Youth Sport Specialization: Is It Overkill?
- Nov 12, 2014
- 3 min read
Participating in sports is an important part of childhood. It has been proven that playing youth sports helps children to do better academically. Playing sports builds confidence, self-esteem, bonds students via comradery and teamwork while teaching discipline and motivation.
Programs such as Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move and 60 Minutes of Play by the NFL have been created to promote children to get outdoors, including playing sports to help teach healthy life choices and fight childhood obesity.
While these points are true, it’s important to note that many orthopedic surgeons are reporting a drastic increase in repetitive stress injuries in young athletes. The trend toward sport specialization, playing one sport year round, is recognized as one of the primary causes of this increase. The numbers are staggering. There are 38 million amateur athletes at the high school level and younger, and 10% were treated for a sports related injury last year. Repetitive stress injuries make up an estimated 50% of these injuries. Dr. James Andrews of the Andrews Institute for Orthopaedics & Sports Medicine claims that youth sports injuries have increased 5 to 7 fold over the past 10-13 years calling the issue ‘epidemic’. Girls after puberty are 2-8 times more likely to suffer a knee injury than boys in the same sport. He claims adolescent athletes today are suffering injuries previously only seen in adults.
After a knee injury, some patients opt for surgery and some for physical therapy. Both options take the athlete out of play for months. Orthopedic surgeons state that having surgery increases the risk of osteoarthritis in 50 to 100% of patients, with onset within 10 to 20 years after the surgery. A 14 year old who has ACL reconstructive surgery may develop arthritis in their mid-20’s. Year-round training is simply unnecessary and not worth the risk. Often the result is repetitive stress injury to the young athlete with a large number never returning to play. For some athletes sport specialization causes burnout and the athlete loses interest in the sport. In addition, many professional sports players prosper due to their cross-training in other sports. Professional players such as Russell Wilson, Bo Jackson, Troy Aikman, Jon Elway and many more played multiple sports, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_multi-sport_athletes.
There is a misconception by parents and coaches that participating in year-round play, while common for elite professional and collegiate athletes, is acceptable for children and adolescents. Athletes who are skeletally immature cannot withstand the same training regimens that adult athletes can. Many surgeons report that the parents of their patients think that since their 13 year old is an all-star, they are destined for the pros. Per NCAA statistics, the percentage of high school athletes who turn professional is 0.03% in both men’s and women’s basketball, and 0.09% in soccer, 0.08% in football and 0.5% in baseball.
No parent or coach wants to see their children suffer an injury due to overtraining.
Youth coaches don’t coach for the money. They coach because of their love of the game and working with kids.
We need to change this trend of year round same sport specialization. We need to educate parents, coaches and players that young athletes need an off-season to help avoid repetitive stress injuries.
Until next time,
Michele Cook
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