Lacrosse Logic
March 6, 2012
Sometimes the administrators of school sports will be heard to say, “Is ours the only sport program that cares about kids’ well-being?” Or, “Are we the only folks willing to both make and enforce rules to protect the program and its participants?”
So, there are feelings of vindication and validation when we read about other sports programs which see and do some things somewhat our way. And it appears US Lacrosse is one of those groups. Here’s some of what is included in its Oct. 30, 2011 Position Statement: “Boys’ and Girls’ Youth Lacrosse Participation Recommendations.”
“1. Athletes at all level of play should have 1-2 days off per week from competitive athletics and training to allow for recovery.“2. Athletes at the U-9, U-11, U-13 and U-15 level should have at least 2-3 months away from sport specific training and competition during the year.“3. Athletes at the U-9, U-11, U-13 and U-15 level should play on only one lacrosse team during a season. If an athlete is playing on more than one team in the same season, they should not participate for more than 16-20 hours per week.”“6. Encourage participation in multiple sports throughout the year and avoid sports specialization before the U-15 age group (high school). Those athletes who choose to specialize in the sport of lacrosse in high school will need to take extra precaution with regard to overuse injuries and burnout. While there may be potential benefits to extra training, the risks of becoming one-dimensional at a young age needs to be evaluated on a seasonal basis. Furthermore, specialization does not guarantee improved play or college acceptance and only an estimated 5 percent of high school senior athletes progress to play some form of collegiate sports. Some researchers believe there is a benefit to multiple sport participation throughout high school.”
Multi-Sport Imperative
September 15, 2015
Each single-sport organization promoted its own sport, and coaches of those sports tended to pressure athletes to focus on a single sport early in life and eventually exclusively. Parents bought into the fantasy that this early single-mindedness was the key to a college athletic scholarship and even a professional sports career.
While we spoke of a high-minded philosophy, on the local level, as a practical matter, more and more coaches and athletes were pursuing an ever-narrower sports experience. Until now.
Starting very recently, the conversation has changed, or at least it’s been joined by new voices. We’ve learned that Big Ten football coaches favor recruits who play more than football in high school. We’ve learned that our fantastic Women’s World Cup Soccer champions were almost all multiple-sport athletes in secondary school. We’ve learned that the hottest young U.S. golfer on the Men’s PGA Tour was a multiple-sport enthusiast in his teens. We’ve seen a half-dozen high profile sports executives with school-aged children advocate for a more balanced experience for their kids. And now we see several dozen amateur and professional sports organizations have joined a campaign to oppose the negative trends in youth sports and to promote a more balanced, healthier sports experience for children and adolescents.
And there it is – a healthier experience. Suddenly, our philosophy that multiple-sport participation is better for youth than sport specialization has been made a health and safety issue, which we’ve known all along but have not emphasized enough.
Now, with attention to over-use injuries and burnout, sport specialization has become a health and safety crisis on the level of concussions, heat illness and sudden cardiac arrest. Multi-sport participation has become a health and safety imperative. A matter of good public policy.
We need to catch and ride this wave for all it’s worth. In the same way the environmental movement catches fire when presented as a human rights issue – that people everywhere have a basic right to clean air and water – we must present sport specialization as a threat to young persons’ health and safety – a risk as great as head trauma, heat illness and heart failure, requiring the kind of bold policies and programs we’ve implemented in recent years to address those equally serious problems.