Parent Involvement in Youth Athletics is Out of Hand
By Jenna Brogan
It’s one thing to be a supportive parent sitting in the stands cheering for your child, but when does heartfelt encouragement get mixed up with the pressure to get money for scholarships? How far will some parents go to get their kids into college, and where should the line be drawn? Has the saying “for the love of the game” disappeared from the face of the earth?
Youth sports need an extreme makeover. Kids should be enjoying their childhood, making friends and learning how to enjoy activities without the dreadful word “college” constantly ringing in their ears. Parents and kids need to be reminded of the main purpose of sports. Unfortunately, too many people have lost sight of the meaning of sports with all of the pressures that society puts on kids to get involved. Sports should be a healthy way to relieve stress and have fun with friends, not some chance for parents to vicariously live out their dreams. It’s unfair that the number of kids involved in sports at the junior high and high school levels have significantly dwindled over the last few years due to the fact that kids no longer enjoy them. They are tired of trying to balance life as student athletes.
The pressure for kids to excel and be the best athletically has greatly increased over the last ten years. Kids are being pushed into sports at ages as young as four (about the same time they learn the alphabet.) Some say that increase in child participation at young ages has resulted from unofficial college recruitment starting early, club teams being the only way to move up the ladder in sports and the idea that it’s never too early to start preparing for possible scholarship money. Unfortunately, athletic scholarships aren’t as easy to get as they appear. According to research done by Mark Emmons of the Mercury News, only “1 percent of high school seniors who are athletes actually earn a scholarship … Of the 360,000 athletes in the NCAA divisions, just 126,000 of them receive athletic scholarship aid.” This calls for society to wonder why parents are putting so much unnecessary stress on kids to win athletic scholarships when they could be keeping up their studies for the $22 billion available for academic scholarships.
Clearly, most parents care about their children enough to want them to succeed. However, when violence erupting between adults at games becomes common, it’s obvious that something needs to change. Every day, the news reports violence breaking out at sporting events. Whether the fights take place between coaches and referees or parents and players, the madness needs to stop. It has gotten to the point where people are not only getting in vicious arguments at professional and collegiate sporting events, but are throwing punches on the sidelines of pee-wee soccer games. Kids need to learn the importance and true purpose of sports, which starts with parents being good role models. Parents dedicate countless weekdays and weekends to their kids’ sports. They are the ones who shell out the hundreds (more often thousands) of dollars for their kids to receive the best sports training possible. The fact that parents are devoted enough to cart around their kids to practices and games says a lot about their devotion to their children. However, they must be careful not to lose sight of the things that are truly important, like family dinners, desperately needed vacations and just plain relaxation time.
The real question being examined here is why the “love of the game” has disappeared. Why can’t kids just play for fun anymore? Are kids still learning the valuable life lessons that were originally the basis of sports? Unfortunately, if society really wants to reform the excessive amount of pressure placed on youth sports, it will take a lot of hard work. Professional athletes who children admire can’t be using illegal steroids. Parents can’t be getting into fights on the sidelines of pee-wee soccer games. Colleges need to lessen the amount of stress they place on athletic requirements, and parents need to change their methods of encouragement so that they are positive and inspirational instead of degrading. Only when kids are reminded of the “love of the game” without the stress and anxiety often provided by parents and college can this issue be resolved.
Presentation High School
The Voice
December 16, 2005