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Sports Specialization

June 21, 2012

Since the 1950s, when high school sports was the “talk of the town” much more than so-called higher levels of sports, before television put college and professional sports on its shoulders and lifted their profiles above local high school teams, it was commonplace for students to participate in multiple sports and for coaches to coach a different sport each season.  Neither is the norm today.

It is likely that the natural tendency to keep testing one’s talent against the next greater challenge is a significant factor in the trend of students practicing and competing in a single sport year-round, but the introduction of non-school youth sports and the zeal of those programs (often commercially driven but sometimes more purely motivated) to expand those programs to every day of a child’s life has greased the skids toward runaway specialization.

Much of youth sports is well grounded in philosophies which provide safe participation for maximum numbers, but too much of youth sports makes distinctions between the abilities of children too early, and schedules children for too much competition in too-distant locations at tournaments that are too lavish and where trophies are too large.  All of which gets their parents thinking too soon about how special their children are and how far they might go in sports, thinking college scholarships and beyond.  In pursuit of this dream, they push their children harder, drive them further and pay increasing amounts to get them on the most elite teams.

Some youth sports programs – especially in ice hockey and soccer but also volleyball as well – will require nearly year-round play by students as a condition to be on the club or travel team, promising college scholarships to those who commit to this schedule, but ironically, with the costs of this non-school participation far exceeding the value of the partial athletic scholarship only a few will ever see.

Non-school youth sports is not the sole cause but it is a primary enabler of specialization, an addiction to a single sport that, like all addictions, puts a portion of life out of balance, generally to the detriment of the individual and the people around that person.  The research is convincing that while specialization can be positive for a few young people, it is far more likely to have negative than positive consequences, most frequently physical and emotional for the child, and financial for the family.

Attendance on the Rise

December 23, 2016

One of the features of school sports that is unmatched by non-school youth sports travel teams is that school events usually draw crowds of spectators. Not just family members, but classmates and citizens of the local community are drawn to attend school sports events.

Among proof of the enduring importance and high profile of school-sponsored sports is that Michigan High School Athletic Association tournament attendance continues to climb despite all the distractions of modern society. Here are highlights reported by the Michigan High School Athletic Association’s Geoff Kimmerly in October:

  • Girls postseason events set a record for attendance for the third straight school year in 2015-16, and overall tournament attendance spiked to its highest total of the last five years.

  • Total attendance for 2015-16 was 1,484,095 fans, an increase of 6.8 percent over the previous year. Girls attendance was 473,241 fans, an increase of 10,141 (or 2.2 percent) over the record total from 2014-15. Boys attendance was 1,010,854 fans, a four-year high helped notably by an increased football crowd in 2015.

  • The third straight girls record showing got a boost from girls competitive cheer, which set an overall attendance record for the 13th straight season with 39,906 fans and also set attendance records at the Final (19,993) and District (12,867) levels. The track & field and bowling tournaments, which include attendance for girls and boys events combined, also set overall records. Track & field broke a 2011-12 record with 37,773 fans overall and a Regional record of 22,413, and bowling set an overall attendance record for the fifth straight season with 13,919 fans and a Regional record of 9,948.

  • Football attendance rebounded significantly after a snowy opening weekend in 2014 resulted in the lowest playoff attendance since the 256-team 11-player field was introduced in 1999. Overall football attendance jumped to a three-year high of 389,897, a 25.4 percent increase from the 2014 postseason and with increases seen at the Pre-District, District and Regional levels.

  • Ten more tournament series showed increases in total attendance over the 2014-15 school year: girls gymnastics (2.0 percent), girls softball (2.8 percent), baseball (0.5 percent), girls swimming & diving (12.7 percent), boys swimming & diving (14.6 percent), boys basketball (1.5 percent), girls and boys cross country (combined, 2.1 percent), boys soccer (2.4 percent), team wrestling (1.6 percent) and individual wrestling (1.7 percent) all saw increases in overall attendance from the previous school year. Girls Volleyball fell just shy of equaling the previous year’s record, drawing 110,638 fans, a decrease of 293 from the 2014 season but still the second-most since records first were kept in 1990-91. Girls volleyball did, however, set attendance records at the Regional (26,445) and Semifinal (4,765) levels of the tournament.

  • The Boys Basketball Finals draw of 47,407 was a five-year high and a 16.9 percent increase from 2014-15. The Girls Basketball Finals drew 22,301 fans, the most for a Semifinals/Finals weekend since 2004-05 and an increase of 12 percent over 2014-15. Girls basketball’s overall tournament attendance of 169,523 was a decrease of 1.2 percent from 2014-15, but still the second-highest attendance for the sport since 2005-06.

  • Overall girls softball attendance increased for the third straight year to 44,515, the highest total since the record-setting spring of 1994-95.

  • Team Wrestling Regionals reached a seven-year high and individual wrestling’s rise was fueled by increases at all three levels of that tournament, including five-year highs at the Regional and Final levels.

  • Boys Soccer Finals drew 4,906 fans, the most for that event since 2007-08.

Not included in these figures are those who attend MHSAA tournaments in golf, skiing and tennis for which admission typically is not charged and likely pushed the total attendance over 1.5 million for the 2015-16 school year.