Exactly. For boys. Participation on the part of females in soccer, lacrosse, and volleyball may be up.
Rates of youth participation in organized sports dropping...Why?
- Thread starter Judge Smails
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Exactly. For boys. Participation on the part of females in soccer, lacrosse, and volleyball may be up.
Not sure about that. I didn't develop a good baseball swing until later. But I always had good hand eye coordination. And I could shoot a basketball the first time I ever tried it.
LOL @ video games. They have existed for 30+ years. This data is from 2008 - 2012, a pretty recent change.
Given this is a relatively recent phenomenon, I'd guess that technology in general is a big culprit, social media more so than video games. Years ago, to socialize with friends we had to make plans and meet them in person, or we were restricted to phone conversations. Sports provided an excellent medium because the time and location would be fixed, and if you showed up you knew some of your friends would be there too.
Today, kids can socialize online. You can video chat. There is Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, or any number of other sites where there are "social" interactions. Kids have learned to socialize with each other without leaving their room. You no longer need to meet in person so see your friends faces or learn what they are up to.
I read an article recently that stated this is also a reason teens don't pursue getting driver's licenses as quickly these days. In our day, cars were somewhat viewed as freedom. Freedom to get away from home and explore the world, meet with friends, etc. Today, teens are waiting to drive because they associate those freedoms with technology. They can do it from their phone instead of needing a car. I'd bet there are some major parallels with sports enrollment.
Given this is a relatively recent phenomenon, I'd guess that technology in general is a big culprit, social media more so than video games. Years ago, to socialize with friends we had to make plans and meet them in person, or we were restricted to phone conversations. Sports provided an excellent medium because the time and location would be fixed, and if you showed up you knew some of your friends would be there too.
Today, kids can socialize online. You can video chat. There is Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, or any number of other sites where there are "social" interactions. Kids have learned to socialize with each other without leaving their room. You no longer need to meet in person so see your friends faces or learn what they are up to.
I read an article recently that stated this is also a reason teens don't pursue getting driver's licenses as quickly these days. In our day, cars were somewhat viewed as freedom. Freedom to get away from home and explore the world, meet with friends, etc. Today, teens are waiting to drive because they associate those freedoms with technology. They can do it from their phone instead of needing a car. I'd bet there are some major parallels with sports enrollment.
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Lacrosse would be a difficult sport to jump into that late. Learning how to handle the stick is key to player development. There is always that great athlete that can pick up anything quickly, but for the average kid, it would be tough. There are also nuances like positional play and footwork that are necessary to be a good player.
Another sport with big numbers of kids playing that is not mentioned is girl's softball. I have three coworkers who have traveled or are still traveling down south, out west, etc for tournaments. Two of the three now have girls playing in DII. The third is still in HS but will probably play DII also.
OK....so lets say you are "right"
So what?
They won't "catch up"?
"Catch up" to what...exactly?
They won't get to the level that they will get a college athletic scholarship or play professional sports?
Fine.
Guess what.....that kid with individual coaches, year round camps and travel teams, $1,000 worth of equipment, etc etc etc ain't gonna' play professional sports either.
The ULTRA MINISCULE percentage of kids that will eventually go on to a paid career as an athlete are gonna' get there regardless of whether not some ego-driven parent tries to "Marinovich" the kid or not.....in fact, that kid might very well be BETTER off if the "Marinovich" got the hell out of the way.
In the meantime - to serve the PARENTS and COACHES egos (And, brother, if you don't see who is really behind all this stuff, you haven't been watching.) you got a whole generation of kids that feel that "sports"....even at age 8, 9, or 10....are "work"...and they should be out there "developing" instead of "playing".
LOL.....and folks wonder why kids would rather play video games than engage in these "organized" youth sports.
Might be a good thing.One of the theories of my wife and I is that the different generations react to the way they were brought up. Kids that were raised in the 60s and 70s by baby boomer parents who (generally) didn't put as much effort and attention into their kids' activities produced a generation who really focused on getting their kids into organized sports and trying to see they reach their full potential. Is the recent drop in youth sports participation a reaction to that by young parents who resented the constant drive to practices all the time? Or is it a function of shrinking middle class disposable income?
One of the theories of my wife and I is that the different generations react to the way they were brought up. Kids that were raised in the 60s and 70s by baby boomer parents who (generally) didn't put as much effort and attention into their kids' activities produced a generation who really focused on getting their kids into organized sports and trying to see they reach their full potential. Is the recent drop in youth sports participation a reaction to that by young parents who resented the constant drive to practices all the time? Or is it a function of shrinking middle class disposable income?
The charts don't support the headline. Was number of 6-18 youth the same in both years? I'm not doubting the trend, but I need to know the denominators here.
Overall rates of team sport participation and physical activity among kids have also been falling, while they are getting fatter.
From the report linked below:
"Millions of kids are fleeing team sports, the most common activity among children. Children ages 6 to 12 who played team sports regularly fell from 44.5% in 2008 to 40% in 2013....
By age 15, moderate-to-vigorous physical activity declines 75%, a higher rate than in Europe. At that point, they average only 49 minutes per weekday and 35 minutes per weekend. Among kids ages 6-17, one in five youth are considered inactive, meaning they report no physical activity. Further, only one in three children is physically active every day
The percentage of children ages 6-11 who are obese increased from 7% in 1980 to 18% in 2010; among children ages 12 to 19, that figure grew from 5% to 18%. One study found that among 17 developed nations, the U.S. had the highest rates of childhood obesity among those ages 5-19....More than a quarter of all Americans between the ages of 17 to 24 are too fat to serve in the military.
The report cites possible causes:
Children today often spend many hours in front of screens (mobile phones, computers, video games, TV), with products that have gotten better at getting and keeping their attention. Even for those who are playing sports, these sedentary hobbies are competing interests in getting kids active through sports, according to parents
Fading is the era of sandlot or pickup ball, a form of play that organically promoted innovation and fitness among generations of Americans. More than 40% of parents whose child plays an organized sport say their child does so year-round. Yet, free play has been shown to produce higher levels of physical activity than organized sports.
There's a lack of mainstream options for the moderately interested athlete. About 23% of middle schools and 40% of high schools do not offer intramural sports...
There's a relative lack of access for minority children.......The barriers to participation emerge early, with the rise of grade school travel teams and elite sport training options that are not accessible to many lower-income kids.
http://www.aspenprojectplay.org/the-facts
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So if you've never played baseball before the 8th grade, you think a kid is going to make a high school team? Never faced pitching before, never practiced 1000s of ground balls? There is the saying that you need 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert at something. I'd say you need at least 1,000 hours to become "good", generally speaking.
Lacrosse has been using this tagline since I played in college years ago. It is in no way possibly true today.
MMA or "Competitive Gaming" far and away are growing more quickly.
Lacrosse is a sport which requires a lot of equipment and has latched onto the "get your kid into a good college" train.
LdN
Catch up to playing varsity in high school. My daughter had a wonderful coach in her league soccer, wonderful woman. The parents, they're nothing like what you're describing. I'm an educated man, I knew from day one that my daughter was never going to play college soccer or basketball but I pushed her anyway because she liked it and her teammates were good girls with solid parents. Kids can get in a whole lot of trouble if left to their own devices and playing sports is one way for them to avoid this. Geez.
One of my best memories about my daughter came from a soccer game when she must have been 14. It was played during a sleet storm and I'm standing with another parent waiting out the game; his daughter and mine had been teammates for like five years by then. It's late in the game, couple of minutes left, down two goals, the game's lost. The ball is going out of play and my daughter races 25 yards and slides to save it, her team keeps possession. The guy I'm with looks at me and says, "That's just your daughter, right there." And yeah, it was my daughter, right there.
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Jim had a great point in that the kids who are involved in these sort of "intensive" travel teams, in my experience, also have excellent grades and tend to keep their noses clean. It is a great group of kids to have as a peer group for your kid. Besides that, there is the lessons that come with sports involving sacrifice, team work, and hard work. Then there is the benefits of exercise and fitness that often lead to life long good habits, while the rest of America gets fatter and fatter. One other benefit, so many kids struggle with their identity, self worth, confidence....being able to say "I'm a soccer player", "I'm a basketball player" brings with it a sense of pride and accomplishment.
The benefits of playing sports, at a high level if possible, are many.
What that says is it is Americas fastest growing sport in High School over a 5 or 10 year period among sports with more than 10k competitors
That's not what the original post said.
There are probably 15 sports that can make this claim when you add specific standards.
LdN
Agreed......and fewer and fewer kids do it.
If we open our eyes, I think we can see many reasons why that is the case.
That's the issue we were discussing......not whether or not kids playing sports is "good".
Well, considering they only show the raw numbers, why hasn't anybody considered the most obvious explanation? Demographics. Perhaps there are simply FEWER KIDS aged 6-18 today than 4 years ago. For one thing, parents are having fewer children than average, and parents are also waiting longer to have children.
It would be pretty foolish to draw conclusions if there was also a similar drop in the total population of 6-18 year old kids in the last 4 years as there was in the participation population in sports. Perhaps a better metric would be the PERCENTAGE of 6-18 year olds who participate in sports.
Also, consider that the rate of participation is probably QUITE different among 6-12 year olds than it is among 12-18 year olds. As kids get older, they DO have other activities that they gravitate towards - heck the rise of lacrosse and ice hockey here shows that maybe kids are opting OUT of baseball, soccer, football and trying some alternate activities (NOT INVOLVING SCREENS). Perhaps 12-18 year olds are more likely to get part-time jobs, or to focus more on academic activities.
(Video Games have pretty much been around since 1975)
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Video games is part of it but it's not all video games. There's a lot of new sports and outdoor activities -- individual and team -- that kids do now. Skateboarding, frisbee golf, rock climbing, parcour. Heck, kids do paintball and airsoft (plastic bb) leagues now.
My son played baseball and soccer when he was a little guy, loved it but by the time he got to middle school he just didn't want to be part of competitive team sports. He just naturally gravitated to more cooperative type stuff. By the time he was 13-14 he had taken up military re-enacting so there was a lot of that.
I think all this adds up to big trouble for the sports revenue model. There just aren't going to be as many male sports fans. Of course some of that gap is being filled by women -- young women are taking a huge interest in pro sports these days, just huge.
My son played baseball and soccer when he was a little guy, loved it but by the time he got to middle school he just didn't want to be part of competitive team sports. He just naturally gravitated to more cooperative type stuff. By the time he was 13-14 he had taken up military re-enacting so there was a lot of that.
I think all this adds up to big trouble for the sports revenue model. There just aren't going to be as many male sports fans. Of course some of that gap is being filled by women -- young women are taking a huge interest in pro sports these days, just huge.
Yes, but to make it clear, my daughter never played on a travel team, we never stayed overnight anywhere. She got a whole lot out of it regardless.
While it is true that kids don't hang together and create their own fun and games anymore, it has a lot to do with changing times.
You can't kick your kid out of the house anymore to go play without some kind of supervision. I live in SC Boro and I know the parents of a lot of my son's friends but they're scattered all over town. There aren't a lot of kids in my neighborhood. There are babies and toddlers and older teenagers and nobody my son's age. My wife or I have to shuttle him around to do things with his friends. Also consider the community is transient. I don't know how many kids will be in my son's 7th grade class this year who were in Kindergarten with him. A handful, maybe.
Now as for the little coal town where I grew up, my father knew the parents of every kid I grew up with. Even if he didn't like them, he knew them. He knew who to deal with if there was a problem. Yes, in the summers I hit the back door in the morning, came in for supper and back out till after dark. Those days are gone. I had the same friends all through high school I had since we were little kids. Now you look at that same town today and I have 2 or 3 friends who still live there and the rest have gotten out. Most of the parents have passed away and the towns are full of imports who are there because it's cheap to live and they are close to a number of prisons for visitation purposes. If I lived there with my 7th grader now I still wouldn't allow him the freedom I had as a kid. You don't know the people in town anymore, there is no accountability, and most of them have nothing to lose and don't care about the area traditions or their reputations in the community. The times have changed, that's why the kids don't play anymore. My friends and I stuck together and looked out for each other because we had roots in the community which doesn't seem to be important to most people now. Some are trying, but they fight a losing battle.
You can't kick your kid out of the house anymore to go play without some kind of supervision. I live in SC Boro and I know the parents of a lot of my son's friends but they're scattered all over town. There aren't a lot of kids in my neighborhood. There are babies and toddlers and older teenagers and nobody my son's age. My wife or I have to shuttle him around to do things with his friends. Also consider the community is transient. I don't know how many kids will be in my son's 7th grade class this year who were in Kindergarten with him. A handful, maybe.
Now as for the little coal town where I grew up, my father knew the parents of every kid I grew up with. Even if he didn't like them, he knew them. He knew who to deal with if there was a problem. Yes, in the summers I hit the back door in the morning, came in for supper and back out till after dark. Those days are gone. I had the same friends all through high school I had since we were little kids. Now you look at that same town today and I have 2 or 3 friends who still live there and the rest have gotten out. Most of the parents have passed away and the towns are full of imports who are there because it's cheap to live and they are close to a number of prisons for visitation purposes. If I lived there with my 7th grader now I still wouldn't allow him the freedom I had as a kid. You don't know the people in town anymore, there is no accountability, and most of them have nothing to lose and don't care about the area traditions or their reputations in the community. The times have changed, that's why the kids don't play anymore. My friends and I stuck together and looked out for each other because we had roots in the community which doesn't seem to be important to most people now. Some are trying, but they fight a losing battle.
For a different way of looking at the data:
http://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2014/cb14-224.html
http://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2014/cb14-224.html
Nice story.
Its completely irrelevant to the point....but, nice story.
No one (I don't think) said sports are "bad" for kids. From my point of view - personally - I think playing sports is GREAT for kids. GREAT for them. I am very big on having the kids active in sports (I've got four myself).
The issue was why fewer and fewer kids are playing sports.
I admittedly did not read through all the replies before posting, but commitment is the reason for us (9 year old girl). She loves to compete, but just last night she admitted that the time commitment to play a team sport is too much for her. We live in what I would consider to be a large community in the Lehigh Valley. You have fall soccer, spring Soccer, spring softball, summer softball. If you're not playing a sport year-round, you sit the bench. At 9 years old, that's too much to take.
We look for activities now without the strict commitment. She has taken karate since she was 4 and loves it. Times are flexible throughout the week, but with minimum requirements. She has gained far more from karate than any of the team sports.Problem is that it's really expensive. We also look for fun runs and anything track related. She's really into American Ninja Warrior, so we would love to find a Parkour gym for kids in the area.
We look for activities now without the strict commitment. She has taken karate since she was 4 and loves it. Times are flexible throughout the week, but with minimum requirements. She has gained far more from karate than any of the team sports.Problem is that it's really expensive. We also look for fun runs and anything track related. She's really into American Ninja Warrior, so we would love to find a Parkour gym for kids in the area.
Yeah, he might. If he is athletic, has good hand eye coordination, and a good coach, it is most certainly possible. What's the most important aspect of hitting from the talent perspective? It's bat speed. If a guy has the ability to generate bat speed, you can teach him to keep the shoulder in, clear the hips, etc. part of the swing. As for ground balls, the single most important aspect of fielding a ground ball is getting behind the ball, and keeping your fanny and head down. A good athlete can learn those things quicker than you believe, I think.
I'll tell you a story. My high school baseball team my senior year was horrible. Last place team. We were coached by an ex football and wrestling coach which made no sense. Nice guy, but he didn't know how to make any of us better ball players. Meanwhile a former major league baseball pitcher was coaching the swim team. Head scratcher. Anyway, the school board and athletic director got their heads out of their arses and made the ex major leaguer, the baseball coach the year after I graduated, which unfortunately was a year too late for me. But I followed the team. There was a scrawny kid on the team when I was a senior and he was a sophomore who couldn't get the ball out of the infield. When the new coach who knew what he was doing got a hold of him the following year, all of a sudden the kid was Lou Gehrig, lining doubles and triples into the alleys. The whole team benefited and went from last place to the playoffs in 1 year. So yeah, you most certainly can teach a kid to play baseball if he is athletic enough and has a mind to be coached.
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So what? According to the 2015-2016 NFHS handbook, there are still 4 or 5 times as many kids in football, basketball, soccer, track and field, and softball/baseball. Lacrosse is not going to catch up.
But who cares? According to the 2015 Physical activity Council Report overall physical activity among kids is trending down:
"For the younger age groups, we find that 18 to 24 year olds continue to trend downward. Children ages 6 to 12 remained flat while we saw a decrease
in activity from 13 to 17 year olds."
I grew up in Levittown during its early days and there were a ton of kids around to play with. There were comparatively few teenagers around so it was seldom you'd see cars parked in the street and we'd play street ball for hours. Never once broke a window or dented a car. The only damage that I recall happening was when I'd look back for a long pass and run face first into the light pole and break my glasses, that happened at least twice. I should sue Chuck Jones for stealing my life story.
I am from the Atari 2600 generation in the early 80's and had loads of games. But you can't compare those games to what kids have today. In those days, the games were very simple and got boring pretty quickly. And once they got boring, we went outside to play. Today's games are far more exciting, and they are so complex that to master even one game takes the equivalent of a college semester's worth of study. Therefore, it would not surprise me at all if today's kids spend far more time with video games.
P.S. - As a side note, to illustrate this point, I'll tell you about the first football video game I ever owned: The screen did not show any images of players or a field. It only showed a scoreboard, starting with 0-0. The first player who had possession would simply press the button on his joystick to score a TD, which would update the scoreboard to 7-0. Then the next player would do the same, to update it to 7-7. This would continue until the game ended in a 56-56 tie. Same result every time, and it only took about two or three minutes to play.*
*None of this is true.
Here is your post:
"They won't get to the level that they will get a college athletic scholarship or play professional sports?
Fine. Guess what.....that kid with individual coaches, year round camps and travel teams, $1,000 worth of equipment, etc etc etc ain't gonna' play professional sports either. LOL.....and folks wonder why kids would rather play video games than engage in these "organized" youth sports."
I was listing the benefits of playing high level competitive sports because you inferred the only benefit was if they went on to a professional career.
The times have changed alright. We now have helicopter parents who are afraid of everything and think they have to drive their kids to every activity. Almost all crimes against kids are from family members and are not increasing though reporting it is. If parents really want to protect their kids, they should keep them away from organized sports coaches and get them off the internet.
It is true there is less traffic-free open space available for free play, partly because every sport and play activity now has to be "organized".
I don't doubt the correlation, Judge. But I am skeptical that there is a cause and effect relationship between sports participation and good grades. I think kids who are motivated and ambitious in the first place are more likely to play sports.
No one is saying they can't play organized sport prior to 8th grade. Many including Paterno who was a big advocate for it felt prior to high school sport should all about skill building and fun. Games should be pick up type games. Not the ultra competitive games. The theory is if you focus more on skill building you will develope more skilled athletes rather then just pushing along those who are naturally more athletic. Some guys are late bloomers. Take Jordan for example. He was cut from his high school team. In today ultra sprits world he might have been left behind because he was a late bloomer.
I remember Joe saying that parents should not be involved in youth sports before a certain age. I agree in theory, but Joe was from Brooklyn. Kids in the suburbs often can't get together with other kids without parents driving them. Still, I agree that some kids sports are taken way too seriously. Just let them have fun and learn some good lessons at the same time.
That's what threw me. I'm sure that a considerable percentage of parents take it too far but speaking from my own experience I haven't seen anything that I would consider to be over the top. Yeah, he's right that my response was off the point, but I really didn't know how to respond to this, completely thrown. Whatever. My daughter worked hard at her sports and eventually tired of them and quit (she was the last cut on her HS basketball team, huge disappointment for her, and, yes, for myself), but overall she gained a great deal out of these experiences. I have a million great little stories about her athletic feats (ha) that brighten my grayest days; I won't share on this thread because, yeah, not the point.
No doubt video games and social media consume today's youth. And it's not impacting just organized sports. I live in a mecca for fly fishing and hunting. Incredible how almost everyone has grey hair (me too). Yes, many are nonresidents and these activities for them are not cheap, but it is truly rare anymore to see a teenager, resident or nonresident, flyfishing with his dad. Does not bode well for habitat conservation $$$ in the future. Skiing is doing fine. Family sport to a much greater extent.
Challenging outdoor activities also require many practice hours to become really good. I always say at least ten years to become an expert wingshooter or saltwater flycaster, and many never get there. Shooting big game animals with a rifle from a heated blind or today's condo tree stands is so much easier for a young novice. Not knocking this stuff, but hardly a physical activity and not for me.
The point is.....and you may or may not agree.....that the benefit is to be gained by PLAYING SPORTS.
When the Parents / Coaches get involved in created this culture that you gotta' make it a 12 month per year/travel team/individual coaches/ etc etc etc deal....it sucks the purpose of PLAYING sports out of the kid....and the end result is fewer and fewer kids choose to participate in sports - which is not the result we should be hoping for.
No kid is gonna' want to play sports with the goal of travelling hours on end to and from activities, eliminating the options to do "different stuff", making a fun endeavor into an "achievement", being a failure if they don't make some so-called "elite" or "travel" team..
No, this has happened to gratify the egos of a LOT of parents, and a LOT of coaches.
Even though I live in an area that I feel is RELATIVELY free from the overblown egos and ridiculously naïve expectations......I still see PLENTY of it!!!
Yes, there are great "sports parents" and there are great coaches out there (I have - personally - had the good fortune to have MOST of the teams my kids were on led by good people)......and there are kids who will thrive under a 12 month per year ultra-competitive environment. These are not absolutes.
But Stevie Wonder can see the clear changes in the culture of youth sports.
Some folks may think that is a good thing, some may not......I don't want to assume which side of that fence you are on....but that culture is certainly correlated to the drop off in participation rates (and - yes - you don't need to remind me that correlation does not NECESSARILY imply causation).
In any event....sports - and youth sports in particular - are going in a certain direction....and I am sure there is nothing I can do to change that. So, aside from being water cooler banter, there isn't much to be gained. It will be what it will be.
Which is it? Some say kids can't play in cities because there is too much crime and others are saying that the suburbs are too isolated for kids to play.
The real problem is too many parents think they have to be intimately involved in everything their kids do and can't stop fussing over their every move. (Meanwhile, the kids are going nuts on the internet and playing violent electronic games.) Now we even have "play dates" for older kids.
As the kids disappear into the organized activities, it's a vicious cycle.
And that's just as I would have expected from your earlier posts.
Good for your daughter. Seriously.
(FWIW, sports for "girls" - I think - are just as beneficial, maybe more so, than for boys)
