AIBU Sporting tournaments and Children

[Prettydress]

My children take part in a well known but minority sport. They compete at a national level and train several hours a day so have a lot of endurce/are very fit.

However, when they compete nationally in the UK often the tournaments run from 9am - 9pm. It's a very mentally intense sport and very physical when done correctly. Most probably like fencing but it's not that.

An example is during a day they will play 18 matches, about 20 mins each with the pattern 20 min match, break for 20 mins whilst team mate plays, 2 x 20 min back to back matches and then a break for 20 mins whilst team mate plays . Lunch will be grabbing a sandwich between matches and they often won't have dinner until 9pm.

I'm used to it, but it actually dawned on me today that it's actually really wrong. We're taking 12 year olds plus.

Does this happen in other sports?

I can't speak for all sports, but that sounds extreme to me.

I thought most National Sports Associations would be much tighter on child welfare.

Writing it down, it does seem very extreme. It's just always what happens 😕

How often are the tournaments?

This particular one is annual. The general more local ones tend to run from 9-5 but same pattern of play and often no scheduled lunch break.

I used to play a similar sport. I’m guessing teams of 2 and both play both plus a doubles?

Presumably you only keep on playing as long as you win? Or does it carry on all day for everyone?

Yes totally. Two individual games and a doubles.

Local tournaments are normally a group round and a knock out so you only play all day if you do well. Usually there are two age categories a day so you'll start all over in the afternoon.

This particular annual UK tournment is a round Robin so everyone plays until 7 or 8ish and then there's sometimes extra decider matches hence they are still playing at 9:30pm 😩

That seems harsh to have to play at 9pm to find out if you are 33rd out of 34 or 34th out of 34!

Lol, that would be harsh. It's a group competition and there's 12 teams. I'm not there so not quite sure but they are playing for 4th-6th place I think.

Karate comps are just like that too.

They need to run the group competition over two days, dont they.

My daughter does dance and the last comp she did was from 8.30am-7pm, she danced about 10 times including call backs and finals but the dances themselves are only about 3 or 4 minutes each. She is much younger than your kids but the ages at the comp go right up to 17 so it's the same regardless of age.

They are long days but she absolutely loves it so it's worth doing, I don't know if I would be happy with her training for several hours each day though, that seems too much

Oh really. I just always wonder how they thinknthye are going to get the best from them when they are suttely exhausted. Often the first day of competing starts at 3 so the kids will be travelling all day from various part of the country and they will compete until 8 or 9 so they might have been up at 4am to catch a flight, compete for half a day and in bed at 10 or 11.

It's really not right is it.

My daughter dances and her competitions can be from 8am to 11pm.
They're very looooong days.

She loves it though.

11pm gosh.

Yes my kids love it. They never complain. But I think the organisers shouldn't put them in that position.

It's just so prevalent in the sport that no one questions it. The players, organisers or parents.

But it's not normal.

The training for several hours a day is what the kids enjoy the most. It's good for their mental and physical health, gives them structure to their time after school and keeps them off screens.

I personally would be happy for them just to do training but they want to do tournaments.

Hmm.

I'm a chaperone for children in the theatre, but I think some sporting events do come under similar regulations.
Roughly for age 9+ the regulations are:
No longer than 9.5 hours at the place of performance.
Earliest to latest: 7am-11pm
Max period of continual performance 2.5 hours
Max total performance time 5 hours

if they are there for more than 4 hours but less than 8 hours, they must have one meal break of 45 minutes and at least one break of 15 minutes. If present at the place of performance or rehearsal for 8 hours or more, they must have the breaks stated above plus another break of 15 minutes.

Having said that, I used to play tennis tournaments. You could be expected to play up to 2 singles and a doubles in one day, I think, and you could only request 30 minutes between games.

It didn't happen often that you were asked to play multiple in a day, and often this was because you'd entered more than one age category, so you kind of had chosen that possibility. But there were days when I had 3 matches, and would have been on court for 6-8 hours.
Having said that, I loved doing it, and loved the feeling of playing all day.
We used to go down to the courts and play all day when we weren't playing tournaments, so it didn't feel that unreasonable as a child.