Giving the young a sporting chance

Parents going to extremes to raise their developing athletes

Clay Latimer, Rocky Mountain News

Published December 16, 2005 at midnight

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In Highlands Ranch, a 9-year-old boy has special tutors in baseball, basketball and football and a certified athletic trainer who videotapes his workouts.

In Bradenton, Fla., a Broomfield teenager practices basketball five hours a day at a sports factory that produces pro and Olympic stars.

In Littleton, two dozen youngsters start the school day with a 90-minute soccer class, part of the experimental curriculum at Jefferson County's first charter school.

In Thornton, a mother downloads the computerized results of a novel test that has measured her daughter's potential in 43 sports.

And in Monument, a father writes a $2,500 check to a company that will scour the nation for a college scholarship for his daughter.

Welcome to the high-tech, hypercompetitive world of children's sports, a bustling subculture where time-starved parents chauffeur their booked-up children from one activity to another, spend thousands of dollars a year chasing often elusive dreams and sacrifice their own social lives for child's play.

"Childhood is no longer just a preparation for adulthood but a full performance in its own right," said Dr. Alvin Rosenfeld, author of The Over-Scheduled Child: Avoiding the Hyper-Parenting Trap.

Early start

The chase for the prize begins early and accelerates quickly. Swimming at age 3. Soccer at 4. T-ball at 5. Private instruction at 6. Travel teams that crisscross state lines for regional and national tournaments at 9. Professional coaches. Gleaming equipment. Nutritionists. Psychologists. Full-time sports academies. Private training centers. Marketing firms for college scholarships. Personal Web sites. Games, tournaments, clinics, summer camps, cutthroat competition, endless seasons — in one sport.

Nurturing a child's natural talent and trying to uncover concealed ones long have been considered traits of good parenting, but not taking advantage of every opportunity is practically considered child neglect today.

Parents are leaping into the game in a big way. In Connecticut, a father hired a dollar-a-minute swimming "stroke coach" to strengthen his 7-year-old son's freestyle. In Tacoma, Wash., a family couldn't afford a Christmas tree and presents because of the cost of club sports and private instructors. In Seattle, a parent was overheard telling his daughter she had cost him $40,000 because she had played poorly in front of an Ivy League coach at a basketball clinic.

"Parenting is now America's most competitive sport," Rosenfeld said. "I think we'll look back and say: 'What were we doing? What were we thinking?' "

Others think Americans will look back and see a time when young athletes pursued their dreams in a family atmosphere that encouraged the development of important values.

"Maybe I'm a little defensive, but I think sports have gotten a real bad rap," said Karen O'Keeffe, whose three sons play for the Colorado Rush soccer program. "People say it's so over the top. But life is over the top. For us, soccer can be a microcosm of life and the values that you need for life — how to handle losing, how to handle winning, how to handle the politics that come into play."

An economic decision

There also is a more pragmatic reason for parents' around-the-clock interest in youth sports.

According to a recent U.S. Department of Education report, the cost of attending a public four-year university rose by 22 percent from 2001-02 to 2004-05, and tuition and fees for in-state students at those institutions grew by 33 percent.

Once a rite of passage, public schools, much less private colleges, seem like a fading possibility for many parents unless a child earns a scholarship.

"Parents feel they've lost control," said Jay Coakley, a University of Colorado at Colorado Springs sociology professor who has written extensively on youth sports. "The world has become increasingly complicated. It used to be that your father could kind of get you in the union or whatever. It used to be that your father would be your advocate.

"But fathers really can't do that now. So what do you do? You try to get your children in the best possible school. But that's going to cost $18,000 a year.

"The next best alternative? For $5,000, you can get them in a darn good club program, where you can develop skills that will help (them) get in a better college. At the least, you'll be able to network with people who are socially acceptable — and develop a résumé that looks good — not just for college, but for life afterwards."

The drive for scholarship money has created a ripple effect, leading to:

• The rise of select — or travel — teams, which provide professional-level coaching, elite competition and the opportunity to play in national tournaments.

• The emergence of specialized training and instruction — it once was the exclusive domain of college and professional players — a $4.1 billion-a-year industry that now routinely reaches down to children.

Former Brigham Young quarterback David Castleton, as a 14-year-old, had separate trainers and coaches for conditioning, basketball, football, speed and mental toughness, according to the Los Angeles Times.

One-on-one tutors routinely charge $50 or more per hour. Dave Hajek, the Colorado Rockies' minor-league hitting instructor, gives hitting lessons to children in Colorado Springs and Lakewood and charges $20 to $80 per hour.

"I don't remember (instruction) ever as a kid," he said. "When I was a kid we played baseball, basketball. We played football outside in the streets. It wasn't year-round. There is a need in this state because of cold weather. Guys who come to pro ball out of (Colorado) are a lot more behind in development."

• The trend toward specialization in a single sport at a younger age.

"I always say if you don't go select by age 10, you should probably just stay rec," Zeph Badii, an 11-year youth coach, now with the Dallas Texans Soccer Club, told The Dallas Morning News in 2004.

Richard Lustberg, a sports psychologist who runs the Web site, www.psychologyofsports.com, believes recruiting young children for specific sports might be even more out of control.

"When are they going to sign a kid out of kindergarten?" he asked.

• An increase in sports-related stress fractures, ligament tears and tendinitis among 5- to 14-year-olds.

Before 2000, Dr. James Andrews, considered the nation's best in ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction, performed about 10 of the elbow operations each year on athletes 18 or younger. By 2003, that number had increased to 50. The success of the procedure, popularly known as "Tommy John surgery," with pro players has wrongly convinced young athletes it's an enhancement rather than a repair, Andrews said.

• An increase in the burnout rate. More than 70 percent of children drop out of sports by 13, according to the nonprofit National Alliance for Youth Sports, the majority because they're weary of pressure from parents and coaches. Coakley tells of a 9-year->old swimmer who told his father, "Dad, I've decided to retire."

• A rise in violence, according to the National Alliance for Youth Sports.

Thomas Junta, of Reading, Mass., upset about rough play in his son's youth hockey practice, beat another father to death at a rink in 2000. The victim's son was involved in the rough play with Junta's son.

In June 2001, in San Juan Capistrano, Calif., about 30 adults became involved in a post-match altercation after an under-14 soccer tournament game. The fallout: Three adults were arrested, one parent and two soccer coaches were banned for life and two boys teams were disbanded.

The cause? Sheriff's department reports said an assistant coach for the winning team allegedly tried to pick a fight with a player from the losing team.

And in September 2003, in Toronto, at a youth hockey game, a father shook the face mask his daughter was wearing. He was charged with assault.

Moving away from schools

A century ago, children turned to public schools for fun and games, a trend that continued until the mid-1920s, when teachers rebelled against sports in the schoolyard, saying they had become overemphasized.

Pop Warner football, Little League baseball and civic groups and churches filled the void — a model that worked through the 1970s. But the playing field already had started to change. In 1964, the American Youth Soccer Organization was founded, creating an option for children who didn't fit the traditional football-basketball-baseball mold. The soccer explosion coincided with the expansion of suburbs and the emergence of baby-boom parents with their obsessive focus on child-rearing, and with Title IX, the federal gender-equity legislation passed in 1972 that made college scholarships available to women.

As options for children have increased during the past 20 years, so has the determination of parents to find any edge — academic, social, athletic — for their children. At Harvard, the admissions office wrote a paper expressing concern that students "seem like dazed survivors of some bewildering lifelong boot camp."

"What you're talking about is fear," Rosenfeld said. "Not fear of drugs or crime or other (societal factors). But fear of failure as a parent. That somehow you're going to be a lousy parent and that your kids are going to suffer, and that you'll have no one else to blame if you don't follow this certain model. I think the whole thing is anxiety-driven."

Education, development

In the 1980s, educational and developmental toys — mobiles, books, tapes, videos — flooded the market; Sylvan Learning Center had opened its doors to moms and dads who hoped to improve their children's grades and study habits; and SAT preparatory courses burst upon the scene.

A decade later, these trends trickled down to sports. In 1999, Velocity Sports Performance opened a training center in Marietta, Ga., marketing to parents who wanted their children to develop into faster, quicker more explosive athletes.

Velocity's director and co-founder is Rich Kissane, a former executive with Sylvan.

Meanwhile, coaches developed the SPARQ (Speed, Power, Agility, Reaction and Quickness) rating — an SAT test for potential college players.

Jamie Carey, a Horizon High School graduate who played college basketball for Stanford and Texas and plays professionally for the Connecticut Sun and Colorado Chill, has seen the best and worst.

"Some of my summer days were the best — getting to travel and see so many cities and states. I was fortunate. Basketball took me overseas. I went to Paris and Russia and places I would have never gotten to go otherwise," she said.

"Basketball taught me so many things — how to strive and work hard, how to be independent. All of that is positive. It's just a matter of being able to keep perspective."

But she also sees a lot of children in danger of losing their childhood to sports.

"And that's unfortunate, because it's a great time of life," she said. "The line keeps getting redefined every year. It's just an obsession.

"I think it's probably understated how much parents push. It's really sad, it's really unfortunate. People get burned out when they're constantly pushed to do something they don't want to do. I saw a lot of friends who didn't make it through as college players because it became work instead of fun."

In 2003, the Johnson County Museum of History in Kansas presented an exhibit, The Perfect Child, which traced the history of child rearing in America through seven eras, beginning with colonial times, when parents relied on the Bible as a governing force.

The final exhibit was titled The Regimented Child: (1970-Present) and included a mannequin of a 5-year-old, draped in a soccer club jersey.

latimerc@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-2596

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