by admin | May 10, 2014 | Articles, Uncategorized
Participation Benefits of Youth Sports A professor of mine once asked us to ponder the question, “Does sport build character or characters?” The answer is – it depends upon the program and largely upon the coach. Unfortunately, it seems that many parents all over the US have blindly accepted this widely propagated assumption that sport builds character, offering their precious, impressionable offspring at younger and younger ages, season after season, to the system that is supposed to teach cooperation, discipline, sportsmanship and social skills. This unquestioning faith we seem to have put in our youth sports system may be doing our youngsters more harm than good. It is important that we examine the youth sports programs in which our children participate and identify the benefits and the risks of participation in those programs. We can then come up with strategies to extinguish policies and procedures that are not beneficial and discover how to accentuate the benefits of sport participation. So what are the good parts? When youth sports programs are run with the needs and best interests of the participants in mind, there are many potential positive outcomes. Here is a list of a few: Youth sports can be a fun and enjoyable experience for all involved. Surveys have shown that having fun is a primary reason why children are motivated to participate in sports (1). Sports provide an arena for youth to be physically active (2, 3). We are all probably well aware of the obesity epidemic occurring today and the need to emphasize health and fitness in children. Studies have found that children who play sports spend...
