Bleacher Revolution

Regan McMahon, an editor for the San Francisco Chronicle, was interviewed by Larry Mantle on KPCC 89.3 yesterday. She's written a book called Revolution in the Bleachers. The McMahon book is about youth sports and the pressures adults create for kids to the detriment of their childrens' emotional and intellectual development.

McMahon's thesis is at odds with the accepted wisdom of Claremont, namely that things like AYSO and Little League are good, essential activities necessary to a healthy and normal childhood. McMahon seems to believe that youth sports have devolved into activities not primarily for children, but for the egos of many of the parents involved.

In her interview, McMahon contrasts the image of organized youth sports with unsupervised play--the sort that kids used to do when they had sandlot baseball games among themselves. Do kids do that anymore? Just play?

Now, kids are starting in organized sports at earlier and earlier ages. McMahon argues that the evidence of psychologists shows that kids need unstructured play and that they develop important conflict resolution skills by having to negotiate the rules in pickup games as opposed to having an adult with a programmatic sports regime impose those rules on the child.

McMahon points out that some of the things that gets pushed out by youth sports is the family dinner and the family vacation. What used to serve as an important bonding times for parents and children have simply been jettisoned by an entire generation of parents. McMahon argues that there is a great deal of statistical evidence that shows lower rates of self-esteem problems and substance abuse and are happier when they grow up in families that do things like share sit down dinners together.

When you think of all the time, money, and energy devoted just to youth soccer in the U.S., how is it that a country like Brazil, where kids just grow up kicking the ball around and playing, can achieve such greatness and beauty in the sport? The jogo bonito's element of fun is missing from the American game.

McMahon goes on to say in her interview that parents are pushing kids into youth sports at the age of seven or earlier partly out of the unrealistic belief that their child can earn a college sports scholarship. Yet, less than one percent of all the kids in youth sports get college scholarships. Sports parents operate under the mistaken illusion that organized sports can make their child a great athlete, but as one coach interviewed by McMahon says, "You can't coach in what God left out."

In the meantime, parents will spend thousands, tens of thousands on youth sports chasing a vain dream. A better bet, McMahon says, is to simply put that same money into a college savings account. And, according to McMahon, there is many times more money in scholarships available for academics as opposed to sports, so it would seem to make more sense to devote money and energy into a child's learning rather than their sports.

All of which raises another question. Are we in Claremont enabling destructive behaviors by placing so much emphasis on competitive, organized youth sports? Besides inhibiting childhood emotional development, pushing kids into sports has also the cause of rising orthopedic injuries among kids, as McMahon notes in her book. The evidence seems to show that some parents are realizing that things have gotten out of balance, and the pendulum is swinging the other way. Parents themselves are discovering the error of some of these assumptions.

McMahon's advice seems to make sense to us. Want to bond with your children? Forget AYSO. Take them hiking, cook a family dinner together, take a long vacation with them, and let them play. Let them be kids.