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It's Only a Game Parents often seek advice from physicians about organized sports. This comes up at the pre-athletic physical examination, when an injury occurs, when walking the sidelines at games, and at PTA meetings and cocktail parties. What general advice should we give? Having fought the sports wars as athlete, parent, spectator, coach, and physician, I have a few suggestions. First, organized sports has many positive aspects. They include stimulating intense early aspirations (usually enthralling, though unrealistic, fantasies), learning teamwork, seeing the rewards of practice and hard work, channeling adolescent drives, practicing sportsmanship (win or lose), providing a mutual parent-child interest, developing lifelong habits of physical exercise, occasionally providing a college scholarship, and rarely making a fabulously wealthy career. These should be contrasted with a warning about the negatives when the experience gets out of control. I find that parents are most concerned about serious injury in sports. Below the high school varsity level, however, serious injuries are exceedingly rare; the lacerations, abrasions, tendonitis, sprains, and fractures almost always heal quickly and, ironically, often are recalled with pride. At the varsity level, proper preseason conditioning and weight training can minimize the risk. Organized sports can have far more serious negatives, however, which are less often anticipated. If parents don’t help maintain balance, sports can crowd out activities with important complementary benefits, such as scouting, church youth groups, family vacations, music practice, and school work. This can be a bigger problem for more gifted athletes working toward scholarships and playing on developmental club teams or perennial high school championship teams. Sometimes a child’s degree of "athleticism" (coordination, instinct, and aggressiveness) does not match that of a very athletic parent. Role modeling, coaching, and encouragment can provide a positive parent-child bond and can fine-tune natural talents, but fundamental change above a child's natural gifts rarely results. Excessive pressure on a child to exceed natural gifts or interests may injure the child and the parent-child relationship. Parents should be warned about the “myth of winning”—that sports is about winning and that winning is everything. On the contrary, a major value of sports is that it provides an early laboratory for children to learn the connection between outcome and preparation, without life-altering consequences. Some losing is necessary. Although athletes should be focused on winning, parents should struggle to remain detached from the outcome, instead providing nurture and perspective after losses as well as wins. It is surprising how often one sees aggressive parents loudly criticizing their child’s play while their team is losing, or scolding them right after a loss for not being aggressive enough or for fumbling or striking out at a critical moment. This is when sport ceases to be play. As a coach I always encouraged parents to be only positive and supportive in the emotional moments immediately after a game (or at least just be quiet), and to bring up specific coaching points a day or two later when the emotion has cooled and constructive interaction is possible. My most important advice to parents and athletes is what my
mother has preached to two generations of athletes, “Don’t
count on sports for your happiness.” After all, few teams
win all the time, few athletes play as well as they dream, most
kids spend their share of time on the bench, injuries happen
at the worst time, referees and umpires really are blind, coaches
are unfair, all athletic careers end. Teaching children (and
their parents) to recall this aphorism at the low moments helps
maintain the right perspective.
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Medical Society. |
