A Survey of Youth Sports Finds Winning Isn’t the Only Thing

[Are_grits_groceries]

At a time when sports tutors seem as plentiful as piano teachers and high school games are routinely nationally televised, Peter Barston has learned something important about youth sports.

Adults may lean toward turning children’s games into an approximation of professional sports. But ask young players what they want, and the answer can be disarmingly simple. More than training to be a Super Bowl star, more than even winning, youngsters play sports for fun — at least they do in Darien, Conn., Barston said.

He has not proved that scientifically. But a research project spearheaded by Barston, a sophomore at Fairfield Prep, makes an intriguing case that while parents dream big, their children focus on the small stuff.

Since August, Barston has toured youth leagues in Darien, asking this question: Why do you play sports?
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The survey is a single page listing 11 reasons children might have for playing sports, including the laid-back (to have fun, to make friends) and the purposeful (to win, to earn a college scholarship). Like the Michigan State researchers, Barston instructed the Darien players to assign points based on the importance of the reasons for a total of 100.

From the mound of data he gathered, Barston found a striking pattern. No matter how he categorized the responses, the most important reason youngsters gave for playing sports was the same: to have fun. That was the top response from football and basketball players, from boys and from girls, and from players in each grade from fourth to eighth. In the basketball survey, 95 percent of boys and 98 percent of girls cited fun as a reason for playing, nearly twice the number who mentioned winning.

Barston does not say that his poll is statistically accurate. But it is a window into what offensive linemen and power forwards think about sports and might say to their parents and coaches — if they were asked.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/sports/31youth.html?ref=sports

While not a scientific approach, IMHO parents and others should pay attention to this survey. They should have a young student conduct one in their own area, and I'll bet the answers would be about the same. (Having a student conduct the survey might make it seem less threatening.)

After hearing about all the appalling incidents caused by parents at youth sporting events, this is welcome insight. Let the kids have fun when they play. They can still be given instruction in proper techniques along the way. Very few will ever make into the top echelons of their sport.

They only get to be kids once.

[Altoid_Cyclist]

1. I played one year of Little League Baseball and said the hell with this!

I saw coaches encouraging cheating, parents "volunteering" to help coach so that their kids would make the the cut, parents yelling and swearing at the kids on the other teams and "fans" and parents threatening the umpires.

Just like Arnold and the other kids on the old "Flinstones" series, I realized that our daily pick-up games of baseball and anything with only kids involved just seemed to be a lot more fun than something "organized".

The best part was when I was offered a scholarship in basketball by a local school when the guys who always played in organized programs and went to all of the camps that their parents paid for were ignored.

Never underestimate how important the FUN aspect of sports is to kids. I see parents now insisting that their kids play organized sports and take lessons and go to camps so that they will get that all important scholarship. I've seen a lot of those same kids get completely burned out and lose all of the enjoyment that sports and games can provide. Then the parents don't understand it when their kids want to quit so the parents try to guilt them into continuing.

As you stated, they get one shot at being kids, let them have some fun while they can.