As a young child, I was a sports fanatic, always outside knocking tennis balls on the wall or juggling my soccer ball to refine my touch. However, as I got older, my desire to play sports subsided. I was ashamed to feel this way, but my feelings were alleviated when I learned that many of my peers were in the same boat. According to a poll from the National Alliance for Youth Sports, approximately 70 percent of children in the United States stop playing organized sports by the time they become teenagers. Although there are a multitude of possible reasons, I think there are three main causes.
First, a bad coach can erase the passion a child once had for his/her sport. A coach is supposed to be the leader of a team, someone who sets examples and makes his or her players want to actually play. However, youth sports can be riddled with coaches who do the exact opposite. Sometimes, coaches are harsh towards their players, using patronizing language whenever their players make mistakes. A coach’s lack of quality can also cause a player to lose passion for his/her sport. If a coach is teaching incorrect technique or faulty, impractical tactics, that team is going to end up losing often. This frequent losing leads to the player losing passion for the sport and may even cause them to quit. The type of coaching a child receives in competitive sports plays a major role in his/her future in the sport: it sets a tone that either motivates or discourages.
The amount of injuries an athlete gets can also affect their desire to play his/her sport, something I can speak on from personal experience. From a torn meniscus, to a chronic groin injury, toa herniated disc, my passion for soccer has consequently diminished over time. The world of sports is extremely unforgiving, as even though I dedicated hours of my time playing and traveling for soccer tournaments, multiple injuries sidelined me for months in return. Regardless of how severe an injury may be, the recovery period is almost always mentally challenging for an athlete. During injury, an athlete is often wondering whether they can re-attain the level of play they had before getting hurt and in some cases, whether they can even return to the sport at all. Hence, some athletes eventually quit their sport to avoid confronting the amount of uncertainty and mental anguish their injury poses.
Lastly, the pressure to perform consistently well in competitions can drive players out of their sports. As players get older, the main focus of travel teams transitions from having fun to earning a spot on a collegiate or professional team, both of which are extremely competitive. For the student athletes who reach this point in their careers, every practice, showcase and game become all the more important; now, players have to worry about getting scouted by coaches in order to continue the sport competitively as an adult. When players can’t consistently play at the standard needed for collegiate or professional recruitment, they can begin to feel frustrated. This frustration can eventually lead to an athlete quitting the sport entirely, becoming another statistic of the American youth who stopped playing sports.
