percent of kids had restarted a sport they'd quit. Kids remain drawn to sports.

It helps that the trend has been toward offering more sports; using 2005-06 data, the WSF found that high schools had more teams for both girls and boys than they did in 2000. To wit, Sabo and his colleague Philip Veliz counted 2.3 million girls and 2.9 million boys playing on high school teams (public and private) in 2011-12 -- 30 percent of high school girls and 37 percent of high school boys.

But there's another trend as well: Millions of high school kids phase out organized sports, with the biggest drop-off coming early -- during and after freshman year. High school sports can be competitive and involve roster cuts and commitments some teenagers can't make. Kids quit for all the reasons above. Whatever the explanation, the numbers are sizable: SFIA reports that between ages 14 and 15 there's a 26 percent drop in the number of kids who play at least one sport even casually.

6. In fact, the closer you look, the more you see the kids left behind.

Girls continue to simply have less access. Whereas high schools in 31 states had enough roster slots for at least 50 percent of the boys enrolled, high schools in only 18 states had that many roster slots for girls.

And then there are the kids who live in the wrong places. In New York, a state with well-funded schools, high school teams could accommodate 75 percent of boys and 62 percent of girls. But high schools in budget-deprived California and Florida, two other major states, had spots on teams for only 29 percent and 23 percent of girls, and 39 percent and 30 percent of boys, respectively.

Meanwhile, opportunities for city kids are far fewer. In Washington D.C., the WSF found, high schools had positions on teams for only 22 percent of girls and 33 percent of boys. That's about one-third the opportunity of girls in New York state and boys in North Dakota.

Living in poor corners of cities culls even more kids from sports. Nationwide, according to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, only a quarter of eighth- to 12th-graders enrolled in the poorest schools played school sports. (Those are schools with the highest rate of free-lunch eligibility, which are also among the schools with the highest dropout rates, meaning that even lower percentages of the kids in those communities are playing.) This situation won't be helped as schools continue to cut back funds for teams. The percentage of high schools with no sports has already jumped from 8.2 percent during the 1999-2000 school year to 15.1 percent in 2009-10.

7. Finally, about our kids' health ...

The No. 1 fear of sports parents is seeing their child injured on the field. And due to the United States' growing population and sports participation, that's now more common. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, roughly 2.7 million kids under 20 were treated for "sports and recreation" injuries from 2001 to 2009.

Reports of head injuries are especially on the rise. From 2001 to 2009, emergency room visits for traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) among children under 19 rose 62 percent. And football concussions reported among 10- to 14-year-olds more than doubled from 4,138 in 2000 to 10,759 in 2010, according to the CDC.

Yet looking closely at the CDC's traumatic brain injury data, which includes concussions, puts football in context. More kids go to emergency rooms with TBIs from biking accidents than from football hits, and the percentage of ER visits for TBIs in football (7.2 percent) was lower than in a bunch of sports, including soccer, baseball, hockey of all types, ice skating, ATV and dirt-bike riding and, most dangerous, horseback riding, where an ER visit is twice as likely to involve a brain injury than in football.

Long-term, the nation's biggest health concern remains obesity. And despite all the youth leagues, the waistlines of America's children are growing. According to the latest CDC numbers, 16.9 percent of kids were obese in 2009-10, almost triple the rate of 1980. According to the CDC, overweight children have a 70 percent chance of becoming overweight adults. By 2030, the CDC predicts that 42 percent of all American adults will be obese.

Clearly, all the time that kids spend competing -- and that their parents spend urging them on -- hasn't forestalled the epidemic. It can't help that for every extra hour kids who love to compete spend in uniform, they spend many more hours staring at a screen. In 2009, children spent more than 7 1/2 hours in front of some sort of media, from handheld devices to iPods to computers or TVs, according to the Kaiser Foundation.

For that and many other reasons, the transition from adolescence to early adulthood -- from the time when the bulk of kids compete in sports to the time when most don't -- takes a measurable toll. Every year closer to age 18 our kids get, fewer of them are as physically active as they should be.

The ubiquity of competitive sports is clearly not a panacea, nor does it last. By 18, the youth-sports pipeline has reached a destination or sorts -- by then Serena Williams had won her first major, Bryce Harper and Kobe Bryant had been drafted and Tiger Woods had teed it up for his first PGA tourney. The players largely have been sorted into their categories: future pros; college athletes; club and rec competitors; and those who give up.

Yet after all is said and done, one fact sticks out: Of all the kids in America, very few have not played sports. In the survey done by Sabo for the WSF, only 13 percent of boys and 18 percent of girls between 8 and 17 had never joined a team or club, had never shared the experience of getting a uniform, practicing with teammates and running onto the field or court to compete.

That's American childhood for you.
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Mag: Hidden demographics of youth sports

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In ESPN The Magazine, Bruce Kelley and Carl Carchia look at the hidden demographics of youth sports.

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Teenagers today experience a myriad of benefits from competing in sports in public schools, from developing camaraderie and team building to honing physical and personal skills. Athletes discover the challenges of both winning and defeat as well.

With the many benefits, however, teens competing in high school sporting events must simultaneously balance athleticism with the potential dangers, such as an overly intense focus on the goal of winning. This goal can become a catalyst leading to destructive behaviors to an athlete's overall physical health and well-being.

While sports are certainly an integral component of the public high school experience, teens and parents must foster positive athletic experiences by maintaining awareness of all positive and dangerous behaviors and making informed decisions when their children are involved in athletic competition.

Team Building and Public School Athletic Benefits
Personal Development
Whether teens compete in team sports or engage in more individualized activities, all high school sports are fundamentally designed to help teens develop stronger personal and interpersonal skills and talents. Athletics offers teens a physical outlet to exert their troubles, anger, and emotions.. As hormones alter teens' moods and thoughts, competition fosters an opportunity for teens to interact with fellow peers, coaches, and mentors, while helping them understand their own abilities and talents.

When children and teens participate in group competitions and activities, they learn skills that apply to opportunities both on and off the playing field. Through competition, teens establish a solid work ethic that values practice and rewards determination. teenagers enhance skills in self-reliance and team interaction, and develop new structures of self- motivation , discipline, and personal responsibility.

Researchers at the Institute for the Study of Youth Sports at Michigan State University report, "Kids who participate in organized sports do better in school, have better interpersonal skills, are more team oriented, and are generally healthier." More specifically, Metzl and Shookhoff (2003) further assert that sports help teens develop an array of personal skills, including resilience, attitude control, time management, and long term thinking abilities.

The Kansas State High School Athletic Association has created the following video highlighting the numerous benefits of participation in athletics:
Physical Fitness
While teens competing in sports are certainly exposed to opportunities to enhance their personal and social development, athletes competing in public school sports also expand their physical abilities and fitness levels. Today's teens are exposed to an array of entertainment avenues that may foster laziness, such as television, video games, and other media devices, but the traditional experience of sports, exercise, and kinesthetic activities help boost teens' minds and bodies. Involvement in sporting activities keeps children moving and engaged physically, vital for their overall health and well-being.

During these formative high school years, teenagers' bodies grow and change constantly, and participation in sports can help teens learn how to maneuver and adjust to their changing body and physical abilities. In addition, a teen's hormones and chemical makeup are constantly in flux. Involvement in sports can actually help the body produce more positive chemicals, such as endorphins and adrenaline, which creates more stable moods, positive feelings of happiness, and decreased feelings of depression or sadness.
Collegiate Preparation
While teens adopt an array of new and enhanced skills through participation in athletics, teens even more notably become more rounded college applicants (Metzl & Shookhoff, 2003). When applying to colleges , regardless of the collegiate location or status, most schools will review an applicant's full four-year transcript, which includes grades, course load intensity, test scores, and extracurricular activities.

By participating in sports and other extracurricular and organizations, an applicant demonstrates the ability to manage academics with additional responsibilities, an important quality in a successful student. This balance illustrates student's self-discipline, social involvement, and general well-roundedness. Furthermore, scholarship opportunities may be available for students who display noteworthy abilities and athletic skills.
By ms4denmark [CC-BY-SA-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons Balancing the Pros and Cons of Competition Potential Dangers of Competition and Sports
While any physical activity and sport can provide teens with incredible benefits and opportunities, parents and teenage athletes must also be aware of the potential downfalls of competition and athleticism. As teens engage in competitive events and team sports, their exposure to peer-pressure and anxiety may increase with the need to win.

Furthermore, athletes can experience extreme physical pressures when too much is demanded from them, resulting in injuries from overuse or other physical ailments. As revealed in the article, "High School Wrestler Learned Training Dangers First Hand," common wrestling practices can lead to dangerous physical consequences. Wrestlers are often forced to either gain or lose weight in order to compete in their desired weight class, which leads to restrictive dieting often involving severe caloric deprivation. This practice is paired with excessive cardio exercise that quickly, and dangerously, burns off body fat and weight. While these practices are often considered to be a more drastic example of the dangers of athletics, any teen who feels suppressed by the pressures of competition may choose to engage in harmful practices in order to win and encounter athletic success.
By English: Lance Cpl. Andrew D. Thorburn [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Midwest Orthopaedics discusses the physical detriments many athletes face due to injury from overuse and the pressures they place on themselves.

Additionally, the physiology of athletes can also be altered as a result of extreme physical exertion. According to Metzl & Shookhoff (2003), "Physical exertion can raise the level of pheromones and endorphins, brain chemicals that cause exhilaration. Exercise can also elevate the serum testosterone level, which makes the heart beat faster." While exercise and competition can enhance the mood-boosting chemicals that help increase a teen's feelings of happiness and success, both spectators and athletes can also feel the adverse effects of sadness or depression when a team has a losing season.
How to Guide Teens to Safely Compete
While teens may be subjected to some potential dangers from athletics, parents can help promote a safe competitive drive by limiting the focus on winning and encouraging their child. Metzl & Shookhoff (2003) assert that if parents and teens "remain uninfected by the toxins of winning at all costs and instead focus on effort and fair play, youth sports can be beautiful, exciting, and fun. They can provide kids with an extraordinary opportunity to express their talents and their character, to run around screaming and laughing with joy." To achieve this, parents and coaches should strive to keep the long-term perspective of sports and competition at the forefront, while teaching teenagers how to do the same.

In regards to addressing the physical dangers of sports, parents can avoid many of the dietary and exercise issues by enforcing specific rules during the sports season. For example, during wrestling season, parents can set a "dinner rule," requiring teens to eat dinner with the family to ensure their child has a balanced diet. Additionally, it is important for parents to talk with their children about any concerns they may have and counsel their children through open doors of communication.

Teens may find it very difficult to strike a balance with the many obligations of both academia and athleticism during a sports season, so it is important for parents to help teens handle the stress and frustrations that may occur. Teens' grades may drop or their social interaction with friends may decrease, and if this occurs, parents can always take advantage of the insight and experience of a teen's coach if they need assistance. For example, if the teen refuses to share thoughts or issues or continues to decline in school or behavior, parents can ask an experienced coach to monitor or speak with the teen. Oftentimes, if the concern is valid and realized, coaches will force teens to sit out during games or competitions until health, attitude, and safety is improved and ensured.
Final Thoughts
By having an awareness of the benefits and challenges of involvement in high school athletics, parents and teenagers can make informed choices that lead to success in high school and beyond. Physical activity is vital for robust health and overall well-being, but it is important for athletes and parents alike to reach a balance between physical limitations and the need to compete to win. If a mindful approach is taken to participation in athletics, teenagers will be nurtured to become their physical and mental best.

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Pros and Cons of Sports Competition at the High School Level - PublicSchoolReview.com

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What are the benefits and dangers of competitive pressure on high school athletes ? Some answers here.

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VisualNews.com, ContributorA place where you can find daily visual inspiration from around the world.

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For the 45 million children ages 6 through 16 currently participating in youth sports, many parents are having to reach deep into their pockets to cover the rising costs of equipment and sports-related activities.

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Any parent knows that young children are filled with energy, eager to run, jump and play. Transferring that natural energy to competitive sports can help keep kids active and healthy as the grow, and other distractions increase that may lead to a more sedentary lifestyle. Competitive sports such as soccer, track, basketball and swimming can also help kids learn important life lessons about teamwork and fair play.

Learning How to Compete

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Participating in sports teaches children and teenagers how to compete in the real world. As they grow older they'll face competition in school, in the workforce and other areas of life. But these competitions don't have to be negative or unhealthy. Playing sports can help kids understand how competition works in a friendly environment, and that if you try your hardest, you have a better chance to succeed.

Understanding the Value of Exercise

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Millions of American children and teenagers are overweight. This obesity epidemic has make the early onset of health problems such as diabetes more common. Participating in competitive youth sports burns calories and helps to prevent obesity. Additionally, many children who are active in sports are motivated to eat healthier foods, such as fruits and vegetables.

Improving Self-Esteem

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Improved self-esteem is another benefit of competitive youth sports. When a child wins a game with his team, he feels accomplished and recognized. Even when he doesn't win, he can learn a valuable lesson: that you can't win every time. Losing with his team can also increase self-esteem, as he learns to hold his head high and feel proud for trying his best.

Decreasing Risky Behavior

According to the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, youth sports can help deter negative behavior, such as joining a gang, because competitive sports provide an outlet for expression, friendship and controlled aggression. Teens who have positive influences and friends feel less of a need to participate in risky behaviors.

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What Are the Benefits of Competitive Sports for Youth?

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Any parent knows that young children are filled with energy, eager to run, jump and play. Transferring that natural energy to competitive sports can help keep kids active and healthy as the grow, and other distractions increase that may lead to a more sedentary lifestyle.

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Sports Promote Healthy Weight in Teenagers

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Walking or biking to school, or playing on a sports team, or preferably two or more, helped high school students lower their risk of being overweight or obese, according to a new report.