GOLDEN VALLEY, Minn. — WATCH: SportsLife on KARE 11 YouTube Channel
SportsLife is a recurring blog examining issues affecting young athletes, their families, officials and the community at large. Topics come from YOU: Email them to [email protected] with SportsLife – Dana Thiede in the subject line.
Ask most parents whose children play sports and they will tell you that it’s not just a hobby, it’s a way of life.
Balancing the time demands of practices, games, and personal skills training with time spent at school, church, and family can drive even the most sane family units crazy. And it’s not just the lack of time that makes things crazy. Dealing with overzealous sports parents, demanding coaches, and perhaps your own unrealistic expectations of what a child will get out of sports only increases the pressure and stress.
KARE 11 is launching a recurring feature called SportsLife that will examine issues affecting young athletes and their families, and the topics will come from YOU. An initial Facebook post generated a wealth of ideas and we hope the conversation continues.
Our goal is to access experts who are leaders in the field, like Dr. Nicole LaVoi, Director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls and Women in Sport at the University of Manitoba. In this article, LaVoi explains what parts of youth sports are broken, WHY they’re broken, and what parents, coaches, and kids can do about it.
“Youth sports are broken in many ways. The major problem is that youth sports have become overspecialized, commercialized and highly exclusive,” says LaVoi. “It’s very expensive and a lot of kids are left out in the cold as to who can play or not.”
Travel teams can tax a family’s budget and time spent together. Because of the significant investment in both, Lavoi believes some sports parents respond by choosing one of two paths.
“What we know from the research we’ve done at the University of Minnesota is that parents engage across a spectrum,” LaVoi says. “We have very involved and overzealous parents, who are THAT sports parent that we all know, not many but some, on the other end of the spectrum where we have parents who are underinvolved and not engaged due to work, multiple jobs, transportation or just a lack of interest. So we have a spectrum of engagement. When we have an underinvolved parent, we know that both children and their parents are involved in healthy and positive ways. And then the Overzealous parents, they’re the ones who yell and scream and jump up and down, yell at the referee and yell at the kids, creating what I call a toxic tornado on the sidelines.”
This toxic tornado has the power to suck others in. Seeing and experiencing negative behavior from parents on the sidelines or coaches on the bench can lead young athletes to think it is acceptable and they model it, showing disrespect towards their opponents and the referees. This type of behavior comes with a win-at-all-costs, high-pressure environment.
“Ultimately, playing sports should mean being physically active, having fun and developing social, emotional and physical skills. When it comes to winning, and winning at all costs, then we start to compromise what young sport should be about.”
LaVoi believes the key to keeping the sports experience positive is to involve your child in the conversation. Ask them what they like about sports, what they don’t like, what stresses them out…and what YOU can do to make the experience more positive.
“First, it should always be about the child. Is the child having fun? I often tell parents to go home, sit down with your children, your child, and their say: “Is football fun, and do you want to continue playing…and if not, why, and let’s find something else to do. Because inactivity is not an option, so you have to do something thing. Maybe you don’t like football anymore.”
“Second, it should be fun. Especially at the youth level, it should be about fun, learning, growing and making friends. And as they get older, it can be more about victory, but we want the kids to play and have fun.”
“Third, parents should check for themselves what they are doing on the sidelines. We know from research that sports parents engage in two major behaviors. They yell at the referee and they coach from the sidelines when They’re on the fringes.”
Do you have an idea for a story you’d like to see in SportsLife? Text your idea to 763-797-7215.
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