TOO SERIOUS TOO SOON MORE KIDS ARE PLAYING SPORTS, BUT MORE ARE
DROPPING OUT, TOO, WHEN PLAYING IS NO LONGER FUN
When Joseph Lorenzetti packs for a road trip he includes a
hockey man's standard gear: skates, sticks, pads, mouth guard, and
a resume of the dozen teams he's played for and a press release
outlining his most recent triumphs on the ice.
He also brings along his Game Boy and a drawing book with his
favorite cartoon characters, Daffy Duck and Tweety Bird.
Joseph recently turned 12. With his slender limbs and
unblemished skin, he looks like a boy. But he is really a hockey
machine, one as dedicated to the sport as any man-sized player.
When he started playing at 3 1/2, he was so small he couldn't hold
a stick. He now trains 300 days a year, attends seven summer
hockey camps, and travels 4,500 miles a year just to compete,
while his parents spend $6,000 a year on equipment, ice time and
hotels. All of which have earned him a score of hockey trophies,
achievements he pursues far more ardently than girls.
``I don't really have a lot of time for them,'' he explains.
His slapshot may be more blistering than most, but Joseph
Lorenzetti is like many children of the '90s, an era in which
young people on the sports field seem less like kids than
miniature professionals. Like the pros plastered on their bedroom
walls, they have resumes, travel budgets, and parents who possess
all the fervor of professional managers with none of the
detachment.
As children's attitudes have changed, so too have the ways they
play. Pick-up games are becoming a thing of the past. The threesport athlete also is disappearing, replaced by year-round soccer
stalwarts or hockey addicts like Joseph, who skate even in the
swelter of summer.
And while more kids than ever are playing sports, more also are
dropping out as they enter their teens and finally can decide for
themselves.
Something is askew. The games are somehow getting out of
control. That's the message kids are sending by their actions and,
when they're asked, by their words. The fun, they say, is seeping
out of sports.
``From my graduating high school class, of the top four or five
athletes, none of them are playing any longer,'' reports Liz
Bonfanti, a Boston Globe All-Scholastic who starred in volleyball
and softball at North Reading (Mass.) High but stopped playing
after her freshman year at Salem (Mass.) State College.
``Somewhere, something went wrong,'' she says. ``There was too
much emphasis put on competition and doing well rather than just
doing your best and having fun.''
Alan Goldberg, a sports psychologist from Amherst, Mass. who
advises pro, college, and high school athletes and teams, spends
his days listening to similar complaints. ``The biggest problem in
kids' sports today,'' he says, ``is adults. Parents and coaches do
really crazy things all in the name of winning. There's a
professional model in our country that is filtering down to high
school and youth sports. That model defines success and failure by
winning.''
Dean Conway agrees that adults can be trouble, but to him the
root cause is a culture that is too organized and forgot what made
sports fun in the first place. But after 24 years of involvement,
most recently as coaching instructor for the Massachusetts Youth
Soccer Association, Conway says he is ``almost entirely
optimistic, because I think that sports has a way of working
through a lot of these issues. If we could get it right, playing
sports would be of just phenomenally positive value to kids.
``We're constantly saying to our coaches, `Please, until a kid
is 12 or 13, trust the game. You can encourage them but let them
play the game. Don't lecture them, don't constantly talk to them;
go to practice and do as little as possible. Help them learn the
joy of running around, of sliding in the grass.'''
The adults take over
Today's brave new world of kids' sports evolved slowly, in
response to cultural changes.
At the turn of the century, most of the action was in the public
schools, but by the 1920s teachers had soured on the intensifying
competition and the slack had to be picked up by civic groups,
churches, and other private sponsors. They got a huge lift in 1939
when Pennsylvania businessman Carl Stotz launched Little League
baseball and Life magazine published the widely read story, Life
Goes to a Kid's Football Game, which portrayed sports as the ideal
vehicle to promote character and courage. Momentum for organized
sports continued to build over succeeding decades, promoted by
adult sponsors like the Jaycees, youth groups like the YMCA, new
leagues like Pop Warner Football and Biddy Basketball, and
commercial enterprises like Ford's Punt, Pass and Kick contest.
Yet as recently as the 1960s and '70s, for each adult-arranged
activity there were scores of informal ones where kids could
gather in a park for five-on-five football, or on any slab of ice
to take slap shots using a broom, a tennis ball, and a pair of
trash cans as a goal. It'd happen after school, on weekends or,
best of all, on summer days when the sun didn't set until after 8.
And, of course, it didn't require any adults.
Things began to change a generation ago, with the changes
cresting the past few years. That was partly a function of fear:
Parents no longer felt comfortable with their kids being out
alone, even in a neighborhood park or a neighbor's yard. More
families also had two working parents, or were headed by a single
parent, which meant no adult was around to monitor the kids'
after-school exploits and more parents signed their children up
for organized after-school sports.
Then there were the growing ranks of ``soccer moms,'' and dads parents who wanted to get their children into programs to teach
them the fundamentals of athletics, let them meet new kids, and
maybe give them a leg up on their college applications. And who
were willing to spend endless hours driving children to and from
practices and games.
Whatever the reasons, the result was more kids spending more
time in more organized sports programs.
Consider the numbers. About 22 million 6- to 18-year-olds
nationwide play in agency-sponsored programs like Little League;
nearly 15 million are part of community recreation programs; 8
million play interscholastic or intramural sports; and more than 2
million are in club or other paid programs. While boys'
enrollments have fluctuated, they appear to be heading up again,
and when the huge jump among girls is factored in, the overall
increase in participation is dramatic.
The swelling numbers are especially apparent in soccer, where
500,000 new kids registered in the 12 months after the World Cup
came to America in 1994.
Young people also are entering organized sports at younger ages,
with swimming and gymnastics programs allowing enrollment as early
as 3, soccer at 4 and baseball and wrestling at 5. Sports camps
are proliferating, too, with tens of thousands of kids 5 and older
spending a week or more of summer learning how to sink a foul shot
or block a lineman.
When they're run well, youth programs teach lessons that transcend
sports: how to get along with other youngsters, how to do better
in the classroom, the value of exercise and teamwork, and how
sports can lessen the allure of gangs, drugs, and other
destructive behavior. It's no accident, experts say, that 90
percent of America's chief executives played team sports when they
were young.
``Playing a sport like tennis can help kids stay out of trouble
and build self-confidence,'' said the late Arthur Ashe, who was
almost as famous for his support of kids' sports as for his tennis
prowess. Through sports, he added, ``You learn to fend for
yourself, and when things get very rough and you cannot lean on
anybody else's second opinion, we're going to find out if you've
got any character.''
The ongoing transformation of youth sports hasn't always turned
out the way Ashe and others hoped.
Start with kids' early enrollment. Many psychologists say that
when children begin organized programs before they're 7 or 8, it
can compromise their self-esteem and sense of athletic ability,
especially if they're not successful, and they can develop a
distaste for sports. It's also questionable whether kids that
young truly understand competition.
What about the notion that starting early gives kids an edge?
``There's no such thing as a prepubescent prodigy in team
sports,'' insists Bob Bigelow of Winchester, a former NBA player
who talks to parents and coaches about the excesses of competitive
sports. ``So many people think Michael Jordan came out of his
mother's womb dribbling a basketball. That's the biggest myth in
youth sports.''
`A cattle auction'
There also are doubts as to whether today's often-torrid
competition is good for kids, even when they're a bit older.
That competition is apparent in the way sports leagues are
organized, offering level after level of teams, many requiring
tryouts. With soccer, 5-, 6-, and 7-year-olds often begin playing
in town recreational leagues, with practices and games once a
week. At age 11 or 12, those who are good enough can be selected
for a club team, training a couple of nights and playing on
Saturdays or Sundays. They also might still be playing for their
town or school, and if they're really talented, they could make
the state team.
Little League can be just as intense. ``We have these Saturday
morning cattle auctions of 9-year-olds,'' says Mim Jarema, a
longtime field hockey coach for Reading (Mass.) High and state
teams. ``We have 12 adults sitting there rating these boys in a
way that's more technical than the NHL.''
Then there is hockey which, when you play at the level that Joseph
Lorenzetti does, is all-consuming. On the rare occasion he isn't
working out with one of his teams at a rink, Joseph is practicing
with a net and Rollerblades in the driveway of his home near
Chicago or sliding on the fiberglass ice simulator in his bedroom.
To ensure he stays in shape, he spurns junk food, slurps protein
shakes, and takes vitamin supplements.
``Hockey probably is most of my life,'' Joseph explains. ``I
want to play for my favorite NHL team, the Colorado Avalanche.''
That sort of exclusive focus on organized, competitive teams, as
opposed to pick-up games, may come at a cost.
``The more structure they have, the less creativity they
display, the less flair,'' says Paul Athanasiadis, who grew up in
Greece - where soccer-loving youths gather on a field without
supervision - and now coaches the Spirit of Massachusetts club
team in Lexington.
The competitiveness of organized sports also means that if
parents want their kids to participate, or perhaps to move up the
ladder, they have to reach into their wallets. Advanced soccer
play can cost hundreds of dollars for tournaments, and travel
expenses, which Conway says is one reason the sport ``more
dramatically than ever is white and upper-middle-class.'' In
hockey, fees for ice time and equipment can send the annual bill
as high as $10,000.
Another side effect of today's competition is that young people
rarely try to excel in more than one sport, the way top athletes
traditionally did, and often limit themselves to a single sport by
the time they're entering their teens. That means losing out on
the chance to experiment with other sports, to develop new
athletic skills, and to give certain muscles a rest while putting
others to work.
Bruce Crowder, an ex-Bruin who coaches Northeastern University's
hockey team, says he hates to see kids opt at a young age for just
one sport, even if it's hockey. Lacrosse, he explains, could
improve eye-hand coordination, while soccer hones foot-eye
coordination.
``When they play other things over the summer, kids come back to
school fresh,'' says Crowder. ``I want them lacing up their skates
in October and December hungry, not, `Here we go again, another
day of lacing up our skates.'''
`Fanatic Parent' syndrome
There's another distraction that youth coaches these days find
even more disturbing: Fathers and mothers who think they're
experts on coaching, and who are obsessed with winning and getting
playing time for their kids. They're such a worry that coaches
have coined a term for them: Fanatic Parents.
Pro sports introduced us to the phenomenon years ago. In trying to
untangle why figure skater Tonya Harding plotted a brutal assault
on rival Nancy Kerrigan, we learned that Harding's mother had
verbally assaulted Tonya when she was just 5 or 6, calling her
stupid and keeping her from resting during practices. We were told
that tennis ace Andre Agassi's dad hung a mobile with a tennis
ball over Andre's crib, had him whack at an overhead balloon with
a Ping-Pong paddle when he was old enough to sit in a high chair,
and, when Andre managed just third place in a 12-and-under
tournament, his father hurled the trophy into a garbage can. Then
there's Tiger Woods, whose dad was so proud of the way he reared
the champion golfer that he wrote a book about it, Training a
Tiger.
Comparable stories have emerged at the college level, of young
stars like Southern Cal quarterback Todd Marinovich, whose father
had trouble separating his aspirations for his son from his son's
needs and abilities. Todd, who was brought up eating all the right
foods and doing all the right workouts, had a short, turbulent
career in the NFL, then spent years partying and surfing. Four
weeks ago, he pleaded guilty to drug charges and was sentenced to
six months in jail.
Now this disturbing phenomenon is filtering down to kids' sports.
Three years ago some 200 parents, fans, and players got into an
all-out brawl after a soccer game between Lowell and Dracut, Mass.
that ended in a tie. Around the same time, the father of a Newton
(Mass.) South soccer player was charged with assault and battery
after charging onto the field and knocking to the ground, from
behind, an opposing player who'd collided with his son. Since
then, league officials have cited cases of parents and coaches
screaming and swearing, pushing and shoving, in games involving
kids as young as 6 or 8, over matters as minor as whether a goal
should be nullified because a dog ran across the opposite end of
the field.
Sometimes, things go a step further. Like when parents hold their
kids back a grade just to give them an edge in size and athletic
experience. Or, in what one doctor calls the ``Bionic Man
Syndrome,'' parents ask whether an operation designed to repair an
injured joint also ``can make their child a better athlete than
they were before.''
``Either I'm getting older and less tolerant, or people are
getting a little more uptight,'' worries Edward Englander, a
lawyer who cochairs the sportsmanship committee for girls soccer
in Newton, where the rulebook has been rewritten to keep games
from becoming too lopsided and winning from becoming the sole
focus.
Goldberg, the sports psychologist, says his most popular lecture
is one called ``Parents from Hell.'' ``Our toughest job today,''
he says, ``is training parents to be appropriate.''
But try as they do, parents sometimes can't rein in their
competitive juices. And coaches too often project their
aspirations onto their players.
``I don't really think we can keep things in check. Kids are left
to play not for enjoyment, but where winning is everything,''
muses Alan Altman, the Newton South parent who barreled onto the
field in what he admitted was an irrational response to seeing his
son land on his neck. The court apparently empathized, as charges
against him were dismissed.
Jay Philbin admits he's ``totally insane'' about his sons' hockey
careers. The boys got on skates and pushed milk crates at age 3,
joined travel teams and summer camps by 6, were in a select league
at 7, and devoted much of their young lives to the game, with the
older son now a full-scholarship player at Merrimack College and
the younger a standout at Cushing Academy. Philbin says he logged
20,000 miles a year driving them to practices and games, and spent
about $10,000 per child per year for equipment and fees.
Did he push too hard?
``I definitely wouldn't have gotten involved if it wasn't for my
parents bringing me to rinks and stuff,'' says Jay's older son,
Jayson, ``but it definitely was my interest that kept me going.''
Still, Jayson acknowledges, ``A lot of hockey parents are nuts,
yelling at the refs and stuff. It's almost like they're playing
the game through their sons' eyes.''
Are we having fun?
To some, these are small prices to pay for the soaring
participation in kids' sports, and the good that comes with it.
But many of those who matter most - the kids themselves - render a
less-charitable verdict on the state of youth sports in America.
Millions of young people simply stop playing between the ages of
10 and 18.
A poll last year by American Sports Data showed that frequent
participation in at least a single sport was up 18.6 percent among
those aged 6 to 11 - but down 6.6 percent among 12 to 17-yearolds, the only age group that recorded a drop.
Copyright © 1997, Denver Publishing Co.
Larry Tye; The Boston Globe, TOO SERIOUS TOO SOON MORE KIDS ARE
PLAYING SPORTS, BUT MORE ARE DROPPING OUT, TOO, WHEN PLAYING IS NO
LONGER FUN, Rocky Mountain News, 12 Oct 1997, pp. 21C.