You Can't Make Us "Play" -- We Want to Play!

The Pioneer Press's Bob Shaw did a good job analyzing the decline in high school sports participation in Sunday's paper. Since its peak in the early 1980s, boys' participation has fallen from over 50% to 24%, and girls' from 38% to 20%.

Shaw interviewed parents, coaches, kids and experts and found that a combination of hyper-competitiveness, unreasonable time commitments, expense, and other attractions (like video games) are deflating the school sports juggernaut.

As I've written before, the absurdity of the schedules was a major factor, as was the increased expectations of kids' abilities, and possibly budget cuts: Intramurals have evaporated, leaving only inter-school sports.

I admit, the article got my dander up when Shaw quoted the president of the state high school sport league: "Kids not involved with sports are going to struggle in adult life, in professional and personal relationships." He went on, "They have not learned how to deal with winning and losing, working out conflict, adapting to their surroundings or problem-solving."

That piece of outrageousness was followed by this: "I took a lot of life lessons from sports. I want my kids to learn what I learned," said by a Stillwater father and hockey coach.

Excuse me, guys, but those of us who didn't participate in sports learned how to work in groups just fine. And it's pure narcissism to think, "I learned it this way, therefore it's the only way to learn it." Understandable, I guess, but wrong nevertheless.

Like a good reporter, though, Shaw went on to balance these narrow-minded comments with quotes from actual present-day students. "What you can do in sports, you can do in clubs," he quotes a Champlin Park 15-year-old. Shaw writes, "She hones her leadership and negotiation skills...as a member of the student council and the debate club."

Kids drop out of sports at the magic age of 14, just at the beginning of high school. According to John Tauer, a St. Thomas psych professor who researches sports motivation,

Typically, the kids have been working for years and have spent thousands of dollars for camps, training sessions and tournaments, [Tauer] said.

Then the ax falls. They get cut from the varsity squad.

"Parents get upset. They vent more. They expected more," siad Tauer. "Now the 14-year-old feels like a failure. He says, 'Why the hell would I want to do this?" "

Even kids who make it through high school sports don't continue with the sport after high school, another clue that love of the game is not what's motivating their participation. According to the article, participation in "adult basketball leagues ha[s] plummeted by two-thirds... Adult softball teams are down to by half."

Hard as it may be to believe, some parents seem to think sports are a "pathway to scholarships and maybe even a high-salary professional career. [Parents] invest time and money and expect a return on that investment," despite the fact that there are many more academic scholarships than sports scholarships available.

This sounds like the exact opposite of the unconditional love that children need from their parents. The child's athletic performance is something the parent has paid for, a commodity, and when the child no longer wants to continue, the parents feel as though they haven't gotten their money's worth.

Shaw ends the article with a series of critics' points, and finally with this: " 'Parents have messed it up,' said parent and coach Uppgren. 'We are all guilty.' "