Revolution in the Bleachers

Author: Regan McMahon
Publisher: Gotham Books
Release Date: April 2007
ISBN: 978-1-592-40284-7

Regan McMahon is the deputy book editor of the San Francisco Chronicle and a member of the National Book Critics Circle. She has written articles, music reviews, and book reviews for various national publications. She lives in Oakland, California, with her husband and two children Hayley and Kyle.

Introduction

I’m not an expert, I’m a concerned parent. I’m not anti-sports; I love sports, having been a hard-core child athlete myself: Competitive figure skating took up much of my life from ages 8 to 16. In middle school I would skate from 6 to 8 in the morning before school and return after school and skate into the night, eating dinner from the snack bar alone while I did my homework between the afternoon and evening sessions. I was on the basketball and swim teams in high school.

But as youth sports have escalated in intensity, competitiveness, time commitment and parent involvement, certain risks are beginning to surface as well, from overuse injuries, stress and depression to inappropriate sideline behavior and fractured family patterns.

Things have gotten out of whack, and it’s time to regain our balance. It’s time for a revolution in the bleachers.

The Rise of Girls’ Sports and Its Impact on the Family

When I started to think about why we parents are running around so much more than our parents did, I realized that the biggest fact is the rise of sports programs for girls.

What changed things for girls—and made logistics more complicated for parents—is Title IX, which was passed in 1972 as an Education Amendment to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to end gender discrimination     in federally funded school programs. The dramatic increase in women’s collegiate sports programs meant athletic elementary and high school girls had an opportunity for college sports scholarships. Parents’ lust for college scholarships is driving much of the craziness that has infected youth sports, and has influenced decisions about early participation, early specialization and membership on elite club teams.

The Rise of Elite Clubs

The second biggest change in the evolution of youth sports, after the increased opportunity for and participation of girls, is the rise of the elite clubs. Up until the early 1990s, the pinnacle of many young people’s sports experience was playing for their high school team.

Now private clubs offer the highest level, most competitive play. For a membership fee, between $500 and $5,500 a year, parents buy what they believe is the best opportunity for their child to get top-notch coaching and—if the child sticks with it through high school—get seen by college recruiters at the many weekend and holiday tournaments that are the clubs’ lifeblood. For many parents, the long-term goal is that coveted college scholarship. Even when they’re signing up a kid as young as 6.

And what comes along with making the cut is a big jump in time commitment—two to three practices a week, in addition to two games per regular weekend and up to five or six games in a tournament—and cost: for dues, uniform and tournament fees, as well for the extensive traveling and overnight accommodations in what becomes virtually a year-round sport.

We have to ask ourselves, is this the best thing for our kids? For our families? And what is that year-round high-level play doing to all those young bodies?

Rise Up and Revolt: What You Can Do Now

• Consider how joining an elite travel team will affect your whole family. Will the parents and siblings be separated more weekends than not? Will it limit or eliminate your ability to take a family summer vacation?
• Ask the coach not to penalize your child for attending family events. The rule of thumb about playing time is to reward those who show up for practice and penalize those who don’t. This is generally viewed as a fair system by players and coaches alike. But when there is no accommodation for spending time with your family—to attend a wedding, a bar mitzvah or a Mother’s Day brunch, or go on a family vacation when the family wants to go, even if it’s not during the coach-approved two-week break in the training and tournament schedule—that tells the child that sports and the team are more important than family.
• Keep academics a priority. If you as a parent don’t agree with putting sports before academics on a regular basis, and aiding and abetting the message that this sends to kids, think twice before you sign on that dotted line.
• Consider not joining an elite travel team until your child is an adolescent. Travel soccer teams, for example, generally start at Under 10, which means 8- and 9-year-olds are spending weekends in motels, away from their friends and siblings, in intensely competitive play.
• Check options. Seriously question if an elite team is what your child needs or wants. You may find an array of alternatives to choose from and may be able to select one that fits your kid and your family better than the others.

The Risks to Young Bodies

One of the big consequences of the rise of elite clubs and the trend towards specialization is that many young athletes are now playing virtually year-round, putting more stress on their growing bodies than anyone ever imagined. Once they’re playing only one sport, they’re using the same muscle groups exclusively, which causes repetitive stress or overuse injuries.

Bob Tewksbury, who works for the Boston Red Sox, says that overuse injuries have become so rampant that major league scouts are no longer turning to the South and West—regions where athletes have more opportunity to play and train because of the mild weather—to find pitchers. They’re realizing that guys who have been taxing their arms year-round, for years on end, may have only so many throws left before they’ll end up on the disabled list.

“There’s an incredible increase in [the Tommy John] injury, and that injury is strictly an over-use injury at a young age,” Tewksbury told me. “So these guys are playing more and more baseball at a younger age and they’re getting hurt. So what the special teams are looking at is: How much wear and tear has this guy got?”

So let’s get this straight: Parents are putting their kids at risk having them play year-round so they can one day play professionally, and the pros are starting to be wary of players who may have worn out their arms trying to get to the majors.

No trophy, no scholarship is worth endangering our child’s health. We seem to have lost sight of the fact that these athletes are children, not facsimiles of professional players. We can’t abdicate our role as protector because we’ve been seduced by the siren call of the scholarship.

Rise Up and Revolt: What You Can Do Now

• Encourage multiple sports. Playing different sports can prevent repetitive stress injuries. Support your child in playing multiple sports—as long as she can, even in high school. College coaches say multi-sport athletes are often their best players.
• Resist the push to specialize at an early age. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that kids wait till puberty to specialize in one sport. There is no evidence that specializing early increases the likelihood of being an exceptional athlete in a sport.
• Lobby your interscholastic league to mandate a break in training. The trend in year-round play has spilled over into the high schools, so that football players, for example, are going to camp all summer and training all year.

Child’s Play

Amid all the gains of playing sports—the physical benefits of healthy exercise, skill development, agility, balance and coordination; the social benefits of building relationships, learning how to work as part of a team, leadership, time management, decision-making, focus, discipline and goal-setting; and the psychological benefits of increased confidence, self-esteem, dealing with disappointment and frustration and learning how to be both a good loser and a gracious winner—I am concerned about what children have lost or given up as youth sports has evolved into its dominant role in contemporary life.

With so much of children’s active time spent in organized sports, kids have less experience making up their own games or picking teams by themselves. Usually if they’re playing a game, adults have made up the rules and are there calling the fouls and telling the kids if the ball is in or out.

So how are today’s kids going to explore their feelings and learn conflict resolution if they play only in the context of organized sports? How are they going to develop their imaginations if they never had downtime?

Rise Up and Revolt: What You Can Do Now

• Promote free play. Kick your kids out into the yard so they can make up their own games, build forts, sail bottlecap boats in puddles and streams or shoot baskets on their own. Take them to the park or the beach or the woods with no agenda and let them run around and make up their own games while they’re there, with you as their base of operations to return to for food and hugs.
• Take summer vacations as a family. A week or two together without the pressures of work and school and sports and the family dynamics you’re locked into in your own home can provide opportunities for fun and connection that are less available during the rest of the year. Don’t give this up to a team itinerary! The team can do without you for a while. You and your children will have more to give after you recharge your batteries.
• Set aside a family night or day for fun each week or as often as you can. Play board games watch a movie together on TV, rent a DVD, go to the movies, take a hike, go on a picnic.
• Help save recess! The cutting of recess has become so prevalent that in March 2006 the National PTA and Cartoon Network launched Rescue Recess, a national campaign to champion the importance of recess for kids and fight for its survival.
• Fight the forces that are cutting P.E. Schools pressured to improve scores on standardized tests have erred in taking time for physical training and exercise away from kids. They need it, and studies show exercise can actually benefit kids’ ability to learn in the classroom.
• Bring back intramural teams. More sports options are better than fewer. For kids who played at the rec level and are not skilled enough to make the high school team or don’t want to make the time commitment that would involve, how about providing a vehicle for fun and exercise and continued love of sports?

Growing Up Stressed Out

People seem to have accepted the idea that we live in a 24/7 world, as the expression goes, and high-pressured youth sports commitments are part of that. But what kind of a toll is this taking on children and families?

According to an oft-quoted study by Michigan State University, 70 percent of kids who play youth sports quit by the time they’re 13. For some, it’s because they’ve had bad experiences or they develop other interests, but for others it’s due to parental pressure or because they are simply burned out.

Some kids train hard from kindergarten on, rack up the trophies and take all the right steps to make the college team, only to find out when they get there that they’ve lost their love of the game.

Rise Up and Revolt: What You Can Do Now

• Make sure your kids have downtime. At our house we instituted one “unplugged” night per week, during which no one could watch TV, play videogames or be on the computer. That left room for solitary pursuits like reading or doing art and interactive ones like playing board games or taking an after-dinner walk.
• Check in with your child regularly for signs of burnout. Is your child still having fun? If she wants to try out for or switch to another sport, let her go. And let her know that whatever she decides you will love and support her either way, no matter how much time and money you’ve invested in this sport so far.
• Stick to one sport per season. It reduces stress on the child and the family.
• Challenge the number of tournaments travel teams go to. Parents on elite teams often get to vote on how many tournaments they go to. Don’t be afraid to speak up at the meeting and say no if that’s how you feel.
• Propose eliminating tournaments on holiday weekends. I know this is precisely contrary to the current practice, but how many Thanksgiving dinners have to be sacrificed before the dominant sports culture acknowledges that this is a national, family holiday that kids should get to spend with their families?
• Challenge the need for seasons to overlap. The double duty is caused by the coach starting preseason practices early, by a month or more, to get ready for the season. We, as parents at the school, could voice some objection to the athletic director, the coaches or the league.

Guess Who’s Not Coming to Dinner

There is a mountain of statistical evidence that eating dinner together is not just a nice thing to do, it’s also a predictor of kids’ success in many areas—physical, academic and psychological. And, conversely, not having frequent dinners together is a predictor of negative behaviors, chief among them substance use and abuse.

Perhaps the most striking fact the studies reveal is the difference a few days make: Children who eat family dinners five times a week are more likely to be emotionally well-adjusted and do well academically and socially, while children who eat dinner together with the family two times a week or less are more prone to getting in trouble at school, being depressed and getting involved with illegal drugs.

Maintaining the family dinner hour is tough for parents who seem to have no control over coaches and leagues that schedule practices or games at dinnertime.

Families with kids on elite travel teams face even more daunting challenges. They not only have busy weeknights, but are also traveling to tournaments on the weekends.

Eating together as a family is too important to just let slip away. It’s worth it to find the time, to make the time. It’s part of our job as parents.

Rise Up and Revolt: What You Can Do Now

• Eat dinner together regularly. Keep in mind that nothing is more important than staying connected to your kids.
• Eat and talk at the same time. Good nutrition presented in a convivial atmosphere will guard against obesity, eating disorders and depression.

Are Parents Driving the Craziness?

Because of our expectations, we may push our kids to play sports, to join an elite team, to stay in a sport long after the child has stopped having fun because we’re living through the child. Perhaps a parent didn’t succeed at sports as a youth and wants a vicarious taste of the glory now. Or maybe the parent was a sports star and wants the chid to know what that feels like.

Regardless of the individual backstory, parental expectations inform everything from decisions about time commitment to sideline behavior. We’ve all seen parents at our kids’ games who shout instruction at their kids during the action of the game, who berate their kids after mistakes, who get overheated by what they see as unfair calls.

Rise Up and Revolt: What You Can Do Now

• Establish a code of conduct and a code of ethics for the parents on your child’s team. Adopt guidelines laid out by Sports Done Right or the Partnership for Youth Development Through Sports.
• Speak up! You’re the only one who knows what’s best for your child and your family. Even if you’ve joined an elite team and know going into it that the time and travel commitment is high, when there is a team meeting, don’t keep mum if you have something to say.

When Coaches Have All the Power

As youth sports has changed, the role of the coach has changed, says my old sociology professor, (San Francisco) 49ers consultant Harry Edwards. The evolution toward specialization of the athlete and the increased emphasis on productivity mean coaches are more interested in winning and churning out specialists in one sport or one position, as opposed to developing a well-rounded athlete and human being.

“Thirty years ago the coach was a father figure, mentor, teacher on the football field. But that assumed an evolution of the player from young man to football player to a great athlete. Today, that coach has productivity expectations of that kid when he gets there. Father figure? Teacher? Mentor? Give me a break. It’s winning, production, and this has turned the coach into an entrepreneur, because the more productive he is, the more he is paid where he is and the greater likelihood he’s going to move to the next level.”

On highly competitive teams, a coach’s demands on an athlete’s time can be astounding. I’ve often wondered why the number of tournaments for the travel teams or games and practices for other times must keep escalating, with little regard to family life.

The trouble is, coaches tell me, if the other teams are practicing that much, they need to as well to stay competitive. That’s what’s led to this arms race of practices, games and tournaments.

The important thing is for parents to seek and find a coach who can be their partner in developing their child’s skills and character. And to find a coach or a league or a level of play that matches their family’s needs and shares—or at least does not oppose—their family’s values.

Rise Up and Revolt: What You Can Do Now

• Establish a code of conduct and a code of ethics for coaches. Have coaches attend workshops by the Positive Coaching Alliance or a training clinic or on-site or online program from the National Alliance for Youth Sports.
• Find a coach who is right for your child. A team may have a stunning win-loss record, but do some research into how the coach treats the players. Style matters. If the coach has a style that works for your child, you’ll see the best results.
• Don’t discount playing for the high school team. If your child’s club coach discourages him from playing for his high school, consider all that he’ll miss: representing his school, bonding with his schoolmates, playing for something larger than himself—an institution with a history, a legacy.

Start a Revolution!

Now that we’ve examined the various forces that have driven up the intensity of youth sports and changed the patterns of family life, what are we going to do about it?

Whether it’s leaving a competitive soccer team to start our own lacrosse league, taking back one day out of seven for the family, transforming school sports for a whole state or designing a new way to play youth sports that’s more like recess than the Super Bowl, parents and sports reformers are looking for another way because the one we’ve got isn’t working well for everyone. People looking for more balance in their lives, fairness on the field and a better experience for kids and families are saying enough is enough and too much is too much.

Even if you’re not ready to change the system or revamp the youth league, there are things you can do right away—all those “What You Can Do Now” suggestions at the end of the previous chapters—in your own family and on your kid’s team to gain balance in your life, let you kids experience more childhood and less pressure, and promote a vibrant, enriching family life.

The most important thing to do is examine the motivation for your decision regarding your child’s sports involvement. Is it for my child or for me? And what is the goal—a scholarship? Fun? Healthy exercise? A positive social environment? Knowingthe joys of the game? Learning a skill set?

If the desire for a scholarship is driving your decision-making, be realistic. Every college coach I talked to said starting your kid in a sport at 5, training on an elite travel team from age 8 and specializing in one sport early do not guarantee a scholarship or even a place on a college team.

College coaches also told me that if parents really want their kids to have a free ride at a university, they should push them to get good grades, because there are many more academic scholarships than there are for athletics.

So there are your marching orders, fellow revolutionaries. Stay focused on the kid, not the scholarship. Keep your child’s needs, not yours, in mind.

The world may have changed and gotten more competitive and speeded up, but kids should still get to be kids. Don’t push them toward college and a career so fast. They’ll be gone before you know it. I know we do what we do out of love. But we can lighten up a little on the throttle. They’ll still get there.

From Revolution in the Bleachers by Regan McMahon. Copyright © 2007 by Regan McMahon. Summarized by permission of the publisher, Gotham Books.

304 pages. $25.00. ISBN-10: 1592402844; ISBN-13: 9781592402847.

Summary Copyright © 2009 by FamilyIntel, LLC. All rights reserved.