Essay On Youth Sports

Are Youth Sports Becoming Too Intense? Sports are no longer being played for fun by young athletes, they are more competitive and intense. Youth sports are becoming too intense, due to the pressure that coaches and parents are putting on young athletes causing them to either get injured or to get tired of playing the sport. The amount of pressure that is put on these young kids makes the rate of kids quitting very high because of the expectations the have. Most young kids do things only if they want to, and if they do not then they most likely are not going to. Some experts say “The first thing to know: no athlete succeeds unless he or she wants to. Few survive and fewer thrive, simply because of their want to play. It is hard for these kids because in order to

A recent survey done says “Over forty-five million kids participate in organized youth sports, out of those forty-five million eighty percent of them quit by the age of fifteen” (Stankovich 2). It is not likely that these kids quit their sport just because, there must have been a reason like: their coach was working them too hard, their parents were trying to push them to succeed, or the environment just became too intense. It is not fair for these kids to quit because of other people, the only reason they should have to quit is if they just do not like the sport anymore. Another survey of 1,250 high level athletes ages ten through eighteen was done and the result was “Only thirty percent of them actually enjoy their sport” (Matz 5). This survey shows that these thirty percent of kids must have been pushed hard by either a coach or their parents because they are successful athletes that did not quit because they did not enjoy their sport. This survey still proves though that youth sports are becoming too intense because they are causing kids to dislike the sport that they used to