Silence is Golden
July 2, 2013
During the summer weeks, "From the Director" will bring to you some of our favorite entries from previous years. Today's blog first appeared Oct. 22, 2010.
A minor repair to a vocal cord forced me into 48 hours of silence recently. I rather enjoyed it and, frankly, was a little sorry to see it end.
You see, when you can’t talk, you’re forced to listen; and when you can’t talk, you’re more inclined to think. Not “think before you speak,” just think.
I’ll spare you the time spent counting my many blessings, as well as the time worrying about a few family matters. But I’ll share with you some thoughts I had about our common ground, that is, school-sponsored sports in Michigan.
I believe the future of school sports hangs in the balance of how we respond to the financial pressures local programs now experience. It worries me that too many responses are putting local programs on a course that will fundamentally and forever knock school sports off the course of educational athletics.
- We are mistaken if we believe a $225 participation fee to play JV tennis doesn’t change the nature of JV tennis.
- We are mistaken if we believe that a competitive athletic program, with high emotion and risk of injury, can be administered by inexperienced or part-time athletic administrators without clerical and event supervision assistance.
- We are mistaken if we believe that we can operate educational athletics without our coaches involved in ongoing education regarding the best practices of working with adolescents.
It isn’t educational athletics if the program does not promote broad and deep participation and does not have expert leadership and coaching.
That is what I thought about. And what I intend to speak about.
Neighborhood Pressure
June 7, 2016
Of all the forces working to cause adolescent youth to focus on a single sport to the exclusion of others, one of the most insidious and impactful is “neighborhood pressure.” It’s “keeping up with the Joneses” applied to youth sports instead of house, car and boat.
Some parents feel like bad people if they do not only facilitate but also force their child to keep climbing the sports ladder, moving from neighborhood team to select team to elite team, and from a season experience to a year-round commitment, and from local participation to a schedule that requires out-of-town travel for both games and practices.
“If the neighbors do this for their son or daughter, what kind of parent am I if I don’t do this for my child?”
Actually, the answer is that you are the smart parent – one who has read the literature and has learned that early and intense sport specialization is not best for your child’s future in sports or in life. Sport specialization is a less healthy experience – physically, emotionally and socially – for children ages 6 to 12; and it is no more likely to result in success in high school sports or a college athletic scholarship than a balanced youth sports experience.
All the intense specialization is certain to do is cost much more money than a college scholarship is worth, assuage parents’ consciences and give them topics to talk about at neighborhood gatherings.