Fred Bowen's "The Score" column,
May 21, 2009, Washington Post

Blowing the Whistle on Youth Sports

I recently read a new book called "Until It Hurts: America's Obsession With Youth Sports and How It Harms Our Kids," written by Baltimore sportswriter Mark Hyman. It is not a kids' book, but it's about kids' sports. Hyman argues that some adults -- parents included -- take youth sports too seriously, and that can spoil the fun for kids.

Here are some of the things I learned from the book that kids and their parents should know.

Overuse injuries from kids playing their sports too much at an early age are way up. They include sore ankles and knees from playing soccer or basketball year-round and sore elbows from pitching too much.

Lyle Micheli, a sports doctor in Boston, estimates that in the early 1990s, 20 percent of the injuries to kids he treated were from overuse. Now, he estimates, 75 percent are from overuse. Micheli says overuse injuries could be cut to almost zero if coaches and parents would simply let kids: (1) play a variety of sports; (2) take it easier; and (3) rest a day or two from sports every week.

Hyman tells the story of Whitney Phelps, an older sister of Michael Phelps, the Olympic gold-medal swimmer. Whitney was a great swimmer, maybe as good as her famous brother, but she never made the Olympics. She swam too much too soon, and she got hurt.

So if you are a kid who plays soccer or baseball in the spring and fall, maybe you should try another sport for summer camp. If you don't believe me, you might believe Tommy John. He won 288 games as a major league pitcher. John refuses to give pitching lessons to kids who are younger than 13. "Those kids do not need to be playing baseball year-round," John says.

Of course, lots of coaches and parents believe that if kids specialize in one sport at an early age and work really hard, they will increase their chances for a sports scholarship to college. But Hyman notes that in a survey of 500 college athletes, about 65 percent said it was not necessary to specialize in a sport before high school in order to play in college.

Hyman also points out that sports scholarships are a very small part of the scholarship pool for college. One recent study indicates that only 18 percent of the scholarship aid at public colleges and only 7 percent at private colleges is for sports. So your chances of getting money for college are a lot better if you are a good student than if you are a good athlete.

I think sports are good for kids. Sports can help kids stay healthy, make new friends and learn to handle disappointment. But as Hyman points out, when seasons last too long and coaches push too hard, youth sports can be too much of a good thing.

Fred Bowen writes KidsPost's sports opinion column and is an author of sports novels for kids.

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