Youth Sports

Problems in Youth Sport



Problems in Youth Sport

The Parents or Children?

By Blaze Foster

 

In class on September 25th, we discussed the problems in youth sport today. According to this article, in most incidents, the parents are who to blame for the problems at youth sporting events. The first Youth Sports National Report Card, prepared by a group called Citizenship,  through Sports Alliance, issued low grades for parents' behavior and a win-at-all-cost mentality fostered by the grown-ups who oversee kids' sports (Emmon 2012). This article briefly talks about the poor role modeling some of the parents are showing to there kids. For example, parents these days are placing too much emphasis on winning and setting bad examples with their own poor sportsmanship rather than promoting their child to just have fun. Also parents our willing to shell out thousands of dollars so their kids can compete year-round and receive the best training. Which is evident to what  we learned in class, that youth sports organized programs are becoming increasingly popular, and emphasising more on performance.
According to Coakley (page 132), he explains that what causes some of the poor behavior from the parents, comes from the ego of if your child is successful in sports, that other parents, perceive the parents with a successful athlete to be parenting the correct way. As we learned in class, 70 % of children dropout of sports by the age of 13. I feel parents are a big part of why children choose to dropout of sports. Jim Thompson, the Executive of Positive Coaching Alliance stated"There are coaches and parents all across the country who are doing great things in youth sports,'' Thompson said. "But that's not the trend? Do you believe Jim Thompson?


Emmon, M. (2012). Adults Hurting Youth Sports. Mercury News, 1. Retrieved from        http://www.busc.org/docs/article-1-05.htm