Invest in Athletic Diversification
January 7, 2013
By Scott Westfall
MSU Institute for the Study of Youth Sports
As part of my duties at Michigan State University, I have recently conducted extended research in the area of sport specialization. For those who are unfamiliar with the term, sport specialization is focusing on one sport year-round while eliminating all other sports or activities.
According to Dr. K. Anders Ericsson, in order for a person to achieve expertise in a sport or activity, he or she must invest approximately 10 years or 10,000 hours of practice. Thus, children, parents, and coaches might see specializing in one sport as a fast track to gaining the expertise needed to win starting positions, state championships, and even college scholarships.
However, these remarkable accomplishments (if they are actually reached) can come with some nasty baggage including social isolation, mental burnout, psychological stress, and overuse injuries such as stress fractures, Osgood-Schlatter & Sever’s Diseases. Often what remains is a kid with some very polished skills, but no love for the sport and a body that has had enough!
To combat these problems, young athletes should participate in numerous sports until at least the age of 14 or 15. When young athletes diversify their sports experiences, they reduce the physical impact by spreading it across different parts of the body, thereby allowing for a faster and more thorough recovery.
Furthermore, sport diversification allows kids to learn transferrable physical skills to other sports, not to mention introducing them to a larger group of active peers, along with more coaches and role models to assist with the tribulations of adolescence.
As a former coach, I can attest to the excitement I felt when I had a group of players that were gung-ho and fully committed to my sport. I would become outwardly excited when they would ask, “What can I do this offseason to get better?”
While I was tempted to respond selfishly with answers specific to my sport (which most likely would make our team better), I would try to think of the “whole child,” causing me to reply with the question, “What other sports are you going to try this year?
The cultures in high school athletic departments can be somewhat ambivalent. While coaches would like to believe that their colleagues always support them and their program, there is adequate reason for them to be skeptical. After all, with the trend of sport specialization, coaches at the same school can end up competing with each other for athletes – even when their seasons do not overlap.
Often I have heard coaches say, “I don’t discourage kids from going out for another sport.” Even if they do not outwardly deter athletes from joining other sports, a coach’s personal interests, reactions, and body language can be felt and heard sometimes even louder than his or her words.
Coaches need to begin supporting, collaborating with, and trusting the expertise of their colleagues – believing they will improve student-athletes on many levels (maybe even in ways that original coach cannot). Coaches must work together and encourage young athletes to diversify by participating in additional sports.
The culture of the athletic department starts with the athletic director. Athletic directors must build a department and coaching staff that is conceived in collaboration, trust, and support for the high school’s entire athletic program. True collaboration cannot exist among coaches if competition for athletes is ongoing – coaches must share the pool of athletes by supporting and even encouraging participation in other sports.
Athletic Directors may be thinking “easier said than done.” So here are a few tips:
- Hold pre-season meetings with all head coaches at the beginnings of each of the three major sports seasons (fall, winter & spring).
- At these meetings, create buy-in with open communication. With the help of your coaches, make a list of the ways sport diversification can help the overall athletic program. Record the many transferrable skills that are seen between two sports (cross country gets wrestlers in shape during the fall season; basketball produces more athleticism for volleyball; track creates faster football players, etc.)
- List fears or myths that each other’s sports or training regimens might present (heavy lifting on game days slows players down; football players lose bulk during wrestling season, coaches not wanting their best player to get hurt playing “other” sports, etc.). Once these fears are brought into the open and effectively addressed, coaches will be much more open to supporting each other’s programs.
- Make a policy for offseason training (weight room, speed training, fall baseball, etc.). Establish that these are supplemental and should be held at different times of the day than practices or games. Example: Mandatory weight training sessions should take place before or during school – not during another team’s practice. This will eliminate athletes from having to prioritize between participating in Sport A and training for Sport B.
- Create a huge master schedule to map-out and plan all summer sports camps so they do not overlap. This will allow athletes to participate in multiple camps and reduce the competition coaches have for athletes’ time during the summer.
- Encourage (politely demand) all coaches to work in the weight room during the offseason and summer. This will boost cooperation among coaching staffs. No longer will the weight room be seen as belonging only to the football team. Conversely, football coaches will not feel they are babysitting athletes from other sports when they come to train.
- Encourage (politely demand) all head coaches keep the scorebook and/or run the clock at the home games for other sports events. When athletes and parents see head coaches supporting other programs, the tone will be set that the athletic department is diversified and supportive of all teams.
Athletic Directors: If you are met with some hesitation, know you are creating change. If you receive backlash or resentment from your coaches, sit down with them and hear them out. However, stay true to your vision that collaboration, trust, and support are the new culture you want for your athletic department. To paraphrase Jim Collins from his book Good to Great, “You are trying to get the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people sitting in the right seats!”
Coaches: This change might take some getting used to, but in the end sport specialization will be better understood and allowed as the exception rather than the norm. Kids will participate in multiple sports and you will be a member of a high school coaching staff built on collaboration and trust. These will combine to create a richer athletic culture at your school.
However, the greatest improvement will be for your student-athletes’ individual experiences; they will be healthier physically, socially and psychologically.
Scott Westfall has spent the last 10 years as a teacher, coach, and athletic director in Fort Collins, Colo. He currently is working on his Doctorate at Michigan State University, with an emphasis in Sport Psychology and Athletic Administration, and assisting the MHSAA with its student leadership programs. Westfall is a former athlete who participated in football, wrestling, tennis and cross country at the high school level, and rugby at the collegiate level. He can be reached at [email protected].
School Sports Reflection: Play to Learn
December 7, 2018
By Christopher Mundy
Special for benchmarks
Christopher Mundy is a graduate of Manton High School and Michigan State University and the principal of Mundy Advisors Group in Chicago. This commentary previously was published this summer in the Traverse City Record-Eagle.
What are sports really about today? And are today's parents missing the point? Time, money, effort and energy. All for what? Trophies, medals, first place, a college scholarship or that top-five draft pick and that multi-million dollar contract that come with it. Fortune and fame?
Why does American society have such an obsession with sports, and are the true values of the games being lost in the “new” modern era of sports?
What if the games kids played were for the pure values of competition, hard work, camaraderie, trust, respect, discipline, communication and relationship building? Even just expressing these words and phrases seems healthier than the win-at-all-cost, everyone-gets-a-trophy, playing for the “end game” society we currently live in.
What messages are we instilling/infusing in our future leaders? It has become a strong and consistent message across all fronts – the arms race to be the best and win at all costs.
Families sacrificing their most precious resources, time and money, for what? For the golden child, the chosen child ... that special one. A glimmer of hope that becomes a burning obsession (for the parent). Are parents attempting to right their wrongs of their playing days or relive their youth through their child? It is an easy and complex trap.
I don’t have children, but I have played sports for nearly 40 years. I have coached, officiated, watched and listened closely at all levels. A spectator with an intense passion for the lessons to learn and a strong curiosity of why and how. I guess at 45 I am old ... or maybe just old-school.
Being raised on an isolated farm in Northern Michigan with a dirt driveway and a makeshift basketball hoop created the love affair with sports. Games of pig, horse or around-the-world with my father are some of my fondest memories. He has since passed. He would always shoot with his off-hand or easy bunny shots to finish me off. And Dad always told me, if you want to play in the fourth quarter, be a 90-percent free-throw shooter and the coach has to put you in.
Baseball would entail games of rain on the roof by myself and a homemade batting tee to hit home runs into the pasture. Football was either offense-defense (three-person football, with my father as quarterback) against my older sister or breakaway running plays against my aggressive dogs; a stiff-arm was my best defense. No video games or cable television on our farm, maybe this fueled my fire or forced my hand. It sure did not make friends want to come over for sleepovers.
Small town America was a great place to be raised. I am biased in that regard. I do think it takes a village to raise a child. Sports was and is the fiber of these communities; it was reality TV before reality TV, and what Friday Night Lights was based on. Kids playing a game for a common goal. It could not be more simple or pure. They are called “games” for a reason. When did we start taking it so seriously? Where did we go wrong?
In high school, we were pretty good. You put kids together since kindergarten and they kind of know and trust each other, they know each other’s strengths and weaknesses. They know more than this. They know each other’s families. And extended families. They pretty much know everything about each other. Which family is broken and which one may have a little more love at their dinner table. Good or bad, this is the reality of being raised in a small town.
Our basketball team was so good we received a top-five ranking, and legendary Detroit Free Press writer Mick McCabe compared us to Hickory, Indiana, in the movie “Hoosiers.” No Hollywood ending for Manton in 1991 though.
This is where the lessons of sports become real; the harsh reality of your childhood fantasies begin to fade, and fade quickly. The hours spent in that driveway will lead to no state championships. The early morning trips to the gym to play against your adult coaches would lead to no college scholarships. And the thousands of hours in the weight room lifting, jumping rope and wearing ankle weights would lead to no multi-million dollar contract. Devastating. Crushing. The end?
No. This is just the beginning.
This is the beginning of life’s toughest lessons being learned. This is where the sweat of your youth meets the tears of maturity, leading to a wisdom that is worth more than any trophy. Maturity is processing these challenging life lessons, learning from them and moving on. If you do not let go of these failures, the burdens can lead you to a life of regret or maybe becoming that aggressive parent trying correct his or her shortcomings through a son or daughter. You know these parents from your kid's games, and I hope you are not one of them.
It has often been stated more is learned from losing than winning. The lessons from failure burn deep, etched into our soul, this pain more powerful than the glory of victory. These lessons and scenarios easily translate to our personal relationships and work life. Memorable. Powerful anecdotes that become part of us. Part of or history. Part of our story. Erase these chapters from our lives, and what are we left with? A shell of a person. A half-written book. A journey half-walked. Perspective with no depth.
These kinds of lessons can’t be learned in a textbook, cannot be explained by a parent or modeled by a teacher in a classroom. The field, the court, the rink is where these lessons are learned. Where family values are refined. Manners are taught. And respect is earned.
Or is it?
This is the crossroads we are at as a society. I cannot think of any other vehicle that offers so much potential and opportunity for the building of character. It starts with the family. And where does it go from there? School, church, a job. The military. A fraternity. Volunteering? An internship or apprenticeship? A civic organization?
Nope. Sports.
Sports is the most dynamic and able tool to build character. The kind of character we need right now as a country and society. Polished. Refined. Character with a sharp edge. An edge called courage. But the reality is sports has become about money, power and control. Are these qualities desirable? Have they corrupted the innocence of sports? Do we worship false idols? Is this generation entitled? Have we given them too much? Made it to easy?
Are the kids having fun? What do the kids want? Do kids have and show a genuine passion for a sport? Have we dared to ask them? Have we prepped them with the appropriate answer? Or do we answer for them? Do we hear them OR do we listen to them? To clarify, listening is an active process of hearing and then processing. Coach Tom Izzo starts each basketball camp with, “Learn to listen ... and listen to learn.” It is that simple.
I do think communication is vital to this process. Communication between all parties: athletic directors, coaches, parents and players. Governing bodies. All stakeholders. A real and raw dialogue on what we collectively want out of sports. Because somehow we have gotten lost, and the many headlines and feature stories confirm the crossroads where we’ve arrived.
Do we as leaders, adults, parents care enough to look into the mirror and ask the tough questions? Or is it just easier to proceed as is? If you believe sports has a larger impact than trophies, medals and ribbons, a larger value than money, then I encourage you to start the conversation with those around you. Our communities’ futures depend on these conversations.
We may soon reach a point of no return, and this would be a catastrophic failure for our generation. When playing for the “love of the game” is just a marketing tagline and not a real opportunity for our kids. For our children’s sake, I hope this is not the case. I know I am a better athlete, better professional and better human from all the losses in my life.
Play hard. Play to compete. Play with passion. Play to learn.