Youth sports have traditionally been utilized for children to learn the fundamentals while being healthy and having fun. Although youth sports are meant to teach the basics, with the costs of college rising parents have been putting excessive pressure on their children to excel in youth sports. Young children are often subjected to aggressive behavior from parents, family, and coaches all while they are just trying to have fun. With all this in mind, the question becomes how young is too young to start adding the pressure of receiving a college scholarship?
The topic of parental influence of youth sports as the basis of the article "Coaching experts to pushy parents: Back Off.” This article provided statistics from Jason Sacks, the executive director of positive coaching alliance in Chicago. One statistic Sacks gave stated that “seventy percent of children drop out of sports by the age of thirteen, and a big reason is that parents are putting too much pressure on them.” He also stated that “Parents are putting in all this time and money and they think that if they put it all in, they’ll see a light at the end of the tunnel in the form of a college scholarship.”
As a youth sports coach, I have seen parents become overly aggressive while watching their child play. There have been countless times where I have watched parents run onto the field, push through children and other spectators to follow a play, scream at coaches or referees and become overly aggressive toward their children, including pushing them, screaming in their faces and even on one occasion slam their child onto the ground after a bad game. There are any changes that I believe should be made in regards to the way youth sports are organized, specifically to ensure the focus is on the children having fun instead of on winning. The league I coach for focuses on football and cheerleading. Recently we switched organizations. The organization we were with previously had a strong focus on winning, rude referees, and had many other teams whose morals were not in the right place to be coaching children. The league we are now affiliated with has a strong focus on teaching the children including, not keeping score for the youngest age group, allowing one coach on the field to help instruct and correct, and referees whose focus is on helping the children learn instead of yelling at them and favoring one team over the other. If the organization’s rules are different I believe there will not be as big of a window for parents to add as much pressure and with coaches not being allowed to add unnecessary pressure it will be more fun for the children involved. Parents need to realize that there are ways of supporting and encouraging their children without pressuring or pushing them. There are ways to find a balance so that their children are more likely to enjoy sports. Youth sports are meant to be enjoyable and the sooner parents understand that the sooner children will be running back to youth sports.
