Enough.
That’s a request targeting youth and high school sports coaches requiring way too much time from young athletes, and the complicit parents mindlessly following along. Such time demands can wreak havoc on the well-being of kids and their families.
Organized youth athletics used to abide by seasonal boundaries. Hockey stayed in the winter, soccer in the fall, and baseball in the spring/summer.
Not anymore.
Sports have become a year-round, coach-coerced commitment. Now we have fall soccer, winter indoor soccer, spring and summer “club” soccer, and Christmas morning soccer.
For obsessed youth coaches there’s never enough practices, scrimmages, games, etc. Many kids end up spending more compulsory time in their sport than professional athletes. Does that make sense?
One pressure-laden result of never-ending athletic seasons is overlapping schedules for kids attempting to play more than one sport, forcing attendance at multiple team activities on the same day, several times a week. Stress and burnout often ensue.
Many young athletes end up quitting their sport(s). Data generated from the National Survey of Children’s Health found that between 2016-17 and 2021-22, youth sports participation in the United States dropped 7.6%. Burnout from too much time commitment was identified as a major contributing factor.
That’s an avoidable consequence if sports organizations exercised better reasoning, and parents put their foot down and prioritized their child’s best interests.
The blurring of traditional sports season boundaries is a new hazard on the youth athletics landscape resulting from emerging trends that have turned a formerly fun journey into an unpleasant, never-ending plod. A “jungle,” as one parent described the new........