What We Are Forgetting About Sports

One country that I think does youth sports correctly is Norway; I love their youth sports model. For those who may not be familiar with it, the emphasis is on making sports enjoyable for children. The focus is on the athlete, not the coach, the parents, or the scoreboard—and on keeping children engaged, having fun, and wanting to continue playing sports.

Some of what Norway does for their youth sports:

• They do not keep score until age 13. There are no online rankings.
• Participation trophies for everyone. No accolades at a young age are based on performance.
• No travel teams or national championships for children.
• Kids play locally until they are teenagers.
• No early specialization; children are encouraged to play and try multiple sports.
• It is low cost.

The result is a youth sports participation rate of approximately 93%.

Compare that with the United States, where most children quit organized sports by age 11. The three most commonly cited reasons are that sports are no longer fun, that there is too much pressure from coaches, and that the financial burden has become too great for their families.

When we talk about removing barriers to sports participation for children, we often think about individual barriers such as learning disabilities or emotional regulation challenges—those barriers are why we have all of this information for coaches about accommodations and strategies. However, I also believe we need to recognize that the culture of youth sports itself creates some barriers. The accommodations and coaching strategies throughout this website help individual athletes succeed, but they are most effective when they exist within a youth sports culture that values participation, development, and belonging over performance alone.

We Are Forgetting That Youth Sports Are Supposed to Be Fun

There is so much emphasis on wins, rankings, and statistics that we are beginning to lose sight of why children should be playing sports in the first place. Aside from them having fun and being active, they teach skills that can be carried throughout life. They teach us how to make friends, communicate with others, work as a team, handle disappointment, build confidence, show humility, follow directions, become more teachable, develop discipline, set goals, and learn resilience; the list goes on and on.

Somewhere along the way, youth sports have become centered around statistics, winning, making the "elite" travel team, college scholarships, and getting drafted, all starting at a very young age. Whether this is driven by adults, social media, or the business surrounding youth sports, it has fundamentally changed the experience for many children.

For athletes who already struggle with anxiety, frustration tolerance, executive functioning, communication, or social skills (just to name a few), this pressure can create an even bigger barrier to participation. A child who already worries about making mistakes now has statistics posted online, games livestreamed, rankings to compare themselves to, and constant reminders of their performance. Instead of having fun and reaping all of the benefits sports has to offer, many children begin to associate sports with stress, pressure, fear of failure, and disappointment.

A Story Worth Remembering

I have a friend whose son plays on a 10U baseball team. They have walk-up songs, statistics updated in real time, and every game is livestreamed and available to watch afterward (for a price, of course). His mother often tells me he comes home crying because of his performance or stays up late replaying the game and obsessing over what he could have done differently.

The thing is, he is one of the best teammates I have ever watched for someone his age. He is always cheering his team on, high-fiving everyone, checking in on his teammates; he hustles every play, listens to his coaches, makes the adjustments asked of him, gets foul balls—everything you could ask for in a player. Yet because his statistics are not as good as some of the other players', he believes he is failing, letting his team down, and not worthy. It is so hard to watch and hear about. Those are the things we should be celebrating, especially at his age. The skills he has are going to take him much farther than what his batting average is at 10 years old.

Removing Barriers Is About Culture, Too

Every child deserves the opportunity to experience the benefits that sports can provide. Removing barriers is not only about helping individual athletes through accommodations, but it is also about creating a youth sports culture where every child feels welcomed, supported, and valued regardless of ability or performance. When we combine inclusive coaching practices with an environment that prioritizes the right things, we give more children the opportunity to succeed not just as athletes, but as human beings.