By John O'Sullivan

From the Little League World Series to "American Idol," we have an unhealthy obsession with "discovering" the next generation of great youth talent in this country. This is especially true when it comes to sports.

I am not saying it is bad to identify talent. Our problem lies in how we define talent at the youngest ages, how and when we select it, and what we do with our newly discovered "talent." Unfortunately, our current system often de-emphasizes all the things that one day might allow true talent to shine, and successful young athletes to become elite adult competitors.

Our first problem lies in how we define talent. We sort our youth sports system chronologically, based on arbitrary calendar cutoffs. As a result, when we start selecting all stars at ages 7 and up, research has shown that most kids selected are born within three months of the calendar cutoff date. In other words, we are selecting kids who are older and more physically mature, who can run faster, jump higher and do all the athletic things a little bit better than the younger kids because of their relative age. The "talent" has very little to do with sport-specific skill, and far more to do with age and physical maturity.

As an example, an 8-year-old born in January, playing a sport that has a Jan. 1 cutoff date, is 12 percent older than a kid born in December of the same year, even though they are in the same age group. This is a massive difference. These kids may be chronologically the same age according to their sports league, but often they are developmentally light years apart.

Who gets picked? The research of Canadian psychologist Roger Barnsley on junior hockey players shows us that in this scenario the children born in January through March are five times more likely to be selected than those born in November or December. We are not identifying talent; we are identifying relative age.

The second issue is how and when we select talent. We have a downward creep in our country, meaning every time we decide to start having tryouts at one age, we begin to organize kids a year younger. If we have tryouts at U11, then we start collecting and culling the U10s. Pretty soon, we say, "Why not just start tryouts at U10?" and then start sorting the U9s.

We start making cuts at increasingly younger ages, and tell a slew of kids that they are not talented by cutting them from the select team. As mentioned above, the greatest predictor of whether a child will make the team or not at these young ages is his of her month of birth.

To make it even worse, often this cutting is not done by highly trained, independent evaluators, but by moms and dads who are coaching, and have a child in the player pool. You think they are going to cut their own kid? And even when we have qualified talent evaluators, again, we are excluding far too many potential players at a time when the biggest difference between two kids might be their relative age and a few months additional coaching.

Finally, let's be honest and admit that we are selecting athletes who are likely to help us win now, with little regard to who might be the better player years from now.

This leads us to the third issue, the over-emphasis of winning with our newly discovered elite athletes. After selecting our "talented" kids, we then funnel a select few into systems with better resources, better coaching and better competition, and exclude others. We travel farther and farther for games; we start measuring development by wins and losses. Once this is established, coaches inevitably play the kids who are going to help them win.

Let's take a soccer coach who has 14 families of 10-year-olds paying $1,000-plus per year for training as an example. If he wants to keep his job at most clubs, he'd better beat the local town team with the volunteer coach, or the neighboring club that only charges $400 in fees.

But what if the other team has a man-child forward who can run by everyone, a man-child defender or goalkeeper who can kick it over everyone's head, and a coach who screams at everyone to kick it long? The coach who is trying to teach his players to actually play soccer, to pass it around the back, to use skill instead of athleticism, likely will lose this game if he does not possess his own ultra-fast growing man-children.

If he has them, in order to get a result, he benches his smaller kids because "they cannot compete' with the big kids that day, and thus he keeps happy the parents of the 10 or so more athletically developed kids. Or, he plays everyone, loses and deals with the grumbling parents who cannot understand why they pay so much to lose.

Never mind the fact that if the coach is developing his players correctly, his team will win that same game 10 times out of 10 in a few years when athleticism is equal, and technique matters more. We ignore that. We have stopped thinking long-term.

This is problematic because at these youngest ages, sports is supposed to be about providing enjoyable activities for children, and prioritizing the development of future players over the performance of current ones. As noted speaker, author and former NBA player Bob Bigelow says, "All sixth-grade basketball players stink. The best player stinks, and the rest just stink worse, but they all stink."

What he means is that aggrandizing young players who cannot adequately shoot, pass, dribble or defend is incredibly short-sighted. Selecting all-star teams and cutting kids prior to puberty does not identify the players with the most future potential; it identifies the players that are often a little older, a little more physically mature and perhaps have a bit more skill then the ones you cut.

This can be psychologically damaging as well. Many young athletes often identify their worth in the eyes of their parents, coaches and peers in terms of sports achievement. "Johnny, the great soccer player," or "Mary, the best swimmer" learn to tie their identity to their athletic success. This is great until everyone else grows, the physical differences disappear and athletes realize that you actually need skill and desire to be successful.

Many young stars never learned to work hard, never faced adversity or a challenge for their spot on the team and never developed the proper techniques needed to succeed at the adult version of their game. They were the star; now they can no longer compete.

It's psychologically traumatic for a 12-year-old whose name was called on ESPN's "SportsCenter" to get cut from the high school varsity team and be replaced by the kid who got cut from his Little League team, but it happens. And once they stop succeeding in sports, their self-esteem and self-worth plummets.

If we want to develop athletes for the long run, we need to make some changes. We have to get away from our ESPN Little League World Series culture that is hurting more kids than it is helping. Here are a few thoughts on how to do this:

* We need to stop trying to identify future talent so young. We have to stop cutting kids at U9 to U12, and thus give larger numbers of athletes access to trained coaching, facilities and resources. We have to allow them to develop at their own pace. We need in-house, academy-style programs at youth sports clubs at least through U12, developing large numbers of players, emphasizing training over games, and focusing on local, small-sided competition instead of travel ball.

* We must stop focusing on winning, rankings, etc., for our teams prior to high school. We need parents who demand that coaches develop their kids, and coaches who demand that they be allowed to develop them appropriately. It is time for youth sports organizations to take a stand, to say "the customer is not always right" and do right by the kids and not the parents.

Very few are doing this right now, because there is always a competitor willing to focus on wins and attract families who do not know any better.

* After their growth spurt, from middle school through high school, we can start selecting out the truly talented, dedicated and elite athletes, as age becomes less of a factor. By doing this, we can get rid of our detrimental system that identifies players far too young, for the wrong things, one that funnels many kids out of the proper development system, and funnels the better ones into high-pressure, win-at-all-costs clubs that injures or burns out most of them by high school.

Our current system is killing our young athletes' enthusiasm and love of sports. Our identification and celebration of success at a young age, with its accompanying creature comforts and media exposure, has created a legion of doting fans of pre-pubescent athletes, before those kids actually have accomplished anything at all in sports. These young "stars" burn brightly, and then often burn out before high school.

And what of the players who might truly have talent but grew later than their peers, the ones who could take their place and become elite high school, college and perhaps even professional players? Well, we cut them years ago, because they weren't good enough to help us win the statewide U10 "Ultra Awesome Super Duper Cup Championship" that we trained all year for.

We can do better!

- John O'Sullivan is the founder of the Changing the Game Project and blogs at www.changingthegameproject.com

Copyright 2014 The Davis Enterprise
Distributed by Newsbank, Inc. All Rights Reserved 
The Davis Enterprise (California)


January 19, 2014 Sunday

SECTION: FORUM

HEADLINE: Our unhealthy obsession with childhood athletic achievement

BYLINE: Special to The Enterprise

Learn more

Who: Author John O'Sullivan, delivering a Davis Parent University lecture on raising high-achieving athletes in a positive atmosphere

When: 7-9 p.m. Friday, March 21

Where: Brunelle Performance Hall at Davis High School, 315 W. 14th St.

Jan. 15--Ryleigh Bure gave a special-needs wrestler a special gift: the thrill of victory.

The Albert Lea wrestling team competed at the eight-team Kiffmeyer Duals Saturday in St. Cloud, and a coach from Foley approached the Albert Lea bench between rounds.

"He came over and asked our coaches if one of our kids would be willing to wrestle a special-needs kid," said Albert Lea head coach Larry Goodnature. "He didn't say win or lose, just wrestle a while with him and let him score a few points."

Bure, a 113-pound sophomore from Albert Lea's junior varsity team made the choice to take the mat.

"I was going to wrestle someone with Down syndrome, and as soon as I heard that, I knew I was going to let him win," Bure said. "His coaches said nobody wanted to wrestle him."

Bure allowed the Foley wrestler to score a few points, and after the third period, Bure's opponent won the match and ran to the sideline to embrace his coach.

"It was neat and really emotional for the fans and coaches when that kid got his arm raised," Goodnature said. "He was hysterical that he won the match. It took a special kid like Ryleigh to do that, to give that special-needs kid the time of his life."

Albert Lea assistant coach Jon Hansen said multiple coaches from other schools made positive comments, including Josh McLay, the head coach from Hastings.

"It was a humbling experience," Hansen said. "It makes you re-think what high school sports are all about."

Goodnature said the match was unofficial, but Brue said he counts it in his overall record, which is 23-3.

Bure's mother, Danielle Bure, posted a video of the match on her Facebook page. She said in the video's description that she couldn't be more proud of her son.

A recap for Albert Lea's varsity finish was in Monday's Tribune. The Tigers took fifth place. They beat Elk River and Hammond Baptist and lost to Cambridge-Isanti.

Albert Lea will wrestle next at 7 p.m. Thursday at Janesville against Waterville-Elysian-Morristown/Janesville-Waldorf-Pemberton. The junior varsity kicks off the meet at 6 p.m.

Copyright 2014 Albert Lea Tribune 
Albert Lea Tribune (Minnesota)
BYLINE: Micah Bader, Albert Lea Tribune, Minn.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News
January 15, 2014 Wednesday
SECTION: SPORTS

HEADLINE: Old-school P.E. might be what youth need; 
Many kids involved in competitive sports learn a limited regimen of movements but may lack other critical physical skills

Copyright 2013 The Baltimore Sun Company
All Rights Reserved 
The Baltimore Sun

December 26, 2013 Thursday 
FINAL EDITION

SECTION: HEALTH AND STYLE; Pg. 3C

BYLINE: Nancy Cambria, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Eric Lay, the head trainer at Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School, loves to see student athletes succeed, but he and fellow trainers aren't always impressed with fastballs or hat tricks.

They're more concerned about whether the athletes can do a decent pushup without their body undulating like a worm. Can they do leg lunges without flailing their arms, wobbling or falling to one side? Are they able to touch their toes? Pull up to their chin? Can they shuttle back and forth?

In a nutshell, trainers want to know whether these kids really know how to properly and safely move and, later, can they add strength to those established movements? 

It's all part of a growing push among trainers and others in fitness fields to get schools, parents, coaches and kids back to basics with physical fitness. Instead of focusing primarily on acquiring fitness through organized youth sports, an exploding business with many well-meaning but poorly trained coaches, they want parents and kids to refocus and acquire proper movement skills beginning as early as kindergarten and progressing all the way through high school.

If it sounds like a throwback to gym class, it is. Those movements first emphasized in physical education classes -- skipping, lunging, twisting, jumping, stopping and starting, to name a few -- are the building blocks of high-performing athletes and the key to enjoying all sorts of recreational activities that encourage lifelong fitness, said Larry Meadors, a former national high school strength and conditioning coach with the National Association of Strength and Fitness and author of a paper urging "physical literacy" among youth.

But yet, "For some ungodly reason we've skipped teaching fundamental movement," Meadors said.

"We all learned the alphabet, and as we learned the alphabet we learned how to put two letters and then three and then four to form words, and pretty soon we had a word, a sentence, a paragraph, a chapter, a book. And you should apply the same things for athletics."

In an age in which kids have seemingly endless opportunities to play sports outside of school, all-around good movement is not always something Lay says he sees with seasoned middle and high school players. That particularly can be the case with specialized year-round, single-sport athletes. Often he'll see unbalanced movement, out of whack from years of kicking with one leg in soccer or pitching and throwing on a softball or baseball team.

Those physical fitness deficits can lead to injuries. That's because the kids do the same thing over and over again, and coaches and organizations can have little emphasis on proper training beyond a few sometimes misguided skills drills.

"Parents want their kids to be physically active, and sports is an option. So a lot of people think, if my kid is in a sport, that takes care of it," Lay said. "Sport skills are great, but there has to also be some training in fundamental movements."

Meadors, a retired 50-year educator who runs a conditioning program in the Burnsville, Minn., school district, said he's seen a significant decline in movement skills in kids over the past decade.

"I have 11th- and 12th-graders -- 16-, 17- and 18-year-olds -- that have the same absolute movement skill deficiencies as 6-year-olds do," he said.

Part of it is due to a decline in physical education in schools and a more sedentary lifestyle. Yet kids also face problems in competitive youth sports, where they learn a limited regimen of movements basic to the sport but may lack other critical movement skills to help them fully succeed.

"A sports skill is only a sports skill; it's part of the game. But there is a ton of stuff the human body does above those skills that hone that performance," Meadors said.

Youth sports in many metropolitan areas are exploding at a very early age, with increased competition, seemingly unlimited options to play and pressure to compete in a single sport year-round. It has led to a rapid increase in injuries even before middle school.

More than 3.5 million kids 14 and younger are treated annually for sports injuries, and the numbers are rising. More than half of all youth sports injuries are preventable. In about half the cases, the injuries are associated with overuse, often linked with the growing trend of children specializing in one sport year-round.

In a paper published with the National Strength and Conditioning Association, Meadors said musculoskeletal injuries in youth are the result of overall low strength levels, incorrect landing mechanics, incorrect deceleration techniques, ligament looseness, muscle tightness, overly developed quadriceps and over-reliance on a particular limb. These essentially are tied to poor conditioning and a lack of knowing how to move properly in a variety of fitness situations.

Many kids simply don't know how to properly slow down and stop when running. Others can't land a jump properly, he said.

Meadors says all he asks for is a greater conversation among schools, parents, coaches and kids to identify the big connection between proper movement skills, lifelong health and true athletic performance.

At this point, in the midst of intense game schedules, coaches lack the time to learn proper conditioning or incorporate it into limited practice schedules, he said.

"When we get to the point of 3.5 million kids injured in a given year -- that's the fourth-leading health risk by the World Health Organization -- there's something wrong about that," he said. "The media loves to hit on the sedentary side and the link to obesity in kids, and that's a real critical issue. But so is misuse of kids in sports and the mis-training of children."