Since I’m a basketball coach, I can use my favorite sport as an example, but it does not stand alone. Basketball was once considered mainly a winter sport. Now, as far as team play is concerned, it has become a sport that is practically a 365-day-a-year game. I feel that this scenario has trickled down too far, especially relating to the younger athletes in elementary and middle school. There are now AAU teams and travel teams, programs that are mostly in the off-season, not during the winter months. Additional programs, such as summer leagues and camps, are designed for scholastic teams. Some elite AAU teams and tournaments go from spring through the fall, which can involve lengthy travel, even to opposite coastlines. These possibilities are available for practically every sport.
As a coach, I see these programs as a benefit to scholastic programs and even parallel to the scholastic sports. Constructively, my criticism may sound archaic, but there is such a thing as overkill. Unfortunately these programs can drench some of the younger athletes with a cause of overplay, which could be the beginning of burnout. I have seen it happen, and in retrospect it becomes an obliteration of a sport that can manufacture the detrimental experience of dread for the child. The loss of interest and love for the game can become the end product — the fun of play is over, possibly forever.
When I was a kid, I played as many sports as I could with my friends. It was unorganized play, meaning that there were no leagues or coaches to determine who plays what and where. Our time was ours and directed by us. At the end of the day there were no trophies or championships to be won. Just fun. There was no going home to complain to mom or dad about sitting on the bench or saying, “The coach doesn›t like me,” or who won or lost. Has that concept disappeared from our children›s time for growing up? Have these programs taken away the process of interaction between kids and their playmates? Out of the interaction in pick-up games comes an ability to solve problems that can occur between children.
I feel that some of these athletic programs might be overstated and are interfering with creative development for growth in our youth. Some things need to be tweaked, a bit of a cutback or maybe a toning down of the overkill. Allow kids to be creative by leaving them more of a portion of their own play time. The logic behind these organized programs is understandable, especially for girls because they don›t usually meet at the recreation fields for pickup games. There just might be too much of an emphasis placed, by adults and parents, on organized team play in sports. There can be some delusions of grandeur that might be subliminal on the part of some parents who are trying to live vicariously through their child›s interests and involvement of any one particular sport with the dream of a Division 1 scholarship. As a coach, I have witnessed this scenario. There needs to be a middle ground for the children to be with their buddies—a time for kids to be kids.
