This issue and the next issue will look at factors to consider when starting a child on the road to athletic success.
Adults play a big part in introducing children to sports.
Teaching a toddler to throw a ball, giving a young child swimming lessons, and buying a five-year-old a bicycle are all natural ways parents introduce sports skills to their children. With this background, almost all children develop a sense of movement, most want to become involved in sports activities, and a few show exceptional athletic ability.
It is extremely easy and appropriate for a parent to encourage athletic ability this way in children. This opens the door for serious training, but doesn't force children into a regimented schedule prematurely.
Some physical education specialists recommend that we teach young children fundamental movement skills rather than specific sports. "Rather than fielding a ground ball, for instance, coaches would learn how to break the activity down into its basic motion components of running, skipping, shuffling, trapping, and throwing." (1)
One such program is START SMART, a six-week course which teaches children as young as three motor skills such as throwing, catching, and kicking. It was started after a study conducted at Northern Kentucky University indicated that 49% of children age five through eight lacked the minimum skills to play organized sports. (2)
Parents can share their favorite sports with their children.
It's okay to involve children in particular sports (i.e., ones that a parent especially enjoys doing or those that the parent thinks his or her children will do well in) without concern that this is being too pushy. Most kids are going to be exposed someone's favorite sports anyway. Hopefully, they will be allowed to decide for themselves what they like to do most.
According to a study of talented athletes, musicians, and artists, they excelled in areas where their parents had an interest. "Parents (or other family members), in pursuing their own interests, created situations that intrigued, interested, or involved the child. The parents responded to this interest favorably, by allowing the child to participate or by arranging special opportunities specifically for the child. Thus, the child's interest was rewarded or encouraged, and the child did learn some simple skills." (3)
After learning the basics, children should be able to decide for themselves how involved they want to be.
It's all right for parents to introduce specific sports to their children and encourage them to take a few lessons. But once that has been accomplished, children should be free to continue or to quit. And if they quit, this shouldn't be cause for despair. There are a wide variety of sports, involving a wide variety of skills, to choose from. Sooner or later children will find what is right for them.
Said Michael DePalmer, athletic director of the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy, "When I meet a parent of a 10-year-old who says, 'My kid just loves tennis,' I wince because that always turns out to be a parent who is pushing his child into competition." (4)
Kids don't have to excel from the beginning.
Coaches are always on the lookout for prodigies who will grow up to be superstars. But many outstanding young athletes will not be able to sustain a high level of performance into adolescence and adulthood, when it matters most. The fact that children are winning competitions at the age of six doesn't mean they will continue to do so at age twelve or eighteen or twenty-four. And the fact that they aren't winning them at age six doesn't mean they won't be at twelve or eighteen or twenty-four.
"I have seen studies showing that few of our best 10-year-olds will be competing successfully at 20," said Peter Daland, who served as swimming coach for the University of Southern California and the U.S. Olympic team, and president of the World Swimming Coaches Association. "We lose these youngsters for many reasons. One is overzealous parents who make swimming a chore rather than fun. Another is overzealous coaches who want too much too soon, turning a developmental age-group program into an end-all." (5)
Noted sports psychologist Jim Loehr says that early success has its downside. " ... the ones who have the most difficulty are those who have the greatest success earliest, because they're always defending turf and having to live up to all these phenomenal claims of genius." (6)
It's very difficult for parents who haven't had a lot of personal experience with a sport to be able to judge their own children's progress. Comparing their children to others the same age is not an especially good guide because this doesn't tell them what will happen in the future.
As long as children are continuing to develop at a reasonable pace for themselves, that should be sufficient at least through junior high.
Said tennis coach Nick Bollettieri in 1990, " ... many parents are seeing the success of young players like Jennifer Capriati and thinking, wrongly, their own kids have got to catch up. They don't realize a player like Jennifer or Andre [Agassi] comes along only once every 15 years." (8)
According to Frank Brennan, the women's tennis coach at Stanford, "... for every Michael Chang and Jennifer Capriati who actually make it for awhile, there are fifty kids out there who pursued that dream and gave up everything else and came up way short." (9)
Parents should also keep in mind that children physically develop at different rates and therefore it isn't always possible to predict long-term success by comparing prepubescent children. "A child who appears to be a superstar at age 10 might just be more physically mature than someone else. There's no guarantee that that child at age 16 is going to be the next superstar," said Ron Quinn, director of physical education and women's soccer coach at Xavier University. (10)
Conversely, some children who seem to have limited potential become very successful professionals. Examples:
Children can develop overuse injuries.
Children who are expected to train too much or too often can develop overuse injuries such as stress fractures and damage to growth plates. This can result in a premature end to their competitive sports careers and possibly lifetime disability.
"We are seeing more and more stress fractures in children and more and more injuries caused by repetitive use," according to Dr. Carl Stanitski, chief of orthopedic surgery at Children's Hospital of Michigan. (11)
Dr. Gregory Landry, University of Wisconsin team physician and a pediatric doctor at the University of Wisconsin Sports Medicine Clinic, has said that he sees more injuries due to overuse than from lacerations and broken bones. (12)
Dr. Anders Ericsson, a psychologist at Florida State University at Tallahassee, found that four hours a day seems to be the maximum anyone (including adults) should train a day. Any more than that becomes counterproductive. (13)
Stan Smith, former Wimbledon champion and now associate director of player development for the U.S. Tennis Association, has pointed out this problem. "The kids are training harder and longer, and we find that their techniques and fundamentals are not as good as they should be. At ages 10, 11, and 12 they should not train four hours a day. But people think the more the better. They forget about kids and the potential for injury." (14)
Children's bodies need time to build up muscle and therefore need time between exercise to repair the minute amounts of damage that come from regular exercise. For this reason periods of intensive exercise, such as those found at summer camps, may cause problems if children haven't been conditioned beforehand.
Dr. Suzanne Tanner, a physician at the University of Colorado's sports medicine clinic, recommends some down time. "Taking a summer off can be the best thing some of those athletes can do for themselves. It allows for them to catch up on growth and gives their bodies time to recover fully from any injuries they might have. I don't recommend year-round participation." (15)
However, children shouldn't rush back into activity after a summer away from it. For this reason and because doctors know that it can be hard to keep children from participating in some kind of sports activity year-round, they often recommend lowering the amount of activity or varying it rather than discontinuing it altogether.
Doctors also recommend that children use and wear equipment designed for them (not for adults); that coaches learn proper training techniques; and that children be allowed to quit when they are tired.
Children should be paced properly.
It's much better to help a child set personal goals than competitive ones. These give greater opportunity for positive results. For example, swimmers can think in terms of personal bests rather than races won; skaters can focus on learning new jumps rather than competitions won; tennis players can aim for better control rather than matches won.
According to Marty Ewing, a professor of physical education and a sports psychologist at Michigan State University, sports participation for children six to eight can help them learn how the sport is played, but it is too soon for them to understand about competition. And then from eight to ten they need encouragement to stay with sports as they are becoming aware of their limitations. "I see success as a coach, not in how many games are won, but in the number of kids who return to play the next season." (16)
A child will lose interest if a sport seems too much like a job.
If practicing and training replace enjoyment, the child is being pushed too fast. It's questionable whether a sport should ever be viewed as a serious business until an athlete is actually pursuing it as a career.
A child who is forced to train is unlikely to have the motivation to get to the top.
This is not to say that there should never be any structure to training. In fact, children often respond well to the rituals which go along with sports preparation (e.g., warm-up exercises, group workouts, low-level strength training), but they shouldn't be expected to put in the kinds of hours that adult professionals do.
Joan Ryan, a journalist for the San Francisco Examiner, has been something of a watchdog for children in sports. In article she wrote, "Child labor laws prevent a 13 year old from punching a cash register for 40 hours a week. But that same 13 year old can labor 40 hours a week inside a gym or on a tennis court." (20)
Studies conducted by the Michigan State University's Institute for the Study of Youth suggest that even average athletes can burn out. According to Vern Seefeldt, then the director of the institute, "We asked them, 'Was your sport season just right, too long or too short?' At every level, both genders, in every sport, the answer was the same--the season is too long." (22)
Said Jack Kramer, founder of the modern men's tennis tour: "For every Jennifer Capriati that comes along who is a sensation at 14, you probably can find 100 who have put out the effort but have lost too many matches and, in the process, their zest for competition. I think we ought to study the effects of what happens to the ones who don't make it, and pass that information to the parents of future generations who are being put into this damn grinder." (23)
Competitions should never be viewed as life-and-death situations.
Outstanding athletes at all levels aim to win, but they should be reminded that there's always another chance. This message is especially important to send to young athletes. To succeed long-term, an athlete must know how to win and how to lose because he or she will most likely do both.
"I came out (of high school) as a superstar, but if I didn't run up to those times, then I wasn't that superstar. I was some Yolanda they didn't know.
"I used to run for everyone else Then when I did bad, I started psyching myself out. The people I was running for started getting upset with me, so I finally just told them all 'I'm doing it for myself.'" (25)
Johnson did not make it to the Olympics as expected, but she became an assistant coach at the University of Colorado and one of her athletes, Yvonne Scott, broke Johnson's University of Colorado record in the 100-meter hurdles. The time was good enough to earn Scott a spot on the 1996 Japanese Olympic team (she held dual U.S.-Japanese citizenship).