Children should be encouraged to stay in sport?

[pontipinemum]

I'm not saying 'everyone gets a medal' sort of situation. But everything should be done to encourage kids to stay in sport, I think the stat's for girls are even worse.

I am just remembering back to when I stopped going to a proper running/ athletics club, it was a really good club with several people that either made team GB or got well on at national level. The coach left a voice mail on our landline that I heard. I was 13yrs old. She said something along the lines of 'pontipine is useless, she will never win anything, she is too slow." it was a very nasty message.

Apparently the coach thought I was talking about her behind her back or that's what I heard from someone else anyway. I didn't talk about her behind her back!

I never went back I was too embarrassed. I knew I was never going to be amazing but I was OK and I enjoyed it. Now I am not saying that event changed the trajectory of my life but I never went back to running

YABU - If kids are bad tell them
YANBU - Encourage them to keep it up regardless

It's very hard to balance it really. I have three boys all of varying abilities , the oldest is 12 now and plays on a number of different teams and at this age it's getting far more competitive and the. Coaches are fielding their best teams and only playing the weaker players when the team are way behind or way ahead. I know it can't me kumbya for ever but it breaks my heart to see boys little faces on the sideline ( even acknowledging that some of them really can barely kick a ball)
I'd love to know what the answer is.

@jetadore I like your style!

Yanbu.
My DD absolutely loves gymnastics. She's never going to be a competition level gymnast but she's good and most importantly she enjoys it so much. Luckily she goes to a lovely class that's welcoming to hobbyists as well as those who want to compete.

Dance has been more fun and successful for fitness for mine, rather than competitive sport.

Ideally there should be both. Fun, accessible sport for everyone and well funded grassroots competitive sport as well. Privately educated athletes are hugely over represented at elite level sport in the U.K: there should be opportunities for talented kids to excel.

Swimming is really poor at this. The whole focus at many clubs is on qualification times and competitive success. Many who don't make it never want to smell chlorine or get wet again - it would be far better to encourage a love of the sport and an approach that means they keep swimming for fitness etc.

I think it is so important to take the focus away from structured competition in schools. In yr 7 they have huge attendance at clubs, and as the kids realise they will never be one of the 6 kids who get to be in matches or whatever they all stop coming. It would be so much better to harness that enthusiasm and keep the momentum.

In adult life, I know many many people involved in sport and basically non of them are high level or successful competitively. They're playing for fitness, for social interaction, to role model for their children etc. We should see that the vast majority of teens will not want to be pro and not act as though that is of less value (in a way we don't question for adults).

It depends on the situation.

I played tennis at a reasonable level as a junior. I knew people who were playing 8 hours a day at 12yo. I knew someone who there were genuine Wimbledon hopes at 10yo. They all put huge amounts of time and money into it at the expense of schooling and everything else. None of them even made it on a low level.

Now in all these cases by 13yo, it was very unlikely they were going to make it. In the case of the Wimbledon hopeful, I beat her at 15yo (and I was never anywhere near that league). But they were still being told that they might make it.
I don't know at what point they realised they weren't, but I know almost all of them haven't played since teen level. So being told that they were good, hasn't led into a livelong love of sport.

I played tennis for fun. Yes, I did have matches and enjoyed them (for the most part!). You can have sport for fun and enjoy some competitive side to it. I still play.

So perhaps turning it round. Maybe what your coach was trying to say, albeit not very nicely, was that maybe you'd be happier at a club where there were fewer top level players and you were middle of the road rather than at the bottom. Yes, she should have put it better, maybe she would if she'd known you would hear it.

But you could take it up, or another sport, now if you want. I know people who have taken up tennis in retirement and done very well.
I'm a very slow runner, and I'm sure if I'd tried athletics then I'd have stopped because I am really bad. But I can play a decent game of tennis. However I know runners who can't play tennis for love nor money. Find your sport.

Without competitive sport from a reasonably young age, it is unlikely you will produce any world champions in most sports. So you do need to keep that side of it. What you need to go alongside it is fun stuff as well. This is not always going to be competitive sport. However much someone enjoys playing football they will not enjoy being beaten every week.
Swimming is an ideal option as the whole family can join in and have fun. Orienteering is fun, geo caching, walking a coastal path, dance, ice skating, roller skating, go ape, 5 aside football, game of rounders in the local park, Frisbee

My DD (16) hates sport. We have that in common. I don't understand the competitiveness of it. She says she can't be arsed with it. We both hate PE because of it's focus on winning. If the focus was more on keeping fit, mindfulness and nutrition then we both might have stuck with it.

I like to cycle as a hobby, just touring, and my daughter loves to hike/ramble. It's enough.

Where I live the athletics clubs that don’t incentivise widening participation suffer when the kids get to 15-ish and the majority drop out. No one left to be in their u17/ u20 cross country teams.

running is a great sport for the non-competitive adult - there’s a wide range of abilities, lots of little races, parkrun etc and lots of clubs for joe joggers, the sport does have to cost anything, you don’t have to join a club if you don’t want to. It’s not the same for kids though. There aren’t such a wide range of races for kids- most 10ks etc are 18+. The few races there are are a bit more serious. It’s a shame that the club couldn’t be more accommodating.

Exactly this. Why are there so many adult options for non-competive sport and taking something up from scratch, but as a teenager it's hard to find anything unless you want to be in a league and, often, need to have started the sport at a relatively young age.

Swimming is really poor at this. The whole focus at many clubs is on qualification times and competitive success. Many who don't make it never want to smell chlorine or get wet again - it would be far better to encourage a love of the sport and an approach that means they keep swimming for fitness etc

@FishFingerWrap I agree that swimming is particularly rubbish for this. My background is swimming and I put my DS in early thinking it was a good idea. He was already doing 8hrs a week by 8yo and even then it was all about the times. I remembered how brutal it is and pulled him out for sailing. I have been delighted at how they treat the young sailors as children and mainly focus on developing them as people.

And this why I make it clear to ds that all of his sport hobbies (he has a few) are for fun and fitness only. He had always known that and has a healthy attitude towards his sports. He does swimming club at school (they aren’t about competitions), he’s just started boxing club, he does football training with a local club, hasn’t made the team (always on the bench) but doesn’t care. Oh and the latest is paddle tennis! He’s all about learning skills and having fun. You have to just choose wisely what kind of clubs/ organisations they join. He’s lucky that his school offer a lot of sporty after school stuff.

@2reefsin30knots, interesting to read a sailor's perspective; my DS is a windsurfer and it's just the same, with a lovely supportive community. Same governing body and pathway, but also plenty of recreational opportunities!

We get him second/third-hand kit. He's off to the world championships just after his GCSEs this summer, but there's never been any pressure to compete and lots of the kids at his club don't. (The kids' programme starts at local level with something called "T15" if this intrigues anyone enough to google, and most clubs have kit for members to borrow.)

The only problem is that races (and training for regional teams if people do that level) are all over, so there's a lot of travel.

I believe there needs to be more focus on less traditional sports along with the need to be part of a club to take part. My DC hate football/rugby/tennis/cricket but will skateboard and BMX for hours on end and love basketball. They also don't want it organising for them, organised fun is their idea of hell! School PE for them is being forced to play football for 75% of lessons, no fun at all for them! They would love a lesson doing wheeled sports.

I also hated PE and sports at school, I did love when we were allowed to do trampolining, aerobics or dance but it wasn't often as wasn't seen as 'proper' sport.

Encouraging children to move for enjoyment and fun is so important for building long lasting habits that will keep them active into adulthood.

Can’t there be two tracks? One for achievement athletes and one for hobbyists. I was very much put off PE at school by the focus on team games and winning, I hated it. I much more enjoyed trampolining and gymnastics, was never any good but it was more fun than the ritual humiliation of being picked last for teams for games I had no interest in playing anyway. Perhaps if it had been more for fun I might have summoned up a bit more enthusiasm.

Being expected to wear shorts or gym skirts was also ridiculous for teenage girls with changing bodies and surprise periods, leggings or sweat pants would have been so much better.

These days I’m pretty active, but only doing the things I want. I will never play a team sport again and that thought makes me very happy.

We have a completely warped idea of sport and exercise in this country. Of course children should be active, either through sport or something else. Moving your body regularly, exercising your heart and lungs, is the foundation of healthy growth, long term health protection and mental well-being.

Instead we treat PE as punishment, sport as something for elite athletes and exercise as only something to do to look good.

However, sport is chronically underfunded: facilities are lacking and volunteers are of variable quality so it's not surprising people are turned off.

@PhotoDad 👋 We are also off to World Championships in July.

Agreed, there is a huge amount of travel involved in the pathway. However you look at it, it is really expensive too. DS has about 10ks worth of kit (2 boats) and one weekend of either 'open' or squad training is over £100 before travel etc. So, although there is a really lovely, healthy atmosphere once you are in, the costs mean that participation in pathway stuff is not inclusive.

Club sailing can be done super cheaply though.

Completely agreed, @2reefsin30knots! Our local club has a free-for-members basic campsite for those who are staying for a weekend (and that's not unusual). At club level, watersports are a wonderful and cheap sport/activity. You do need to spend a lot of money if DC get into the competitive side of things. I don't know how that compares to other sports, to be honest, and I do worry about how that is a barrier to entry. (And good luck to your sailor! Are you expected to take your own boats to championships? At least we can throw boards on top of a car without trailers etc.)

The answer is to stop allowing coaches to treat children that way. Have football for children for fun not to feed the egos of grown men. Especially when you get to teen ages where some boys fall behind purely because puberty and being stronger and more athletic comes later for them. As long as the children are attending training and giving their best a childrens coach should be working to get the best out of the children he already has in the team.

The club should be loyal to the boys that have been in the team for years and only bring in new players if they have a space.

In Rugby all the team must play a certain percentage of the game (half minimum I believe). While I'm sure there are some clubs who just don't take the really weak players, the club my DD plays at allows any child to play as soon as they are safe to do so (i.e have the basics of throwing, catching and tackling sorted)

there should be clubs that....

So what are you all doing to create such clubs, get them running, make them attractive, recruit members and volunteers, conform with safeguarding, insurance, etc? Tell us about the clubs you run like that NOW for children, adults and anyone. Share the benefit of your experience.

I was hopeless at sport at school, but fortunately did dance (badly) which at least kept me going and made things like aerobics and step in my 20s seem accessible. I also got into DoE, fell in love with hiking, and learned how to swim which has also opened up opportunities itself, and the realisation that I can learn new, random things.
Fortunately those positives have meant that the ritual humiliation of PE did not define my attitude to being active in adulthood.

With my background, I got my DCs doing a range of sports early, and try to keep it to a participation level rather than competitive level. My dyspraxic 12yo still continues with swimming lessons, more for the routine of a weekly structured swim than anything else. He also continues with karate and parkruns. Because he's fit and can run, he's less of a liability in school team sports than I was and that helps cover some of his skill gaps and avoid the ritual ridicule that I had to put up with.

Parkrun is a brilliant illustration to the importance of participation over prowess. I've been lapped by elite athletes, but unlike in PE, they don't goad slower participants. Generally I run mid-pack, but if I go slow or walk for whatever reason, it's about the joy of participating not the athletic pace.
At junior parkrun, we watch the regulars grow up over the years. The congratulating is equal between the first and final participants. The timed nature means you can be competitive with yourself or other regulars, but there's no exclusion or not being good enough. That's important for being active for life.

There is a big gap in opportunities for participation sport for non-competitive older children who aren't inclined or don't meet the standards for competitive sports.

Should point out that much sport at youth level is volunteer run. Many of the volunteers have never actually played the sport. If you want more teams, volunteer - don’t wait for someone else to do it. It’s not just coaching - there are dozens of other jobs that need doing too.

I can see the OP's point to a degree, sport can be enjoyed and doesn't need to be competitive, you can have a kick about, enjoy the experience of a half marathon, do stuff for a personal challenge etc. Without feeling the need to win.

However, I think there are different clubs out there, I was a club runner and involved in two very different clubs, one was very social, and they loved the races but there was never any focus on performance, it was a good day out with food and a pint afterwards. The other was more performance-based, races were trained for specifically and training was structured/traditional etc. Two very different environments the first club I loved and my running really progressed, as there was no pressure and the focus was on enjoyment, the other I hated, I worried in case I ran poorly in a race and let the team down, I felt I had to try as hard as I could in training and got worse due to trying too hard, got injured more. I stopped training with them in the end and began enjoying running again.

A lot of it comes down to finding the right club.