By Stu Hadden
(and Mick’s 2¢)
Introduction
As a kid I loved playing games and as a young teen I loved playing sports. Once I turned 15-16, I just wanted to win. The purpose of this article is to examine the different stages of athletic development in children and what role we as adults can play to help our children get the most out of sports.
Youth Sport in America
Kids sports are big business in America, something I don’t recall us having in the UK – even when I left in 2016. If a child can create value on the field or the court, then that can attract college or even high school coaches to recruit them. This can potentially save their parents huge amounts of money on tuition fees, not to mention giving the child the opportunity to get into schools they otherwise wouldn’t gain entry to and ultimately get the experience of playing sport on a big stage. With these huge positives at stake for the few who make it, there is also a chasm full of kids who fall by the wayside, get injured either physically or mentally and never go on to achieve their dreams. But are we missing the point? The next section will look at the stages of athletic development in a child’s life and how we can approach them in order to maximize their development and minimize these potential negative impacts that draw so much media attention.
Youth sports in the US and how it is conceived could be a never-ending article of arguments and counter-arguments and no doubt would open a can of unappetizing worms. That being said, I will dare to slightly crack open that can and take an eensy-weensy peek inside. One of the slightly disturbing characteristics I find in youth sports is the future potential of college sports scholarships that can be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Very often it’s not the child that really wants to or cares to succeed, but the parents. Many parents want to live their athletic dreams through their offspring and from a very early age on, push their kids into sports they don’t love, into training and coaching sessions they don’t want to do, and into competitions they aren’t ready for. Good days and bad days hang on whether the child wins or loses.
Obviously every family dynamic is different and every child responds to stimuli in their own individual way. The role of the parent is a vital ingredient to their children’s sporting success, the line between too little support, too much overbearing support and just the right amount is agonizingly thin. Figuring that out as a parent is just as much a challenge for them as what it is for the child learning and succeeding in their chosen sport.
The potential to earn big dollars (or save big dollars on college scholarships) can blind parents into forgetting who exactly is playing the sport in the first place and making the journey all about them instead of the well being of the child. They may be shocked to actually learn their child possibly does not want to take the sport that seriously. Food for thought.
Building an athletic foundation 0-7
Research shows that between the ages of 0-6 is when children start developing their basic athletic foundation which will provide them a springboard to learn sports well later on. This includes basic co-ordination, strength and speed as well as their social development and their attitude towards physical activity. In my experience as a coach I have seen that the children who are 5-6 years old and are very active and relatively coordinated, usually have gone on to enjoy sports later on and often turn out quite good at all of them. During this time, it is important that the parents and teachers encourage them to make up games, climb trees and play throw and catch in the garden with their parents, brothers, sisters, and friends. By developing this foundation, they are able to move their body in a lot of different ways early on. In this stage, habits are often formed and it is important that we as adults help them form good habits so that they can have the strongest possible base going into the next phase of their athletic development.
The emphasis should always be on making everything fun and encouraging them when they do things well. Sports are an integral part of our society. They are important for people’s physical and mental health, social skills, and teamwork. So getting kids to enjoy sport early sets them up with a good chance of reaping all of the rewards that playing sport can bring in later years.
Growing up in the 70’s and 80’s (yes! I am old!), we really did have an advantage… We didn’t have cell phones, social media, video games, cable television or home computers! So during our down-time, we spent most of it playing outside. Playing cricket or footy on the street with our neighbors and siblings for example, or tag, or hide and seek. We simply mucked around. Today, kids are surgically attached to electronic devices and are addicted to social media accounts. The distractions are plentiful and it is a particularly difficult cord to cut.
Stu is spot on. Unstructured physical activity for young children is tremendously valuable. It can build overall hand-eye coordination, creativity, an outlook that exercise is enjoyable, social skills, problem solving, and self confidence. Giving kids too detailed technical instructions at this stage can be a sure way to turn them off sports all together.
That being said, I was 6 years old when I played my first squash league match. I lost 0-9; 0-9; 0-9. Fortunately, it didn’t discourage me, although no doubt I wasn’t particularly happy. Maybe my competitive spirit was deep back then. But I also believe that learning about winning and losing early on, definitely helped me. The key is figuring out the right time to place your child into competitions.
Building sports specific skills 5-13
During this age range is the time that you would look to begin developing sport specific skills on top of the child’s athletic foundation. I have deliberately overlapped this age bracket with the last one because every kid advances at a different rate, but one who has a stronger athletic foundation will find it easier to pick up sport specific skills and at a younger age than one who doesn’t.
I started coaching aged 22, and frankly I was terrified of coaching total beginners especially 8-13 year olds that were completely uncoordinated. I had a huge group of 8-12 year olds who couldn’t catch, let alone hit a ball, which would be a great source of frustration for them. Many of the kids couldn’t do a single push up and I had parents holding me solely responsible for a group of demotivated kids becoming good squash players. In order to rectify this I had to go right back to basics and practice stuff with them which I felt they would have had far more fun learning by themselves in a child structured, rather than coach led, environment. In order to produce a varsity level athlete, it is important that in this stage of their development they are able to work on the sport specific skill development such as swinging a baseball bat to hit a moving ball, throwing a left jab or hitting a straight drive. If by the middle of this stage the child is still primarily working on its foundation skills, such as throwing and catching or being able to stop a moving ball with their foot, they will be playing catch-up with a lot of their peers. That isn’t to say they can’t still be very good at something, but they will have to work much harder and possibly specialize in one sport earlier in order to put in a good showing, something which in itself can lead to its own set of issues.
Don’t forget here, that the key is enjoyment. The motivation to learn and grow in a chosen sport does have to come form the child, not from the parent. If a child has fun, they are more likely to want to continue to get better. And let’s face it - winning is fun. It is also addictive. Success can be measured in may different ways, however. You don’t necessarily have to win the squash tournament (for example) in order to consider the performance a success. For some, maybe just getting in the draw is a step forward. It shows that their ranking is improving.
Overall, the emphasis should be on long-term development and the pleasure of playing. Since all kids have vastly contrasting paths in how they progress, it is never a good idea to compare them to others. Their improvement should be measured against their younger selves.
Training to compete and specialization 11-17
During this phase is when kids will start training more intensely and playing the proper rules of the sport or adapted rules of an actual sport. Even if they are just playing soccer with kids from their street they would still have goals, play offside and have fouls for example. The key to this phase is letting the kids play the sport they want to, and usually as a parent it means trying to not get too involved.
There are a couple of different philosophies on how this phase should be handled. For me the two best are the Tiger Woods Model and the Roger Federer model. Tiger was a golf specialist early on, hitting his first ball at age 2 and playing tournaments consistently from age 4 onwards. All he ever played was golf. He has obviously gone on to become one of the world’s greatest golfers but there is academic argument surrounding whether or not this background has actually hindered him. He had a huge wave of initial success on the world golf tour and got remarkably good very quickly, but the argument is made that a slightly slower development curve would have led to a far longer and more dominant spell at the top for two main reasons. It is widely speculated that his injuries would have happened to far less of an extent if he had balanced his body out by playing other sports and not overusing his body on a one-sided motion so early on in his life. It’s easy to see how golf would develop muscle imbalances even worse than tennis or squash because you only hit off one side. It is also speculated as to whether he would have developed differently on a social and psychological level had he not been so laser focused on one thing his whole life, which may have led to less personal issues that have undoubtedly and seriously hampered his career at a time when he was in his prime.
Just to add on here, it was clear that from a very early age, Tiger Woods’ (and his father) one and only goal was to be the world’s best golfer. All the training, practice, learning was laser focused toward that one goal. I don’t know about Tiger’s childhood, but I’d place a fair wager that he didn’t play a lot, if any, other sports. It’s impossible to say whether or not he would have reached his level of success had he not followed this path.
His injuries may be very well associated with this singular focus, but in hindsight, if he could go back in time, he would probably have countered the unbalance in his body (and avoid many of his injuries) with supplementary exercises. The focus however, would have still been golf. For the next golf prodigy this world produces, chances are they will train smarter.
Roger Federer is a different kettle of fish altogether. He hit his first tennis ball aged 8 and played badminton, basketball, cricket and squash growing up. The Fed was national junior champion age 14 but only specialized in tennis very late at age 16, much like yours truly into squash! Nadal also played soccer during this athletic development stage but because Federer is the GOAT I will focus on him. He is still playing tennis at the top level, still making the finals of slams and he is 38 years old. That is something that in the pre Federer era was unthinkable. His body has held up well and he has not burned out despite all of those years on tour. Remarkable and something that many attribute to his path to reach this point of the journey.
Clearly Federer had/has significant natural athletic talent. But it was also 24 years ago. Things have changed considerably since then: training methods, level of competition, the money. Being a part of the junior tennis world in the US, I seriously doubt that the Federer method would work very well now. The level of play amongst middle teens is border line professional. Coco Gauff is an obvious (albeit extreme) example. Of course, the question here beckons - does your child want to go pro? Or maybe college tennis is the goal? Or maybe just high-school? Assessing goals is unquestionably crucial as that would plainly affect the child’s level of commitment. And once again, the goals here are the child’s goals, not the parent’s.
Personally I much prefer the Federer route but I believe in letting the kids ultimately decide what sports they play and which they want to specialize in. The parent or coach can voice their opinion to guide them. So long as they present it in a way which puts across a rational argument and don’t make an emotional appeal, children shouldn’t be forced to do something they don’t want to do.
To conclude
In order to give your child the best chance of playing sports at a good level and getting the most out of them, it is important to help them develop an athletic foundation early on. Playing catch with them when they are young and encouraging them to physically play games as much as possible is the key to doing this. They can then start building sport specific skills such as striking a squash ball over the top of their foundation, which are then transferable between sports and so when they find a discipline they enjoy, they can get more involved in it. Specialization is a tricky one and I personally believe that for their long term development not specializing before the age of 14 in most but not all cases is a smart move. That being said, every child and every family is different, and there is absolutely more than one way to skin a cat. I just hope that I can share something that will help someone somewhere. After a lot of reflection, I can safely attribute a huge amount of my athletic success to the way in which I was raised as a young lad, before I started playing organized sports.
It is definitely exceedingly beneficial that athletic activities start at a young age in order to build a solid sporting base. Parents play a vital role in that. How much of a role? That’s a question that each parent needs to hold up a mirror and ask themselves. However, I do sincerely believe that parents do need to push their child at least a little, regardless of what level they want to get to. Instilling discipline, reliable and honorable work ethics, and always putting in maximum effort, are traits that the coaches shouldn’t necessarily be having to worry about. And those qualities are not just for the sporting arenas, they translate 100% to every other facet of life.
