The Stress of Sports

Over the past several years, I have been amazed at how competitive and driven we soccer parents can be at even the youngest levels of play. Five years ago if someone had asked me if I thought that kids as young as 7 or 8 would participate in travel soccer, I would have laughed. Now, it's not uncommon to see U-8 players traveling to out of state tournaments. And you wouldn't think that the words "recruiting" and "grade school" would go together. But I've noticed coaches evaluating kids at the U-6 level to play on competitive teams when they move up. You even see professional coaches for kids as young as 6 or 7. Just the other day I read an article that pediatricians are starting to see stress injuries that we haven't seen in the United States since the days of child labor. This is caused by children specializing in 1 sport and playing in multiple leagues year around. So what is driving all of this? Is it the kids that are clamoring day and night to play competitive sports day after day all year long?

I have to conclude that it's coming from us, the parents. Somewhere back in our minds, most of us have this dark fear that our kids are "falling behind." And whether it's school or sports we feel that we have to push our kids to succeed or they'll grow up to be panhandlers or heaven forbid, average. I never thought I'd see professional coaches for young children, but now it's almost commonplace. Every year I have some parent ask me if I thought their kid could get a college scholarship someday. Sometimes I just want to shake these folks and say, "They're only 10 years old!" Some of the greatest professional athletes in baseball and soccer did not even play orgaized sports until their later teenage years. What did they do before that? They played soccer or stick ball in the streets and vacant lots, just like many of us did when we were young.

It's easy to get caught up in the rat race and forget that these are kids who's bodies and souls are developing. What's sobering to me is when I speak to older parents who have grown children who have experienced the race and come out on the other side. I have had many of those parents tell me how they wished they hadn't pushed their kids so hard for so long to achieve a certain level of perceived "success"in youth sports. They tell e how they wish they could have approached sports with more balance and less stress on winning at all costs. Sometimes the consequences of the rat race have been tragic. I know of parents who have lost their relationship with their kids. Some have gotten side tracked by alcohol and drug abuse.

One that I know, chose to deal with the stress by just quitting sports altogether. When I was growing up, a neighbor friend of mine was one of the best tennis players in the city. He played constantly through elementary and middle school. When he finally got to high school, he was burned out. He laid his racket down and said he would never play tennis again. I ran into him a year or so ago at my kids school. I hadn't seen him in years and he now has school age children of his own. I asked him if he ever played tennis. He said that he hadn't played since he quit back in high school.

So what can we do? First of all, ask some serious questions about yourself and your own motivations. Do you want your child to participate in sports for their own enjoyment or is it your enjoyment that is at stake? What do you want your kids to learn from sports? Is winning more important than learning lessons about life? Once you are in touch with your own core values and what you want to teach your kids, look at the coaches that interact with your kids. Do they share your values? What are they trying to teach about the sport and about life? Are they focused on shaping the adult that your child will become? Are they praying for your kids? Do they love your kids for who they are, or what they can do on the field? And finally, who are they deep inside. If you think about the coaches and teachers who have influenced you the most when you were young, you probably can't remember what they taught you but you will always remember who they were and the type of people that they were inside.

As coaches and parents, we have to remember that these kids in just a few years will be young adults, some of them with kids of their own.We have a precious opportunity to teach them values that they will carry with them the rest of their lives. We have such a short time to teach and they have a lifetime to carry those lessons with them. Let's take our real jobs seriously.