Youth sports specialization trend raises risk of injury and burnout among athletes
Certain things should be verboten in organized youth sports.
Among the most obvious:
Parents fighting with one another.
Coaches prioritizing winning over imparting instruction, encouragement and positive life lessons.
Anyone verbally abusing or physically attacking game officials.
But parents also need to be on the lookout for less obvious perils, especially for young athletes who “specialize” in a single sport: overuse injuries and/or burnout.
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According to the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, “youth sports has experienced a paradigm shift over the past 15 to 20 years ... [as] kids are increasingly specializing in sports.”
The AAOC defines sports specialization in youth (those 12 or younger) “as engaging in a sport for at least three seasons a year at the exclusion of other sports.”
"The days of sandlot play and street pick-up games are waning and we’re witnessing the professionalization of youth sport," said New York surgeon Dr. Charles A. Popkin, the lead author of a 2019 study published in the Journal of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons.
When specialization does more harm than good
The study focused on the impact of early sport specialization and delved into the adverse health and social effects on today’s youth.
"Parents and coaches are increasingly focused on developing elite athletes and believe that if more focus is placed on deliberate practice and early specialization, young athletes will have a better chance at college-level play or even Olympic standings," said Popkin. "That’s not usually the case.”
The National Athletic Trainers’ Association is also sounding the alarm: “Studies show that young athletes often see specialization as a prerequisite to advancing, [whether it’s] making the varsity team, earning a college scholarship or progressing to the professional level,” said NATA President Tory Lindley in 2019. “When athletes specialize too early, or engage in excessive play, they are increasing the probability of injury and reducing the chances of achieving their goals. We want to help athletes and parents recognize health is a competitive advantage.”
Boynton Beach chiropractor and sports rehabilitation specialist Dr. David Rudnick has been seeing more young athletes suffering overuse injuries in recent years, noting that "one study says that youth baseball players who play year-round have a 36 times greater likelihood of suffering an injury. This is especially true for pitchers. That’s why Major League Baseball has created a program called Pitch Smart, which created pitch limits and rest guidelines for players between the ages of 7 and 22.”
Youth sports biz outsizes even NFL
In the past two decades, concurrent to the rise of youth sports specialization, has been the commercialization of youth organized youth sports.
According to a 2019 Business Wire report, organized youth sports is now a $19-billion-per-year industry in the U.S.
By way of comparison: Business Wire says the NFL is a $15-billion-per-year enterprise.
A 2019 survey of more than 1,000 parents conducted by The Aspen Institute and the University of Utah found that families spend an average of $1,400 annually on the fees and travel expenses associated with organized youth sports. And many parents find they have to spend far more than that.
As Money magazine noted in 2019 “prices are also on the rise, and it could be what's causing kids to drop out of extracurricular activities at an earlier age, or not even participate in the first place. In fact, the share of 6- to 12-year-olds who played team sports on a regular basis was down from 45% in 2008 to 38% in 2018.”
But for parents who can afford to pay for their children to participate, they believe there could be future rewards awaiting their offspring.
In a 2018 study called "Quantifying Parental Influence on Youth Athlete Specialization: A Survey of Athletes' Parents," researchers surveyed hundreds of parents and found that “57.2% of them hoped for their children to play collegiately or professionally.”
TV executives long ago decided that elite organized youth sports provided compelling programming — in effect, "professionalizing" these competitions.
Throughout this month, ESPN dedicated large programming blocs virtually daily to the boys (baseball) and girls (softball) Little League World Series tournaments. The age limit for these players: 12.
The Senior League World Series (ages 13 to 16) and American Legion World Series (ages 13 to 19) tournaments were also televised during August.
And these baseball/softball tourneys ended just in time to free up the network to air live broadcasts of the nation’s top high school football teams — which ESPN has been doing for more than a decade.
From Aug. 25 to Aug. 28, ESPN aired its 13th annual GEICO ESPN High School Football Kickoff games — seven in all, including four interstate matchups — across its multiple channels. Throughout the 2022 season, viewers will also be able to catch 11 weekly GEICO ESPN High School Football Showcase games.
Keeping young athletes healthy
So how can the well-meaning parents of aspiring young athletes support their goals and dreams while also minimizing the risk of preventable injuries?
The experts have a few suggestions.
“I recommend youth athletes take at least two months off per year to recover from a specific sport and encourage them to play multiple sports to train different movement patterns and muscle groups to avoid overuse injuries,” said Rudnick. “If they are super-focused on one specific sport and don’t want to play others, I encourage cross-training and other strength and conditioning programs in the off-season. This will help improve biomechanics and movement patterns to reduce the risk of excessive load on joints.”
The National Athletic Trainers’ Association offers the following advice:
Delay specializing in a single sport for as long as possible.
Play on only one team at a time.
Don’t spend more hours per week than age in years (i.e., a 12-year-old can play a maximum of only 12 hours per week in a given sport).
Rudnick, whose son Micah played on an 8-and-under baseball team that won a Florida state championship earlier this year, urges parents to remember the most valuable aspects of having their kids play organized youth sports (and preferably more than one).
“Somehow, we’ve forgotten the reason our kids like playing sports,” he says. “It’s about being part of a team, developing friendships, working toward a common goal, learning new skills, competing and, most importantly, having fun.
“As parents, coaches, trainers and healthcare providers, we have the responsibility to make sure they never feel pressured as well as to save them from themselves when they doing more than their still-developing bodies can handle.”
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Why young athletes should not 'specialize' in a single sport
