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POSITIVE PARENTING
playing one sport year-round. Sports should be fun for children. Overuse injuries in children is a concerning trend.” – Dr. James R. Andrews [put in a call-out box] Some of the most common overuse injuries for young athletes include tennis elbow, impact-related running injuries (like shin splints) and many shoulder and elbow related injuries often suffered by baseball pitchers.
BY ANNA KANE
n 1982, 12-year-old Andre Agassi and his doubles partner, Roddy Parks, won the National Indoor Boys 14’s Doubles Championship in Chicago, IL. Less than a year later, he was shipped off to Nick Bolletieri’s Tennis Academy in Bradenton. He would go on become one of the greatest tennis players in history. Agassi famously trained exclusively for tennis from a very young age and reached greatness. Most of our children are not prodigies like Agassi. Many however, face pressure to specialize in a sport at increasingly younger ages. The emergence of club teams and travel sports combined with a prioritization of excellence over participation and the year-round warm weather of South Florida makes this trend even more pronounced here than in other areas of the country.
Different Strokes for Different Sports…
Does Specialization Make Someone a Better Performer? Author Malcom Gladwell famously coined the “10,000-hour rule.” This “rule” is an adaptation of an old theory about chess masters. It suggests that becoming a master requires around 10,000 hours of dedicated practice and training. Gladwell applied this theory to life more broadly: to become a true expert takes a lot of hard work! Proponents of sports specialization have adapted this theory: if a child shows an aptitude for a sport, having them focus on this sport early sets them on a path to attaining those 10,000 hours, becoming great and potentially gaining a college scholarship.
Sports Specialization: Should Kids Focus on What They are Best At? A 2013 study by the National Institute of Health suggests, however, that timing may be what matters most. The study’s conclusion states “Some degree of sports specialization is necessary to develop elite-level
skill development. However, for most sports, such intense training in a single sport to the exclusion of others should be delayed until late adolescence.”
Health Risks There are essentially two types of sports-related injuries: traumatic injuries and overuse injuries. Overuse injuries are typically caused when a person does the same physical motion over and over, causing wear and tear. Playing a single year-round sport significantly increases the risk of these types of injuries. Dr. James R. Andrews, founder of the Andrews Institute for Orthopedics & Sports Medicine has become an outspoken critic of specialization. “I have seen my patient population and surgical cases get increasingly younger. Children, parents and coaches need to realize that kids need to take a break from
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The benefits and timing gained from specializing vary significantly by sport. Sports where athletes tend to be elite at a young age favor earlier specialization. Parents of star gymnasts or tennis players often contemplate home-school their children to maximize training time. According to a 2016 NCAA survey, almost nine out of ten college gymnasts said they had specialized by the age of 12. Other sports had far less pronounced benefits and trends toward specialization. Football players, for instance, had the lowest levels of high school specialization. In fact, every touchdown scored in this year’s NCAA National Championship Game was scored by an athlete who played multiple sports throughout high school. Interestingly, none of them play any other sport while in college. In fact, multi-sport collegiate athletes are extremely rare.
Should You Make the #1 Sport the Only Sport? Specializing in a single sport at a young age is a bad idea. A study that tracked young athletes between 1990 and 2011 concluded, “For most sports, there is no evidence that intense training and specialization before puberty are necessary to achieve elite status. Risks of early sports specialization include higher rates of injury, increased psychological stress, and quitting sports at a young age.” For High School kids, it’s a bit of a different question. Sports participation like theater or art or music are as much about a teen’s self-identification and pursuit of happiness as they are about pursuing excellence. Being good at something is important to selfesteem and makes that activity more fun. So, if your 14-year-old daughter wants to drop Basketball to focus on Volley Ball, tell her to go for it!