Problems in Youth Sport Today

Little League Baseball stripped the United States championship from the Chicago Jackie Robinson West team for violating the rule for having players on the team that live outside the geographic area the team represents.  Little League found that that Jackie Robinson West used a falsified boundary map and met with other neighboring Little League districts in Illinois to build a superteam and claim players.  This information was found from Little League Punishes Chicago team

This relates to what we learn in my American in the 21st Century class on February 17th, 2015 because we talked about youth sport and specifically the major problems in youth sport.

The major problems in youth sport today are:

• Overemphasis of winning
• Pressures by significant others to achieve success
• Installing unrealistic goals of stardom or professional status
• Overuse injuries/overtraining/burnout

There is an overemphasis on winning in youth sports and coaches and athletes will do the best they can to win at all costs.  Unfortunately the coaches of the Chicago Jackie Robinson West team chose to cheat in order to win.  This is also unfair to the young players because they are being taught that you have to cheat to win.  We learned in class from the notes that the number one reason kids participate in sport is: to have fun.  What the Jackie Robinson team did goes against why kids want to play sports because they are showing them you play to win, not have fun.  This is only one example that we have heard about, and this kind of thing happens all over the U.S today in youth sport.

Youth sport needs to focus all the benefits of youth sport, which was discussed in class on February 12th, 2015 and those benefits are:

• Develop and maintain fitness
• Preparation for adulthood
• Opportunity to learn values
• Teach interactive skills
• Provide opportunity for leadership

Youth sport helps develop good moral values and skills that can help kids later on in their future.  Youth sport has no place for cheating, and adults that force kids to cheat are only hurting them in the long run.  When kids realize you have to cheat to win and that playing sport is not fun, then there will be a decrease in participation and youth sport will have a negative connotation.  In class we learned that sports help to prepare kids for adulthood.  By teaching them to cheat, kids growing will think it is okay to cheat in sports and in other real life situations.  Coaches and parents need to teach kids the positive aspects such as the ones we learned in class.  Teaching them this will help them to have a positive experience that they can pass down to their kids in the future and will help them to become better people when they are older.  of   I believe what Little League did was right and hopefully it is a message to coaches that youth sport is not just about winning, but it is for fun and other beneficial aspects for young kids.