#79. The Decline of Fun and Rise of Work in Youth Sports

How youth sports evolved from an enjoyable leisure-time activity to yet another source of achievement pressure on kids.

Pixabay/CCO.

Dear friends,

In a recent Boston Globe op-ed, Kara Baskin wrote in these words about the chaos of youth sports for her and her kids:

“As I baked in the sun at a far-flung soccer field at 3 p.m. on a muggy Thursday, pecking out a work email while nibbling a limp ham sandwich, I knew my life had spiraled. My younger son had soccer midday. Fine: He loves it. But from there, I’d whisk my older one to a championship rec league basketball game at 5 p.m., followed by an interminable Little League game for my littler one (it’s kid-pitch; might as well bring a sleeping bag). The evening would conclude with a 90-minute, 8 p.m. club basketball practice for my older one in a most inconvenient locale. If we were lucky, everyone would be fed and in bed by 10 p.m. Our schedule was encroaching upon my work, meals, and sanity. Our family Google calendar resembled a Tetris board defaced by Jackson Pollock.”

The Changing Picture of Youth Sports from the 1950s to Now

What has happened with youth sports over the course of my lifetime? As I described in Letter #9, youth sports in the 1950s—for me and millions of other kids—was primarily a matter of going out to a local park, school yard, or vacant lot and getting up a game with the motley bunch of other kids who also showed up looking for a game. Parents were not involved in this activity, nor were any other adults, except for the occasional young adult who wanted to join us and accepted our way of playing. We played for fun and for no other reason. We cheered when our made-up temporary team scored, but nobody cared who won. Some of us fantasized about becoming professionals in whatever sport we were playing, but 99.9% of us pretty much knew it was fantasy.

Beginning in the 1960s, gradually at first and then more steeply, the youth sports picture changed. Little League Baseball, which had been created in 1939, became much more common and formally structured than it had been before. Biddy basketball, Pee Wee hocky, Pop Warner football, and the like arrived on the scene (Friedman, 2013), and many communities set up free public sports opportunities independent of these national nonprofits. Over time, these formal opportunities became increasingly competitive and selective, concerning which kids got playing time or could join the travel team, with coaches looking for victories and parents showing up to cheer their children on and (pathetically) sometimes to boo the referee or umpire. What had been play became, increasingly, an adult-run activity where the children were pawns, moved about by coaches who were intent on winning and pushed by parents wanting their children to excel (Knoestler & Bjork, 2024).

By the mid 1970s we arrived at a situation that would have seemed weird in the 1950s—many kids entering sports more because of adult pressure than because they really wanted to. Being a pawn is not much fun, but everyone, including your parents, are telling you it’s good for your development. And, as fewer kids were showing up at the park, schoolyard, or vacant lot for a pickup game, you almost had to join a team to find other kids.

In the 1980s, conditions changed still further. Reductions in government spending during the Reagan administration led to reduction in publicly supported youth sport programs, which opened opportunities for private profit-making sports companies (Knoester & Bjork, 2024). These companies, for a fee, promised to give each child individual attention to improve the kid’s skill at the sport, aimed at preparing them at least for a varsity high-school sport and a shot at a college athletic scholarship. Increasingly, in the decades after that, parents who could afford it began to put their kids into youth sports in much the same spirit that they put them into prep schools, to improve their resumés for college applications. Kids entered a sport not necessarily reluctantly, but more because they had become convinced that this was a way of getting ahead and less because they thought it was fun.

One result of this change from publicly sponsored to privately sponsored training and leagues was that youth sports became increasingly the domain of the financially well-off. It became one more vehicle through which rich parents could advantage their children, over those from poorer families, for admission to elite colleges. One research study revealed that, by 2022, 70% of children with family incomes more than four times the poverty level participated in sports, contrasted with just 31% of children with family incomes below the poverty level (Black et al., 2022). In 2022, the average youth sports parent spent $883 on one child’s primary sport per season (Aspen Institute, 2022). And some parents were spending upwards of $1000 a month, including fees, equipment, extra training, and travel expenses.

When parents are spending money like that, they expect results, and that means pressure on the kids, and pressure on the coaches to get results from the kids.

The Trend Toward Specialization in Youth Sports

In the 1950s, my friends and I played a wide variety of sports, partly dependent on the season: baseball through much of the spring and summer, touch football in the fall, ice hockey on frozen ponds in the winter, basketball whenever the outdoor court wasn’t covered with snow or ice, and in one place where I lived, tennis on public courts. On top of that, we did lots of fishing, swimming, bicycling, and what might charitably be called cross-country skiing (side-stepping up hills and then skiing down). We did all this just for fun, with little or no thought about its developmental benefits, but now I see it as a recipe for good all-around conditioning. Moreover, the variety kept us enthralled. If we had just engaged in one or two sports, we would have become bored.

Most of us who took part in varsity high school sports continued there to engage in more than one. For me it was swimming, track, cross country, and basketball at a rather large school in Minnesota and then basketball and baseball at a tiny school in Vermont. Like almost everyone else on those teams, I had never taken a formal lesson in any of those activities before joining, and even then there was little in the way of lessons, as our coaches were usually teacher volunteers, not experts. We did watch professionals on television and, for better or worse, tried to imitate them. We cared about winning and showing off to girls, but we still played mainly for fun.

Over time since the 1950s and ‘60s, as pickup sports declined and formal sports increased, and as a goal of many was training for a future scholarship, kids began increasingly to specialize. A prevailing idea was if you focus on just one sport, year around, rather than divide your efforts among several, you have a better chance of becoming good at it and maybe getting that coveted scholarship. One study, of over 1,000 youth athletes, found that 60% of them had specialized in a single sport before age 12 and that the mean age of specialization was 8.1 (Padaki et al., 2017). Another study, of 772 youth basketball players (ages 13 to 18) in elite youth leagues, revealed that 70% of them played only that sport year around, that 58% of them began specializing in that single sport before age 14, and 35% began specializing before age 11 (Meisel et al., 2022). The same study revealed that 70% of these young athletes reported spending less than one month away from organized basketball over the past year. Not surprisingly, 54% reported sleeping less than the recommended 8 hours a night, 55% reported feeling physically exhausted, and 45% reported feeling mentally exhausted from basketball.

Ironically, the view that early specialization is a better route than diversification for superb sports achievement appears to be largely a myth (Brenner, 2021), though it may be true for a few sports, such as gymnastics, diving, and figure skating, which benefit from technical, repetitive training of bodies that are still very young and flexible. Informal surveys and reports from coaches and trainers suggest that most athletes who reach the highest professional levels in team sports such as basketball, baseball, and soccer played multiple sports in their youth (Kliethermes et al., 2021).

Reported advantages of playing multiple sports rather than just one include fewer injuries from overuse of muscles and joints involved in any one sport; better physical fitness because of the different muscle requirements of different sports; improved sports-related cognitive abilities because of the different mental requirements of different sports; improved performance in any one sport because of the transfer of skills developed in other sports; and less burnout (i9 Sports, 2022).

Sports Burnout

Sports should be both fun and health-promoting, but all too often organized sports are neither. A report by the American Academy of Pediatrics Council on Sports Medicine and Fitness (Logan & Cuff, 2019) lists some of the reasons, including the following: Pressure from highly controlling parents creates performance anxiety and eventual burnout. Some parents model poor sideline behavior, including screaming, fighting, and even sometimes attacking officials, countering the view that sports are supposed to help develop moral character. In one study, nearly half of children in organized sports reported verbal misconduct by coaches. Many young players spend more time sitting on the bench, in practices as well as games, than in active participation, so they are getting much less exercise than they would playing pickup games. Finally, researchers have found that families with children in organized sports eat more fast foods and fewer meals at home than those not involved with such sports.

John Dunn and his colleagues (2022) have for years studied the harmful effects of perfectionism experienced by some kids involved in sports. They define sports perfectionism as a sport-specific drive “towards attainment of very high (or perfect) performance standards” coupled with “great concern or preoccupation with the consequences of failing to reach those high-performance standards.” The worst variety of perfectionism, they find, is socially prescribed perfectionism, where the original source of the pressure comes from significant others, most often parents or coaches or both. In such cases the fear of failure to achieve, by unrealistically high criteria, involves a fear of disappointing others, not just oneself. Dunn and his colleagues have found that socially prescribed perfectionism in sports is commonly associated with heightened anxiety, reduced optimism, heighted image concerns, heightened anger, lower self-esteem, and thwarting of one’s own psychological needs (Dunn et al, 2022). It is also a major cause of sports burnout—the physical and psychological exhaustion, increased dislike of the sport, and increased sense of futility about reaching goals that leads many young athletes to quit, commonly never returning to the sport they may have initially loved.

Whether from burnout or other causes, the great majority of kids who start a formal sport at an early age leave it at an early age. National surveys indicate that the average child who starts a sport at elementary school age or earlier plays it for less than three years and drops out by age 11 (Aspen Institute, 2022), and 70% drop out by age 13 (Brenner, 2021). Increasingly, organized sports is the province of little children born to families that can afford it, with relatively few continuing into high-school age. A longitudinal study of the sports life of the graduating class of 2023 at a college preparatory school revealed that the percentage of students who participated in sports at all declined from year to year, from 82% in 7^th grade to 39% in 12^th grade (Valenzuela-Moss, 2024). At each grade approximately 20% of those participating in a sport reported feeling burned out by it. Not surprisingly, the percentage reporting burnout from academic lessons was even higher, much higher, jumping from 36% in middle school to an average of 66% over the last three years of high school. As I explained in Letter #43, students at high achievement schools are suffering psychologically at much higher rates than those at schools with less achievement pressure, and I suspect that sports pressure only adds the pressure already felt for perfect grades and honors in classes.

Overuse Injuries

Sports medicine for children is a huge industry, which flourishes largely because of the pressure on children to excel at competitive sports. The most common serious injuries are overuse injuries, in which muscles or tendons are damaged because of too much use, not enough rest, and insufficient conditioning of other parts of the body. In one large study, comparing 822 injured youth athletes (ages 7 to 18) with 382 uninjured youth athletes, researchers found that, other things being equal, those with serious overuse injuries, compared to those without injuries, were 36% more likely to have been specializing in one sport rather than playing more than one; were 107% more likely to have been playing one sport more hours per week than their age in years; and were 87% more likely to have been spending at least twice as much time at their primary formal sport than in free play (Jayanthi et al, 2015). .

Turning these and similar findings into recommendations, to protect against debilitating, long-lasting overuse injuries, young athletes should not play a single sport year around and especially not play just one position (such as pitcher in baseball) in that sport, should not play or practice intensely in their sport for more hours per week than they are old in years, and, my favorite, should spend at least half as much time each week at free play as they spend in formal sports (though I would encourage much more free play than that).

If you have been following professional basketball and baseball for many years, you may have surmised that players get injured today at higher rates than they did years ago. Apparently, you are not just imagining this; the rates of injuries in both sports have been on the rise (Rodriguez, 2024; Holmes, 2024). There are many possible reasons for this, and one of them, proposed by trainers and medical authorities involved with professional sports, is that athletes are arriving at these high ranks over-trained in their specialty and not sufficiently trained for all-around fitness. NBA commissioner Adam Silver has been quoted as saying: “What our orthopedics are telling us is they’re seeing wear-and-tear issues in young players that they didn’t used to see until players were much older.” (Holmes, 2024). One medical specialist involved in evaluating the physical condition of NBA draft prospects, claimed that he often found high-level college players who “couldn’t perform basic movements, such as squats, lunges, or balancing on one leg.”

In my experience, kids who played the wide range of self-directed games we used to play could perform all such movements with ease. That’s just one reason why we need to renew free play for kids. The more important reason is to restore fun.

Concluding Thoughts

I’ll conclude this essay with a story I wrote about nearly four years ago in a Psychology Today blog post. Three years before that, the president of a major youth sports organization that specializes in baseball, softball and soccer, with thousands of players and hundreds of coaches across the United States, contacted Lenore Skenazy (author Free Range Kids and president of Let Grow) and me for advice. He had read some of our writings and was concerned about the relative absence of enjoyment and creativity among the kids in his organization. We made a simple suggestion: Ask the coaches to devote the first 10 to 15 minutes of every practice session to free, self-directed play of their sport. Put out the equipment and ask the kids to create their own game for the first part of the practice session, in whatever way they would like.

One coach who followed this suggestion told us later, essentially: “Wow, the kids used to walk to the practice field; now they are showing up early and running to the field. They don’t want to miss any free-play time.” In some cases, kids began asking for more free play, and at least some enlightened coaches accommodated that. Some coaches even began to host “sandlot games,” where the whole game was organized and directed by the kids.

Then we learned from a soccer coach in the organization that his team became so enthralled with their own ability to direct their own games that they asked him not to coach, but to let them coach themselves in their tournament games. To his credit, he was delighted by this suggestion, not insulted; and his team went on to win the national championship in their division. To see his explanation of their success, click here.

And now, what are your thoughts and questions about all this? If you have interesting recollections about your own experiences, or stories about your kids’ experiences, with formal or informal youth sports please share them. Your stories, thoughts, and questions enrich these letters for me and other readers.

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With respect and best wishes,

Peter

References

Aspen Institute (2025). Youth Sport Facts/Challenges. Project Play. Available at https://projectplay.org/youth-sports/facts/challenges#:~:text=The%20Aspen%20Institute%20estimated%20U.S.,revenues%20of%20any%20professional%20league.

Black, L. I., Terlizzi, E. P., & Vehratian, A. (2022). Organized sports participation among children aged 6-17 Years: United States, 2020 (NCHS Data Brief No. 441). National Center for Health Statistics. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/index.htm. [Reference in Knoestler & Bjork, 2024.]

Brenner (2021). Sports Specialization and Intensive Training in Young Athletes. Pediatrics, 138, September 2016:e20162148 Updated 2021.

Dunn, J.G.H. et al. (2022). Perceived parental pressure and perceived coach pressure in adolescent and adult sport. Psychology of Sport & Exercise 59 102100

Friedman, H.L. 2013). When did competitive sports take over American childhood? The Atlantic. Sept. 20, 2013.

Holmes, B. (2024). These kids are ticking time bombs': The threat of youth basketball. ESPN. Available at https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/27125793/these-kids-ticking-bombs-threat-youth-basketball

i9 Sports (2022). Should your child play one sport or multiple sports? Available at https://www.i9sports.com/blog/should-your-child-play-one-sport-or-multiple-sports

Jayanthi, N.A. et al (2015). Sports-Specialized Intensive Training and the Risk of Injury in Young Athletes. The American Journal of Sports Medicine, 43, No. 4 DOI: 10.1177/0363546514567298

Kliethermes, S.A. et al. (2021). Defining a research agenda for youth sport specialisation in the USA: the AMSSM Youth Early Sport Specialization Summit. Br J Sports Med 2021, 55,135–143.

Knoestler, C. & Bjork, C. (2024). U.S. youth sports participation: analyzing the implications of generation, gender, race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and family and community sport cultures. Leisure/Loisir, DOI: 10.1080/14927713.2024.2366177

Logan, K. & Cuff S. (2019). AAP Council on Sports Medicine and Fitness. Organized Sports for Children, Preadolescents, and Adolescents. Pediatrics. 143(6): e20190997

Meisel, P.L. et al. (2022). Age of early specialization, competitive volume, injury, and sleep habits in youth sport: a preliminary study of US youth basketball. Sports Health 14 (1), 30-44.

Padaki et al. (2017).

Rodriguez (2024).

Valenzuela-Moss, J., et al. (2024). Changes in sports participation, specialization, and burnout from 7th to 12th grade: final results from a 6-year longitudinal study. Sports Health, 16, 177-183.,