Organized Youth Sports

Organized youth sports are synonymous with Capri-Suns, muddy sports uniforms, and long hot Saturdays spent at the field, ballpark, or another venue. It’s commonly held ideology that competitive youth sports were created to foster teamwork, discipline, and fun. Thousands of leagues and independent sports clubs across the nation, are dedicated to fostering these values, as well as pursuing an extreme level of expertise in a particular sport. For young children, one would inherently think that sports leagues should be mainly focused on the aforementioned values. In today’s increasingly competitive society, the average Elementary aged child seems to have an athletic calendar that is downright rigorous. Rather than freely playing, young children

According to the Livestrong organization, “If the pressure to win is overemphasized or the expectations of parents or coaches become too great, kids may experience psychological stress,” (https://www.livestrong.com). Highly competitive sports environments can provide children with such high expectation of performance, that failure to meet this level can seem catastrophic for children. Some youth teams and organizations produce such a high pressure environment, that can often prove to be dangerous for children in many ways. The American Academy of Pediatrics states that, “Anecdotal reports in young athletes suggest risks of “burnout” from physical and emotional stress, missed social and educational opportunities, and disruptions of family life,”( https://www.aap.org/en-us/Pages/Default.aspx), and furthermore that, “ Unrealistic parental expectations and/or exploitation of young athletes for extrinsic gain can contribute to negative psychological consequences for elite young athletes.” That being said, the pressure put on children for success in athletics, is sometimes not even for the benefit of the child. Children’s sports programs have become corrupted by coaches and parents, seeking extrinsic benefit and attention on the backs of young children. This is indicative that children’s sports leagues have become far too competitive

Furthermore, data published by the same medical journal states that, “Athletes who played their primary sport more than 8 months of the year were more likely to report an upper extremity overuse injury or lower extremity overuse injury,” (The Association of Sport Specialization and Training Volume with Injury History in Youth Athletes). Most individuals who have participated in the high-pressure world of highly competitive youth sports, can speak to the prevalence of dangerous injuries as well as the pressure to push through the pain. Often times, a young athlete is pressured to forego recovery time, in effort to return back to practice and competition. It is not uncommon for coaches to encourage athletes to ignore Doctor’s orders, and persuade their athlete to skip properly recovering from an injury. If the athlete skips the proper recovery time, then they will be able to resume practicing. However, in this case they will most likely be plagued with the same injury further down the road in their career. In addition, most youth sport leagues do not have on-site team physicians. This leads to an increase of dangerous risks, and lack of communication between coaches and medical