Now imagine offering a few thousand dollars, at most, for the entire season that may last 3-4 months.

How many qualified applicants would you expect?  Probably not a lot — and those that you do attract may not always be the best candidates based on the high demands and low pay of the job.  Welcome to the increasingly difficult world of hiring high school coaches.

For as long as schools have offered sports, schools have relied on dedicated individuals willing to sacrifice enormous amounts of time and energy for the opportunity to coach young athletes.  But in 2026, that traditional arrangement is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain.

According to a 2026 National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) article, some schools now find it difficult, if not nearly impossible, to attract applicants for coaching vacancies.  Simply advertising positions within a school district may no longer be enough.  The problem isn’t necessarily that people have lost their passion for coaching, but instead the demands of the position have grown while the rewards (particularly financial compensation) have not kept pace.

Today’s coaches are expected to do considerably more than teach sport skills, organize practices, and oversee games.  Coaches are responsible for parent communication, offseason training activities, athlete skill and strength development, administrative requirements,completing required first aide and mental health training, and keeping up with all youth sport trends, concerns, and issues.  And, of course, there’s also the pressure to win.

…some schools now find it difficult, if not nearly impossible, to attract applicants for coaching vacancies. 

A 2026 Coach & Athletic Director survey found that 80% of responding coaches expressed at least moderate concern about finding quality assistant coaches, while 71% expressed concern about increased workloads and pressure.  These challenges create an interesting psychological contradiction that deserves attention.  We routinely celebrate coaching as a labor of love, something coaches should feel lucky to do and honored by taking minimal money in return.  We admire individuals who give their time because they care about young people and enjoy teaching a sport.  But somewhere along the way, have we become so accustomed to their sacrifices that we’ve forgotten coaching is actually work?  Often, this is precisely the case.

Consider the coach challenge of today’s athletic director.  Schools want experienced, knowledgeable, committed coaches who communicate effectively, demonstrate integrity, develop athletes, and build successful programs — but what happens when very few qualified individuals apply?  When this occurs, athletic directors have to become increasingly flexible about experience, availability, staffing arrangements, and traditional expectations.  In increasingly more cases, they find themselves recruiting individuals who they might not have considered for a coach hire in previous generations.

Importantly, flexibility shouldn’t mean compromising standards involving student safety, ethical conduct, or appropriate behavior.  But it may require reconsidering how much responsibility one individual can reasonably assume, or how much the AD (or another senior coach) may be needed to guide and supervise the new coach.

There’s also a generational question worth considering.  Are younger adults less committed to coaching, or are they simply more willing to establish boundaries around their time, careers, and families?  Someone who declines a coaching position because it interferes with family responsibilities isn’t selfish or lacking dedication, they may simply be making a reasonable decision about what they can afford to sacrifice.

Perhaps the problem isn’t that we have fewer people who care about young athletes, but that we have created coaching positions that increasingly depend on extraordinary personal sacrifice — and still very low pay relative to job expectations.

Final thoughts

With fewer quality coaches pursuing school coaching vacancies, student athletes are left with mediocre coaches — if even a coach at all.  There is no argument that the job is demanding and the pay is low, and if schools are going to continue to offer quality sports to kids these concerns must be addressed.  There are many adults committed to helping kids by coaching them in sports, but we need to properly address their concerns rather than rely exclusively on their dedication and altruism.

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For those of us who have loved college football for decades, there’s something increasingly sad about watching the sport change so dramatically of late.  College football once had a very unique quality that made it different from almost every other sport: Every game seemed to matter.  A September upset could, and often did, destroy national championship aspirations.  A November rivalry was a game circled on the schedule a year in advance and could define an entire season.  Sometimes a single loss was enough to change the college football landscape.

That uncertainty created extraordinary anticipation.  Saturdays weren’t simply opportunities to watch football games, they were annual events with enormous emotional consequences.

Now think about a new, 24-team playoff.  A powerhouse school loses two games, perhaps even three, and still makes the postseason.  A highly anticipated rivalry ends in defeat, but both teams advance anyway.  The games still count, of course, but do they carry the same weight?

Psychologically, part of what makes an experience special is its scarcity.  When opportunities are limited, we tend to value them more.  When something becomes increasingly available, even extraordinary experiences (i.e. two storied college football programs playing) can gradually feel ordinary.  College football seems determined to test that principle.

We now have more postseason opportunities, more nationally televised games, and more playoff football than ever before.  Yet I wonder whether all that additional football is making the sport more exciting — or simply making it more routine?

There’s also the concern of fan fatigue.  People have limited time, attention, and emotional energy.  When nearly every weekend offers another supposedly monumental matchup, how long before the word monumental loses its meaning?  Can every game really be the greatest game ever?!

Even sports gambling adds an interesting wrinkle.  More playoff games mean more opportunities to wager, and a relatively unremarkable matchup can suddenly feel important when money is riding on the outcome.  But there’s something troubling about that distinction.  College football once made games meaningful because of what was at stake on the field.  Increasingly, we’re finding other ways to manufacture that excitement.

So here we are now with a 24 team playoff system that looks far different from the original BCS era of just two teams, or even the 4-team and current 12-team playoff model.  More teams, but also more potential changes — and not all will be welcome changes.  Another conference realignment.  Another expanded playoff.  Another disrupted rivalry.  Another tradition quietly disappearing.

Fans complain, but eventually will adjust.  We continue watching because we love our schools, our teams, and the personal memories associated with them.  But adapting to something doesn’t necessarily mean embracing it, and continuing to watch doesn’t necessarily mean enjoying it as much as we once did.

Final thoughts

Maybe the saddest part of college football’s endless expansion isn’t that the people running the sport have forgotten what made it special — it’s that the fans haven’t.  Fans remember when a Saturday afternoon could make or break a season, when a rivalry loss could haunt the program for a year, and when competing for a national championship was truly extraordinary.  Fans will  probably keep watching, cheering, and remembering what college football used to feel like even as the playoffs expand and regular season games essentially meaningless, but it would be nice to see some decision-makers weigh factors beyond added revenue when messing with an established good thing.

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Yet there’s often one remarkably simple difference between the people who achieve what they set out to do and those who don’t.  One group actually does what the other group talks about doing.

The secret to success: taking action

If people know what they want and what they need to do, why do so many never take the first step?  Psychologists have long studied what’s known as the intention-behavior gap, the disconnect between what people intend to do and what they actually do.  We know exercise is beneficial to our health, saving money is wise, and pursuing meaningful goals can improve the quality of our lives.  Yet knowing something is worthwhile doesn’t necessarily translate into action.

One explanation involves the psychological comfort of planning.  Thinking about a goal, researching possibilities, discussing ideas, and imagining future success can create a satisfying sense of progress.  We feel productive because we’re mentally engaged with something important.  Unfortunately, mental preparation can sometimes become a substitute for actually doing anything.

Consider two people who dream of writing a book.  Both have great ideas, similar abilities, and a lot of enthusiasm. One spends years discussing possible topics, researching publishers, and imagining what the finished book might look like.  The other sits down and begins writing, perhaps only a few paragraphs each day.  A year later, one has accumulated a lot of ideas, while the other has accumulated pages.  The difference isn’t necessarily intelligence or talent.  It’s the action step!

Ideas are a dime a dozen.  People who put ideas into action are priceless.

Another psychological barrier involves fear of failure.  As long as our ambitions remain possibilities, they cannot be tested against reality.  The aspiring entrepreneur can imagine a thriving business.  The would-be author can envision a bestseller.  But actually pursuing those ambitions introduces uncertainty, criticism, rejection, and the possibility of disappointment.  This fear of failure can prevent an idea from becoming something tangible — our fear stops the idea from ever developing.

Interestingly, people often wait until they feel sufficiently motivated, confident, or prepared before beginning — yet confidence frequently develops through action rather than preceding it.  Taking a step provides information, experience, and opportunities to improve.  We learn what works, discover what doesn’t, and make adjustments along the way.

This doesn’t mean success is simply a matter of trying harder.  Intelligence, resources, opportunity, health, and circumstances all influence what people can accomplish.  Nor does taking action always guarantee a successful outcome.  However, among individuals with reasonably comparable abilities and opportunities, the willingness to translate intentions into behavior can make an enormous difference.

Perhaps most importantly, action doesn’t require extraordinary accomplishments or dramatic changes.  Writing a few paragraphs, taking a short walk, making a phone call, submitting an application, or making that first trip to the gym may seem insignificant.  But repeated small actions can produce meaningful results over time.  Meanwhile, even the most impressive intentions accomplish little when they remain intentions.

Final thoughts

Perhaps we spend too much time wondering what successful people possess that others don’t.  We often assume successful people are smarter, more talented, more confident, or somehow better equipped to achieve their goals.  Sometimes that’s true, but often the difference is considerably less mysterious upon closer inspection.  The successful people we know started, took a chance, made mistakes, adjusted, and kept going.  While others continued thinking about what they might do someday, they began discovering what they could accomplish today by taking action.  The distance between wanting something and achieving it isn’t measured by how much we think about it. It’s measured by what we do about it.

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Don’t write off the late bloomers

In youth sports, the tortoises are kids whose athletic abilities emerge more gradually.  These kids may be smaller, physically less mature, or slower to develop the skills that make other young athletes stand out.  Keep in mind these kids aren’t necessarily less talented or less hardworking, they may simply be developing on a different timetable.

Meanwhile, youth sports are filled with hares — we’re talking the physically advanced 9-year-olds who hit baseballs farther, run faster, throw harder, and dominate the competition.  Coaches recognize them immediately, while parents marvel at their abilities watching them from the stands.  These kids are selected for elite teams, celebrated on social media, and sometimes labeled future stars before they’ve even reached middle school.

The problem is that early athletic superiority doesn’t necessarily predict long-term athletic success.

Research on youth athlete development demonstrates that kids of the same chronological age can differ substantially in biological maturity.  A physically advanced 11-year-old may possess considerable advantages in height, strength, and power over a later-developing peer.  By age 16 or 17, however, those differences may have narrowed considerably, or even flipped to where the previous smaller kid is now the bigger kid.

There’s also a psychological consequence to identifying talent prematurely.  When a kid is labeled exceptionally talented, that athlete will likely receive better coaching, more playing time, stronger competition, and greater encouragement.  Meanwhile, the less impressive child usually receives fewer opportunities to develop — if any at all.

Over time, these unequal experiences can create a self-fulfilling prophecy.  The early standout continues improving because of the unlimited opportunities provided, while the late developer falls further behind because those same opportunities were withheld.

Another consideration involves the psychological skills kids develop along the way.  Athletes who cannot rely on superior size or strength (the tortoises) may learn to compensate through persistence, patience, strategic thinking, adaptability, and emotional resilience.  These qualities aren’t always reflected in youth sports statistics, but they can become increasingly valuable as athletes mature into high school.

So how can adults better support the tortoises?

• Recognize improvement, not just performance.  Celebrate skill development, effort, persistence, and progress rather than simply rewarding the biggest, fastest, or most dominant players.
• Provide meaningful opportunities.  Give later-developing athletes quality coaching, appropriate competition, and enough playing time to develop their abilities.
• Avoid premature labels.  Resist categorizing kids as future stars or marginal players when their physical and psychological development is far from complete.
• Keep pathways open.  Create opportunities for kids to continue participating, improving, and moving into higher levels of competition as their abilities develop.
• Encourage patience.  Remind young athletes and their parents that development is rarely linear and that early struggles don’t necessarily predict future limitations.

Of course, not every tortoise eventually catches the hare.  Some early standouts remain exceptional athletes, and hard work alone doesn’t guarantee athletic success.   The point isn’t that late developers are destined to become stars, it’s that we often make judgments about kids long before their development is complete.

Perhaps the greatest concern is what happens to the tortoises who never get the opportunity to finish the race.  These kids are cut from teams, receive limited playing time, become discouraged by constant comparisons, or eventually abandon sports altogether.  Some of these kids might have developed into outstanding athletes.  Others might simply have enjoyed years of meaningful participation had they been given more time and encouragement.  Sadly, they often fall out and never fully benefit from being a part of a sport’s team.

Final thoughts

We devote enormous attention to the extraordinary 8-year-old athlete, the dominant 10-year-old, and the so-called future superstar.  But perhaps we should spend more time celebrating the kids whose accomplishments unfold gradually, through persistence, improvement, and years of dedication.  Youth sports should be less concerned with identifying who’s best today and more committed to helping kids become their best tomorrow.  In the original fable, the tortoise wins because he never gives up.  In today’s youth sports, perhaps the bigger challenge is making sure we don’t give up on the tortoise first.

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Today, that relationship is changing.  As more young athletes pursue travel teams, private clubs, and specialized programs, increasingly more school athletic programs are struggling to attract enough participants.  Teams that once carried full rosters may barely have enough players to make a team today.  With low participation, schools are forced to eliminate teams and/or entire programs, and rarely do they come back.

While the reasons for declining school participation vary, the growing availability of outside athletic opportunities raises an important question: What happens to school culture when students increasingly pursue their athletic identities somewhere else?

A changing landscape with school sports

Psychologically, schools are more than places where children receive academic instruction, they are social communities where students develop friendships, establish identities, and experience belonging to a common environment.  Social identity theory suggests that membership in meaningful groups contributes to how individuals understand themselves — and school athletics have traditionally provided one of the most visible expressions of that collective identity.

Consider a school basketball game against a longtime local rival.  The players on the basketball floor represent their classmates, teachers, families, and community at-large.  Students fill the stands, cheer together, celebrate victories, and share disappointments.  These experiences often create connections among students who otherwise have little interaction.  But what happens when fewer students participate, teams become less competitive, and attendance declines?  The consequences may extend far beyond wins and losses.

A shrinking athletic program can result in fewer opportunities for students to participate, fewer school traditions to celebrate, and fewer occasions for classmates to rally around something they share.  As enthusiasm declines, the incentive to participate may diminish further, potentially creating a cycle in which declining involvement leads to even weaker programs.

Another concern involves school connectedness, the extent to which students feel accepted, supported, and valued within their school community.  Research has consistently associated stronger school connectedness with positive academic, emotional, and behavioral outcomes.  Although athletics represent only one pathway to connectedness, they can provide an important source of shared identity and pride.

Increasingly, some young athletes may feel stronger connections to their private clubs than to the schools they attend.  Their closest teammates attend other schools, and their most meaningful competitions occur miles from home.  Unlike kids who play for their local school, their athletic accomplishments are celebrated primarily within organizations disconnected from their everyday school environment.

This raises a broader concern: Are schools gradually becoming places students attend rather than communities with which they identify?

Of course, travel and club sports can provide tremendous opportunities, and many athletes successfully participate in both school and outside programs.  Declining school participation also has multiple causes, including specialization, costs, changing interests, and school policies.  The issue isn’t whether private athletics are inherently harmful, but whether we adequately appreciate the community-building role school sports have historically played.

Final thoughts

When a school loses an athletic team, it can lose traditions, shared experiences, community involvement, and opportunities for students to feel connected to something larger than themselves.  A varsity letter once represented more than individual achievement; it symbolized belonging to a school and contributing to its identity.  As athletic opportunities increasingly extend beyond school boundaries, perhaps we should ask not only what young athletes are gaining, but what their schools — and the students who remain — may be losing.

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What is the psychology behind why do we do this?  Why are we sometimes so willing to prioritize insignificant details over matters of very important consequence?

Psychological variables impacting our impressions

Psychologically, one explanation involves salience bias, known as our tendency to give disproportionate attention to information that is particularly noticeable, emotionally provocative, or memorable (in other words, the stuff that easily stands out).  An unusual hairstyle immediately captures our attention, while understanding a candidate’s economic proposals requires time, effort, and analysis.  Unfortunately, what grabs our attention isn’t necessarily what deserves it.

Another explanation involves the halo effect and its negative counterpart, the horn effect.  We frequently allow one appealing or unappealing characteristic to influence our overall evaluation of someone.  For example, a well-dressed, charming individual may be perceived as intelligent and competent, while someone with an unusual speaking style may be judged negatively, even when those characteristics mean little, if anything, about their actual abilities.

Perhaps the most interesting explanation involves a psychological process known as attribute substitution.  When confronted with a complicated question, people sometimes unconsciously replace it with an easier one.  For example, instead of asking, “Which candidate’s policies and qualifications best align with my priorities?” we ask, “Which candidate do I like more?”  As you can see, the second question requires substantially less mental effort than the first question.  Unfortunately, we can feel remarkably confident in our conclusions without recognizing that we’ve answered an entirely different question.

Psychology research has uncovered how powerful these superficial impressions can be.  In a 2005 study published in Science, psychologist Alexander Todorov and colleagues found that judgments of political candidates’ competence based solely on facial appearance predicted the winners of nearly 69% of the U.S. Senate races they examined.  Although this doesn’t establish that appearance caused those election outcomes, it clearly demonstrates how strongly superficial impressions can correspond with consequential decisions.

Of course, appearance, communication style, and personality are not always irrelevant.  How someone communicates, responds under pressure, or interacts with others can provide legitimate information about a person’s leadership style and abilities.  The problem arises when relatively minor characteristics (i.e. the color of a candidate’s necktie) become substitutes for examining qualifications, judgment, accomplishments, and substantive positions (i.e. a candidate’s tax proposal)

The ways in which we evaluate people extend well beyond politics and seep into almost every human action we experience.  Employers overlook qualified applicants because of an awkward answer to an interview question.  Patients judge physicians by their bedside manner rather than their medical expertise. Students form impressions of teachers before a single word is said in class.  In each of these examples, the same psychological mistake has occurred: We confuse what is immediately noticeable with what is genuinely important.

Final thoughts

While most of us consider ourselves thoughtful, rational decision-makers, psychology studies show that we may be over-confident in our thinking.  We want to believe our judgments are always grounded in evidence, careful consideration, and common sense — yet something as trivial as an irritating voice or strange haircut can sometimes outweigh information with far greater consequences for our lives.  The challenge isn’t to eliminate first impressions, but to recognize when those impressions are doing the thinking for us.  Before making an important decision, we might ask ourselves a simple question: Am I giving the greatest weight to what actually matters, or merely to what happens to capture my attention?

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Anger is a normal human emotion, and sometimes a necessary one.  But what happens when anger stops being an occasional response to life’s frustrations and becomes a daily way of living?  What are the psychological, physical, and social consequences of spending so much of our life being miserable about the world around us?

We become what we consume…

Psychologically speaking, chronic negativity can become a self-reinforcing pattern.  Through selective attention and confirmation bias, individuals increasingly notice things that validate their negative expectations while ignoring more positive experiences.  If you approach the world expecting to be disappointed, offended, or mistreated, chances are you’ll find plenty of evidence to support those expectations.

Interestingly, anger can also be psychologically rewarding.  Expressing outrage may provide temporary emotional satisfaction, especially when others validate our feelings.  Social media has capitalized on this phenomenon.  for example, post an angry comment, receive dozens of supportive reactions, and the behavior is reinforced.  Before long, expressing outrage can become less about addressing legitimate problems, and more about experiencing the psychological rewards associated with being angry.

And today, we have an unlimited supply of things to be angry about, especially if you regularly cruise around the internet.

Consider how many people begin their mornings scrolling through provocative headlines, political interviews, and super-charged social media posts.  People click on something outrageous, become irritated, read the comments, and become even more angry.  Then they share the offending material with others, perpetuating the cycle.  The irony is quite remarkable — we voluntarily and actively consume material that makes us miserable, then complain about how miserable the world has become.

Unfortunately, the consequences extend beyond momentary frustration.  Research has associated chronic hostility and persistent anger with increased cardiovascular risk, elevated stress responses, poorer emotional well-being, and difficulties in interpersonal relationships.  Constant rumination can also interfere with sleep, concentration, and our ability to enjoy otherwise pleasant experiences.

Perhaps equally troubling is the psychological energy that hatred occupies.  Our attention, time, and emotions are limited resources.  Every hour spent ruminating over somebody we dislike, fighting with strangers online, or stewing on perceived injustices is one less hour for more meaningful and rewarding life experiences.

And sometimes, negativity can even become a part of our identity.  Over time, we morph into the person who is always complaining, criticizing, scapegoating, and outraged.  Our relationships may increasingly revolve around shared grievances, creating social environments where anger is not only accepted, but encouraged.

Of course, there is an important distinction between justified anger and habitual hostility.  Anger can motivate positive change, establish healthy boundaries, and challenge injustice.  The problem emerges when anger becomes our default emotional setting rather than a response to specific circumstances.

Final thoughts

Life inevitably provides legitimate reasons to feel disappointed, frustrated, and angry.  But we also have choices about how much attention and energy we devote to those experiences.  In a world where outrage is constantly manufactured, promoted, and rewarded, perhaps one of the healthiest things we can do is become more selective about what deserves our emotional investment.  After all, being angry at everything doesn’t necessarily change anything — but it does rob us of opportunities to experience happiness, connection, and peace of mind.  At some point, we should ask ourselves a difficult question: What if the person suffering most from all our hatred is ourselves?

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Why kids drop out from sports

Recent research from the Aspen Institute found that the average age at which former youth athletes reported quitting organized sports was just under 13, with more than one-third leaving between ages 12 and 14.  Among former athletes, feeling “not good enough” and negative coaching experiences were prominent complaints mentioned.

This age group is especially interesting to study as it’s around the time when kids transition from youth sports to school sports, and the focus and philosophies change, too.  High school teams become more selective.  Playing time becomes less equal, with the more talented kids earning more time on the field.  Practices become a lot more serious.  Coaches become more demanding and have higher goals and greater expectations.  Winning becomes increasingly important, not making sure every kid receives equal playing time.

None of those developments are surprising, or inherently bad.  Competitive sports should become more competitive as kids get older.  The most talented kids usually stick around and play until the end of high school, but what happens to the kids who aren’t the best?  How do we keep those kids interested, excited, and committed to keep playing?

For example, consider a 14-year-old who likes soccer but isn’t one of his team’s better players.  He attends practice, works hard and works hard to improve — yet still rarely plays.  When he does play he sometimes makes mistakes, and he’s taken off the field soon thereafter.  When he does succeed, rarely is he acknowledged and encouraged.  The better players always receive more playing time, more instruction and more recognition. It becomes clear to the average athlete that there is no path toward becoming better, or earning more playing time.

Eventually, he quits.

We might conclude he just wasn’t that interested in soccer anymore.  On the other hand, perhaps soccer gradually stopped giving him much reason to remain interested.

Research on youth-sport participation repeatedly identifies enjoyment, perceived competence, social connection, motivation and coaching as important factors in whether young people continue playing.  In other words, kids don’t simply need to participate, they need to experience enough psychological reward from participating to make them want to return.

This doesn’t mean every athlete needs a trophy, constant praise or equal playing time, but instead means development shouldn’t be reserved primarily for the athletes who are already good.

Imagine the difference between telling a struggling athlete:

You’re not ready to play at this level (or, worse yet, never playing the kid but not giving him any feedback why)

versus:

You’re not ready yet. Here’s what we need to improve, and here’s how we’re going to work on it.

The first coach communication is pessimistic, discouraging, and limited.  The second coach communication displays appreciation, support, and encouragement, as well as a pathway for future success.

Genuine positive reinforcement matters too — not meaningless praise, but sincere recognition of improvement, effort, persistence and contribution.  A kid who isn’t scoring goals, getting hits or starting games still needs opportunities to experience competence and progress.  He also needs space and acceptance for failure — just like how these concessions are afforded to the best kids on the team.

With less than 5% of all high school students athletes moving on to play college sports, high school coaches and athletic directors need to regularly evaluate the focus of their programs, and the efforts being made to keep kids involved and playing.  If the focus is only on the 1-2 kids each year that make it to college sports, we are doing a disservice to the majority of kids who simply want to play, enjoy their friends, get in good condition, and represent their school.  When kids stay with sports, they enjoy healthy structure, learn invaluable life skills, and feel good about being a part of their school and community.  When kids fall out of sports, some struggle without structure and encouragement they used to receive from coaches.

Final thoughts

Most kids don’t quit sports because they suddenly stop liking sports.  What is true is that sometimes kids stop liking what sports have become for them.  As competition increases, adults shouldn’t eliminate standards, playing-time decisions or the realities of winning and losing.  But coaches and schools can still provide encouragement, belonging, meaningful development and a visible path toward improvement for kids who are not star athletes.  We spend enormous amounts of energy figuring out how to make young athletes better, but maybe what we should be doing is figuring out how to make kids want to keep playing.

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The nuance with hazing

Group initiation efforts can quickly go from something funny to something awkward, embarrassing, and/or dangerous very quickly — and often without much warning.  For example, consider a relatively shy freshman athlete who is required to stand in front of the team and sing an embarrassing song.  The team laughs, and the freshman laughs too.  Nobody physically forced him to participate, and he could have easily refused.

Or could he?

What if this already shy and anxious kid refused to sing, and suddenly was labeled soft by his teammates? What if every freshman before him had sung, but he is the only one who refused?  What if the team captains were watching, what would they say or do to a freshman not willing to be a part of team traditions?  What if he believed backing out might affect how teammates viewed him?  Suddenly, “choice” becomes considerably more complicated.

The reality is that a child who struggles with anxiety may feel compelled to participate due to team pressure, even when the experience causes significant distress and takes a serious toll on their mental health.  Could the kid have walked out?  Yes, but clearly there is a price to pay for non-compliance when it comes to team traditions, conformity, and acceptance.

One useful contemporary way of thinking about hazing is to focus less exclusively on the behavior and more on the social conditions surrounding it.  StopHazing, for example, defines hazing as activities expected of someone joining or participating in a group that humiliate, degrade, abuse, or endanger them — regardless of their willingness to participate.

That last part is important, as often with hazing it is the appearance of participant willingness that provides a false reality of the situation, and is often the precursor to potentially dangerous group dynamics, rituals, and behaviors.  “It seemed like he was cool with it, he never said no, and went along with the stunt.  How could that be hazing?”  Ironically, it is precisely these types of situations that are often the most dangerous!

Sports teams are extraordinarily powerful, tight-knit social groups.  Team members dress alike, practice together, travel together, win and lose together, and develop their own traditions, hierarchies and identities. For a young athlete, belonging to that group can become enormously important — important enough to do just about anything to join.

The impact of group dynamics

Psychologists have understood the power of groups for decades, and the findings are very applicable to today’s sports hazing.  In Solomon Asch’s famous conformity experiments, participants sometimes publicly gave obviously incorrect answers about the lengths of lines after hearing other members of the group unanimously give the wrong answer.  Check out the video below to see firsthand the power of the group on an individual’s decision making:

Another famous psychology study illustrating the impact of an authority figure on an individual’s thinking and behavior is the Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiments.  Milgram demonstrated something even more alarming than a person selecting the wrong sized line: ordinary people could be persuaded by an authority figure to continue what they believed were increasingly dangerous electric shocks to another person.  In one of the most famous — and controversial — psychology experiments (deemed unethical today), subjects in Milgram’s study exercised behaviors they never thought they would as seen in the video below:

Although neither the Asch nor Milgram studies examined hazing, both reveal something critically important about it: groups can exert tremendous psychological influence on both the people carrying out the behavior and the person expected to endure it.  The reality is that we think and act differently in groups compared to when we are alone, and it is the unintended (and often unexpected) group dynamics that emerge and lead to different outcomes than what was expected.

Imagine being a 14-year-old freshman surrounded by older teammates saying, Relax, this is what every new team member does.  The psychological question isn’t simply whether that athlete can say “no,” it’s what he believes will happen if he does.

That brings us to something frequently overlooked in discussions about hazing: the contingency.  If you participate, you gain acceptance, status, belonging, or simply avoid embarrassment.  If you refuse, you risk ridicule, rejection, exclusion, or being perceived as weak.  These things don’t even need to be said as it is widely known by kids targeted for hazing that these are the results based on how the kid decides.

Remember, hazing does not have to require physical violence.  It might involve humiliating nicknames, degrading language, forced performances, rookie duties, embarrassing disclosures, required clothing, or traditions that appear relatively harmless to outsiders.  The behavior matters, but so does the power structure surrounding it.

There is another fascinating group phenomenon at work.  Imagine 15 teammates watching a kid go through something uncomfortable.  Twelve kids privately think, This is getting ridiculous.  Yet, nobody says anything.  Each kid looks around, sees nobody objecting, and concludes that everyone else must be comfortable with what is happening.  Silence, consequently, becomes evidence of approval.

Over time, often year-to-year for sports teams, hazing can become self-perpetuating:  We went through it.  We survived. Now it’s your turn.

Final thoughts

Perhaps we need to move beyond thinking about hazing simply as bad people forcing unwilling victims to do terrible things. Sometimes the psychology is much more subtle and nuanced in nature.  Kids on a team want to belong, and they don’t want to look weak.  Kids will often laugh while feeling humiliated, and participate while wishing they didn’t have to.  None of these reactions and behaviors suggest that hazing is good, healthy, or safe, but instead strong evidence to support psychology research showing things like how different we act/react in group settings, the willingness of individuals to be victimized by hazing in order to be part of the team, and how compliance does not mean that the victim wants to go through hazing.  When being a part of a team is contingent on kids doing things they shouldn’t or wouldn’t do, the risks of mental and/or physical harm spikes dramatically.  As you can see, hazing practices are sometimes quite subtle, but even things that seem innocuous can quickly lead to devastating consequences.

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Travel baseball has become an enormous industry, increasingly attracting outside investment and operating on a scale that mimics college sports.  Perfect Game, for example, announced a 2024 partnership that brought 22,000 additional travel teams into its organization.  Perhaps more revealing is that those teams weren’t all considered “elite.”  Perfect Game specifically identified different competitive levels: AA/D3, AAA/D2, Majors/D1 and showcase.

That raises an interesting question: At what point does travel baseball simply become recreation baseball that travels?

Rec or travel baseball?

In case you haven’t noticed, the economics of youth sports have changed dramatically in recent years. If you operate a traditional select program and 60 kids try out for 12 positions, you choose the best 12.

But if you’re operating a growing youth-sports business, those other 48 players represent something else: potential customers.

Why field one team when you can field four or five?  This doesn’t require anything manipulative, it’s simply how businesses grow.  More players create more teams, which create more tournament entries, facility rentals, uniforms, instruction and travel.

The scale of the modern youth-sports business illustrates the point.  Unrivaled Sports, whose properties include Ripken Baseball and Cooperstown All Star Village, currently reports serving more than 800,000 athletes and two million visitors annually across its network.  Interestingly, the company itself describes its experiences as both “competitive & developmental” and “inclusive & premium.”

Obviously there’s nothing inherently wrong with that, as more kids playing baseball is a good thing.  Better facilities, coaching and competition can provide wonderful experiences.

But there may be an unintended consequence — the hollowing out of recreation baseball

When the best players left recreation leagues for travel baseball years ago, recreation leagues could absorb the loss.  But what happens when increasingly more kids leave year after year?  Eventually, you’re not just removing elite players, you’re removing average baseball players, volunteer coaches and entire families from community programs.

This concern isn’t new, but it is growing.  More than a decade ago, The Washington Post documented communities experiencing the migration of players from local leagues into full-time travel baseball.  More recently, a 2026 examination of recreational baseball in Jasper reported participation declining to approximately 200 players, with the local parks and recreation director identifying the growth of travel and community teams as one contributor.

That can create a powerful feedback loop that looks something like this:

And eventually the word travel itself becomes less meaningful.  Athletic ability still exists on a continuum ranging from exceptional players, good players, average players and beginners.  Expanding the number of travel teams doesn’t change that normal distribution, it simply moves more of that distribution underneath the travel baseball umbrella.

There is also a psychological component.  Saying “My son plays travel baseball” carries a certain status. It sounds selective and advanced, but when nearly every interested family can eventually locate a travel team appropriate for its child’s ability, travel baseball stops describing a level of ability and starts describing a method of participation.

Final thoughts

The problem isn’t that average players want to play travel baseball, it’s what happens to community baseball when the average and below-average players bypass recreation leagues that are more suited to their current talents and abilities.  We are already seeing reports of recreational baseball and lower-level travel baseball contain essentially the same caliber of player — except one costs hundreds of dollars, and the other costs thousands.

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Scouting the perfect athlete

When assessing athletes many analyses take place, but perhaps there is one big question that supersedes the others: Will this athlete excel in the clutch?

Some athletes thrive when the pressure increases.  Conversely, other athletes perform brilliantly when little is at stake, but struggle terribly when the game is on the line.  Sport psychologists have spent decades examining anxiety, confidence, attention, emotional regulation, personality, coping skills, and responses to pressure.  So far, no reliable test can tell us who will thrive under pressure and who will struggle.  But what if someday a biology test could yield those results?

As artificial intelligence continues to develop, we may soon have new ways to assess the relationship between personality and sport performance.  For example, imagine the scouting combine of the future.  An athlete enters a testing room and provides a saliva sample.  That sample is combined with genetic information, hormone levels, heart-rate variability, neurological testing, personality assessments, reaction-time measurements, and years of performance data analyzed by artificial intelligence.  Minutes later, a computer generates a new statistic called a Pressure Performance Score.  Clutch potential: 38th percentile.  The scout looks at the number and immediately crosses the player’s name off the list based on his low score.

As of today, we are not able to assess athletes using a pressure scale like just described.  Genetic testing cannot reliably tell us who will become an elite athlete, much less who will deliver the game-winning hit in the ninth inning.  Human performance is far too complicated for that kind of specificity today, but technology rarely stops because something is complicated.

Professional sports organizations already use sophisticated psychological assessments, biometric measurements, wearable technology, medical imaging, and enormous databases to evaluate athletes.  As artificial intelligence becomes better at finding relationships among seemingly unrelated variables, it isn’t difficult to imagine teams searching for biological markers associated with performance under pressure.

Suppose researchers eventually develop a biological and psychological profile that predicts performance under pressure at a highly accurate rate.  Would teams use it?  After investing hundreds of millions of dollars in a pro sport franchise, it’s hard to imagine teams not going all-in with new testing that reveals the biology behind great clutch athletes.

While finding athletes that stack up biologically is great, what happens to the athletes the algorithm gets wrong?  An otherwise talented athlete might lose an opportunity, not because he failed under pressure, but because a computer predicted that someday he might.

There is also the possibility of a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Imagine telling a young athlete that his biological profile indicates he performs poorly under pressure.  What happens the next time he steps to the plate with two outs in the ninth inning?  In all likelihood based on his test results, he will perform poorly because he expected to perform poorly.

While it is a worthwhile pursuit to find biomarkers that yield important information relating to future sport (or life) success, it is also important that we understand the effects of self-fulfilling prophecies, as well as confidence, attention, and motivation.  In other words, mentally tough athletes may outperform what their profiles predict, while athletes with less mental toughness may struggle under pressure despite profiles suggesting they should succeed.

Sports analytics began by helping us understand performance. Eventually, they may attempt something much more ambitious: predicting human potential before that potential has an opportunity to reveal itself.  If science someday claims it can tell us who will become clutch and who won’t, should we use that information to decide who gets the opportunity to find out?

Final thoughts

Perhaps the greatest danger isn’t that technology will someday become good enough to predict human behavior, but that we will become too confident in believing that it can.  Athletes are not static collections of genes, biomarkers, personality scores, and statistics.  Analytics can undoubtedly help us understand athletes better, but there are important aspects of the psyche that are incredibly difficult to measure, including focus, motivation, and the will to win.  In the future, there may be a point where prediction begins replacing opportunity.  If a number someday tells us that an athlete isn’t built to be clutch, will we still give that athlete the chance to prove the number wrong?

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Nearly psychology student eventually encounters Dr. John B. Watson, one of the most influential — and controversial — figures in the history of psychology.  Watson helped establish behaviorism, an approach that moved psychology away from examining hard-to-see internal thoughts and feelings and toward studying observable behavior.  In other words, Watson wasn’t particularly interested in what you were thinking; he was interested in what you actually did.

Central to Watson’s theory of behaviorism was the enormous influence of the environment.  Human behavior, he argued, could be shaped through learning, conditioning, reinforcement, and life experience.  Change the environment and experiences surrounding a person, and you could potentially change the person.

Nature, nurture, or both?

John Watson strictly adhered to the idea that it is indeed one’s surrounding environment that most directly impacts and shapes our lives, and that by changing our environment, we essentially change who we are and what we will become.  In his 1924 book Behaviorism, he issued one of psychology’s most famous challenges:

“Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select — doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief…”

While completely unethical by today’s research ethics, think about what Watson was proposing in theory.  If you were to give him a group of healthy infants and complete control over their environments, he believed he could largely determine what they would eventually become.  Watson believed inner thoughts and emotions had far less impact on human development than the surrounding world around the individual, especially with respect to behaviors that are continually reinforced.  These days, that sounds extreme.

Fast-forward to today, where we know far more about genetics than psychologists did during Watson’s era.  We now know that children aren’t interchangeable blank slates.  Temperament, intelligence, personality tendencies, physical abilities, genetic predispositions and other biological characteristics all contribute to development in varying degrees.  Modern psychology generally doesn’t frame human development as nature versus nurture, but instead views nature and nurture as continually interacting.

Interestingly, even Watson himself later acknowledged that his famous statement exceeded what he could scientifically demonstrate, writing, “I am going beyond my facts and I admit it.”  But before dismissing Watson entirely, consider a thought experiment.  Imagine two children born with essentially identical biological potential.  One grows up in a safe home filled with books, encouragement, affection and stability.  The child attends prestigious schools, participates in activities, meets with inspiring teachers and coaches, develops friendships with achievement-oriented peers and grows up surrounded by adults who continually reinforce the expectation that effort will eventually produce opportunity.

Now place the other child in a dramatically different environment where there is instability at home, limited educational opportunity, few positive role models, unsafe surroundings and little hope and encouragement.  Instead of opportunities continually appearing, obstacles continually do.  Would we really expect these two children to arrive at adulthood unchanged by those dramatically different experiences?

It is also important to note that “environment” extends far beyond parenting. We are also influenced by teachers, coaches, and friends, as well as our neighborhood and school.  Socioeconomic status impacts our development, as do the number of times we are praised and encouraged by others.  In fact, sometimes it is just one teacher, coach, or friend who changes the direction of someone’s life.

While Watson himself admitted he may have over-estimated the influence of environment and surroundings, he did help us better understand that those factors do indeed have a great influence on human development.  Watson pushed the environmental argument toward its extreme, but the other extreme (also false) would be to assume that it is biology only that is responsible for human development.

Final thoughts

Perhaps the most provocative part of John Watson’s argument isn’t whether he could actually turn any infant into a doctor, lawyer, artist, or thief, but what his claim forces us to consider about ourselves.  How much credit — or blame — should we take for the people we eventually become?  We like to think our personalities, values, interests, accomplishments, and even our failures belong uniquely to us.  But imagine being born into a different family, attending different schools, receiving different encouragement, and encountering entirely different opportunities.  Would you still be recognizably you?  Watson may have pushed nurture much too far, but perhaps his greatest contribution was forcing us to confront an uncomfortable possibility: the line between who we are and what our environment made us may be far more difficult to draw than we’d like to believe.

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Today, the phone comes out almost immediately when something cool is about to take place.  Record it.  Photograph it.  Post it.  Share it.  Attend a concert and you’ll see thousands of people holding phones above their heads.  Visit a tourist attraction and watch people carefully position themselves for photographs rather than focus on the actual attraction.   A meal arrives at a restaurant and someone photographs and posts it before taking a bite.  Kids do something funny and parents immediately begin recording.   Are we living these moments, or simply creating content to share?

Are we living life, or just creating content?

It is important to note that recording and posting about your life is not inherently bad, but it does provide a stark contrast about the ways in which we live today compared to the time before smart phones and social media.  Psychologically, something very big has occurred relating to how we live moment-to-moment today that begs the question: Are we documenting our experiences — or increasingly having experiences so we can document them?

Developmental psychologists have long described the adolescent “imaginary audience”— the tendency for young people to feel as though others are constantly noticing, watching, and evaluating them (even though they aren’t).  Today, however, the previous imaginary audience has turned into a real audience of fans, followers, and viewers.

Today, our “real” audience of followers and subscribers can potentially watch our vacations, children’s accomplishments, workouts, meals, relationships, opinions, celebrations, and even personal struggles.  Life can begin to resemble an ongoing movie in which we simultaneously become the star, director, camera operator, and publicist.  And when we are creating content, our audience becomes important.  Rather than asking am I enjoying this, another question can quietly enter our thinking:  How will this look?

Does my vacation look amazing enough?  Is the concert I’m attending cool enough to post?  Is my child’s sports highlight awesome enough for a lot of clicks?  Does this dinner look like a chef prepared it so I can take a photo and upload?  And today’s audience provides immediate feedback.  Likes.  Views.  Comments.  Shares.

Over time, we learn which versions of ourselves receive the most attention.  That raises an interesting psychological question: Are we gradually shifting from asking “What do I enjoy?” toward asking “What version of my life performs best?”

If so, there could be real-life mental health consequences:

• Less internal validation. “That was meaningful to me” can gradually become “Other people responded to it.”
• Less presence. Part of our attention is devoted to documenting the experience rather than simply experiencing it.
• Identity becomes performance. Instead of discovering who we are, we may begin constructing the version of ourselves that receives the best response.
• Experiences become transactional. Is this worth posting? Will people notice? Will they respond?
• Ordinary life can begin to feel inadequate. If memorable experiences are the ones worth sharing, what happens to all the quiet moments in between?

The last possibility may be especially important, as most of a meaningful human life isn’t particularly post-worthy.  In a normal world it consists of ordinary dinners, trivial conversations, uneventful weekends, private accomplishments, boredom, and moments nobody else will ever know occurred.

If we’re constantly searching for the next shareable moment, do we gradually become less capable of appreciating everything that happens between them?  The irony is remarkable. We document our lives because we don’t want to forget them, yet sometimes the act of documenting them may prevent us from fully experiencing the moments we’re trying so hard to preserve.

Perhaps the ultimate question isn’t whether we’re sharing too much of our lives, but whether we’ve become so accustomed to performing our lives for other people that we’ve forgotten what it feels like to live a meaningful moment simply for ourselves.

Final thoughts

There is nothing wrong with taking pictures, recording special moments, or sharing parts of our lives with others.  The concern begins when sharing the experience becomes more important than actually having it.  A meaningful life shouldn’t require an audience, applause, likes, or proof that it happened.  Some of our best moments may be the ones nobody photographs, nobody posts, and nobody else ever knows about.  Perhaps one of the healthiest things we can occasionally do is experience something wonderful — and resist the urge to post about it.

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While all of these advances are impressive, there’s an interesting contradiction developing alongside all of this medical progress: At the same time we’ve gotten remarkably good at treating injured young athletes, we’ve created a sports culture that may be giving them more opportunities to become injured in the first place.

Youth sports & injuries today

Kids experiencing overuse injuries are now a major issue in pediatric sports medicine.  The American Academy of Pediatrics has warned about excessive training loads, inadequate recovery, and year-round participation.  Kids with growing bodies are particularly vulnerable because bones, muscles, tendons, and growth plates are still developing.

This news is not surprising when you consider the schedule of some young athletes today.  A baseball player might move from spring baseball into summer travel baseball, then fall ball, followed by winter pitching or hitting instruction before starting over again.  A basketball player may move from the school team to AAU and then directly into camps and private training.  A wrestler might compete in summer wrestling tournaments until his or her traditional winter school season begins. The reality is most sports go year-round, and the “offseason” has become a thing of the past.

Sport specialization adds another observable concern.  Recent research continues to associate high levels of youth sport specialization with greater injury risk compared with multi-sport participation.  With more kids specializing today, the threat of injury becomes even more concerning.

But are kids actually suffering more injuries today, or are we simply much better at finding them?  The answer might be a little of both.

An injury that might once have been dismissed as simply a “bad knee” or “sore shoulder” 20 years ago can now be precisely diagnosed through modern-day imaging and specialist evaluation.  Greater awareness of the danger of concussions has similarly changed what we recognize as an injury, as well as the frequency in which we assess for concussions.

Still, certain serious injuries among young athletes, including ACL injuries, have generated increasing concern.  And repetitive-stress injuries make intuitive sense when children repeatedly perform the same movements for increasingly long seasons.

Then comes another interesting question: Has modern medicine changed our attitude toward injury itself?  Our healthcare providers have become extraordinarily good at getting athletes back onto the field — but “return to play” can subtly become “return as quickly as possible.”

While it’s not always witnessed directly, there can be tremendous pressure surrounding an injured young athlete to get back on the field as quickly as possible.  The injured athlete doesn’t want to lose a starting position, and often feels the pressure that the team needs him back.  Some injured athletes worry about how much money their parents have invested in the season, or all the effort coaches make in order to compensate for the injured athlete’s absence.  The athlete sits idle and watches teammates continue playing, often resulting in even greater motivation to get back out there (even if not fully recovered).

Suddenly, recovery itself becomes a competition.  Returning in five weeks when doctors initially predicted eight can become a badge of honor and earn respect from teammates, coaches, and even parents.  Playing through pain becomes evidence of strength and toughness.  And missing games can feel like failure — even if missing games is medically warranted.  Putting it all together and we see more serious injuries, better medical care, and greater pressure than ever before for kids to return to playing as fast a humanly possible.  Is this new sports landscape good for kids?  Or have we created a situation worthy of much more attention and scrutiny?

Final thoughts

There is nothing wrong with wanting young athletes to compete, improve, and return to the sports they love after experiencing an injury.  But perhaps our modern-day advances to repair injured bodies has made it easier to overlook why so many young bodies need repairing in the first place.  Better medicine shouldn’t give us permission to demand more from children; it should give us better information about how to protect them.  Maybe the real measure of progress isn’t how quickly we can get a 13-year-old back onto the field, but whether we can create a youth sports culture in which fewer 13-year-olds need MRIs, orthopedic surgeons, and months of rehabilitation.

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I have encountered some parents at my office who seem less like parents of their teenagers, and more like fans of them.  These parents aren’t simply accepting of their kids, they almost seem impressed by them — even when the behavior they are admiring isn’t particularly admirable.  Is it cool to be in awe of your kids as though you are on their level, or should parents be clear with family roles and who’s in charge — specifically with the parent-child dynamic?

What some parents tell me…

I have heard many stories at my practice over the years, including some parents who marvel at the trouble their kids find.  One parent casually mentioned to me knowing that his teenage son and friends were drinking in the basement, but he thought it was kind of cool so he decided not to bother them.  Another parent laughed while describing how his teenager snuck out of the house, only to be caught by police sneaking back in during the wee hours of the night.  And several parents have shared with me that underage drinking is out in the open at their graduation parties, with the assumption kids won’t drive after drinking.  I have been told many stories about parties, drinking, breaking rules, or getting away with something told with an unmistakable hint of pride.  Some parents have even told me they have bought alcohol for their kid and his/her friends!

The message for parents who only casually parent almost becomes: My kid is really cool.

But why do some parents feel this way?  One possibility is that parents sometimes experience their children’s social lives vicariously.  If my teenager is popular, invited to parties, dating, socially confident, and accepted by the “cool kids,” perhaps some of that status psychologically rubs off on me.

Psychologists have long recognized our tendency to derive satisfaction from association with successful or popular people and groups.  We readily understand the parent proudly announcing that his daughter made varsity, or his son was accepted into an elite university.  But perhaps reflected status can operate socially as well.

Everybody knows my kid.  Everybody likes my kid.  My kid gets invited everywhere.

There may also be an element of identification and nostalgia.  Hearing about a teenager’s adventures can take parents back to their own adolescence.  “We did the same thing at that age” becomes an amusing justification for behavior that should deserve a considerably different response from a parent.

None of this means parents need to become authoritarian or react hysterically every time a teenager makes a poor decision.  Adolescence involves experimentation, mistakes, boundary testing, peer influence, and increasing independence.  Simply put, teenagers are going to screw up.  But that’s precisely why they still need parents.

With brains still not fully developed, teenagers aren’t supposed to possess mature adult judgment.  Part of adolescence involves testing boundaries, and parents are supposed to model and provide some of the boundaries being tested.  In doing so, it requires accepting one of the least enjoyable parts of parenting: sometimes your child isn’t going to like you very much.

A friend might laugh about the drinking story.  A fan might admire the rebelliousness.  A parent occasionally needs to say, No, that’s not acceptable.

There’s an important distinction between being in your child’s corner and being in your child’s fan club.

Being in your teenager’s corner means loving him whether he succeeds spectacularly or screws up badly.  It also means defending him when appropriate, encouraging him when he’s struggling, and making certain he knows that one bad decision doesn’t define him.  But loving the person doesn’t require celebrating the behavior.  In fact, sometimes the most loving response is accountability by means of disappointment, correction, consequences, or simply saying no.

Teenagers will eventually have plenty of friends, fans, followers, and people willing to laugh along with their bad decisions.  What they have far fewer of are adults who love them enough to occasionally disappoint them, challenge them, and establish boundaries. Your teenager absolutely needs you in his corner.  But sometimes the best thing you can do for him is step out of the fan club and be his parent.

Final thoughts

Being your child’s biggest supporter doesn’t mean being a fan of everything your child does.  In fact, some of the most important moments in parenting occur when support looks nothing like cheering — when it means setting a boundary, expressing disappointment, imposing a consequence, or simply saying no.  Teenagers will have plenty of friends willing to laugh at their bad decisions and plenty of peers impressed by their rebelliousness.  What they need from their parents is something different: someone who loves them enough to risk being temporarily unpopular.  Sometimes being your child’s biggest supporter means refusing to be their biggest fan.

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The reasons why so many kids specialize in one sport today

Sports are no longer confined to the traditional 3-4 months when they are “in season.”  Today, the baseball player may have fall workouts, winter lifting, indoor hitting, pitching programs, camps and summer baseball.  Basketball has open gyms, off-season workouts and AAU.  Football has weight training, seven-on-seven, camps and summer practices.  Soccer and volleyball have extensive club seasons.

While nobody necessarily tells the athlete, “You can’t play another sport,” they don’t have to. Why?  Because kids aren’t choosing among three sports, they are choosing among three year-round programs.

Perhaps one of the most interesting words in modern high school athletics is optional.  An off-season workout may technically be optional, but when your teammates are attending, your coach is watching and someone else wants your position, the word “optional” no longer sounds like a voluntary decision devoid of potential negative consequences.  In fact, it’s quite the opposite that kids pick up on — if you don’t attend “optional” workouts, you will pay a price for that decision.  When kids feel this way, it creates anxiety and leaves them in impossible situations trying to find ways to play multiple sports throughout the year.

There is an important psychological distinction between truly having a choice and feeling like you have a choice.  The problem isn’t necessarily created by bad coaches with unreasonable intentions.  In many cases, coaches are responding rationally to the competitive environment around them, as well as some parent expectations.  If a neighboring soccer program is training throughout the winter, your program feels pressure to do the same.  If basketball players are competing in AAU throughout the spring and summer, taking several months off may feel like falling behind.  As other schools and leagues do more, everyone else does the same.

Eventually, we have something resembling an athletic arms race.  And the casualty may be the multi-sport athlete.

Different sports require different skills, movements and ways of thinking.  Baseball demands patience and the ability to handle a lot of individual failure.  Basketball requires constant movement, immediate decision-making and continuous interaction with teammates on the floor.  Football requires athletes to accept highly specialized roles while functioning within a larger coordinated system.

There are mental health benefits to playing different sports as well.  Playing multiple sports exposes kids to different teammates, coaches, leadership styles and social environments.  Perhaps most importantly, it allows kids to occupy different roles.  The star midfielder in soccer might come off the bench in basketball.  The starting quarterback might simply be another player on the baseball team.  There is something developmentally valuable about sometimes being the best player in the room — and sometimes clearly not being the best player in the room.

Multiple sports can also broaden an athlete’s personal identity.  When a teenager’s entire world becomes I am a football player, struggles in football can threaten something much larger than athletic performance.  Playing other sports provides additional friendships, experiences and opportunities to feel competent.  These broadened experiences and relationships also contribute to better mental health, too.

None of this means young athletes should be prohibited from specializing in a chosen sport if they so desire. Some kids genuinely love one sport and want to pursue it year-round.  But we should also ask whether we’re making that choice for others without realizing it.  It’s easy for coaches and athletic programs to say they support multi-sport athletes.  The more meaningful question is whether their expectations, schedules and off-season demands actually make multi-sport participation possible.

Perhaps the multi-sport athlete isn’t disappearing because kids suddenly stopped wanting to play multiple sports.  Maybe we’ve simply built a sports culture in which every sport increasingly wants to be the athlete’s only sport.

Final thoughts

Perhaps the real issue isn’t whether the three-sport athlete is actually disappearing, but whether we’re making it unnecessarily difficult for that athlete to exist.  We continue to praise the benefits of playing multiple sports while simultaneously creating year-round (“optional”) expectations that make doing so increasingly challenging.  If we truly value multi-sport athletes, then coaches, schools, parents, and sports organizations may need to do more than simply encourage them — we need to create an environment that actually allows them to play.

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Developmental changes related to smart phone usage

Before smartphones filled every empty moment, kids spent considerably more time observing and interacting with the world around them.  Kids watched other people, noticed facial expressions, and made eye contact.  Kids also initiated conversations, learned how to enter groups, handle silence, read a room, deal with boredom and entertain themselves.  None of these experiences appear to be very important individually, but collectively, they help us grow and develop important social skills and improve our mental health.

The reality is that kids don’t learn sophisticated interpersonal skills from an instruction manual — they develop them through thousands of authentic, in-person repetitions.  When should I speak?  Is that person serious or joking?  Did I offend someone?  Does she seem interested in what I’m saying?  How do I politely join this conversation?  What does that facial expression mean?  What do I do after saying something awkward?

The reality is that kids don’t learn sophisticated interpersonal skills from an instruction manual — they develop them through thousands of authentic, in-person repetitions. 

Face-to-face interaction provides an extraordinary amount of information through facial expressions, eye contact, posture, tone of voice and timing.  Phones provide social interaction, but it’s a very different kind of interaction, one that is far more limiting than what can be developed communicating in-person.

Think of this another way — we wouldn’t expect a child to become a great soccer player without repetitions.  Why would we expect kids to develop sophisticated face-to-face social skills while potentially removing thousands of their social repetitions?  Reading or watching videos how to communicate with others isn’t anything close to actually communicating in-person.

There may be emotional consequences as well to smart phone overload.  Previous generations had considerably more unavoidable time alone with their thoughts.  Waiting meant waiting.  Boredom meant figuring out what to do with time on your hands.  An awkward moment sometimes meant sitting with the awkwardness and and developing problem-solving solutions.

Today, uncomfortable feelings can often be interrupted instantly.  If you are bored, anxious, lonely, or embarrassed, just pick up your phone and divert your attention somewhere else.  That doesn’t mean smartphones cause mental health problems, but emotional regulation develops partly through real life experience.  Kids need opportunities to tolerate boredom, frustration, uncertainty, disappointment and social discomfort — and discover that those feelings eventually pass.  But if distraction is always immediately available (smart phone), are some of those developmental repetitions disappearing?

Human attention presents another interesting question.  The truth is the real world doesn’t operate like a smartphone.  Books don’t change subjects every 15 seconds.  Coaches sometimes give mundane instructions.  Conversations occasionally drag on far longer than needed.  Friends tell stories that take five minutes instead of 10 seconds.  Learning to remain engaged when something isn’t immediately stimulating is itself an important developmental skill.

We may not understand the full consequences of these developmental changes for years.  Smartphones haven’t existed across enough generations for us to know exactly what happens when screens occupy so much time and so many of childhood’s previously empty spaces.  It is possible the effects won’t be dramatic, but instead appear in subtler ways: less comfort with boredom, difficulty sustaining attention, fewer spontaneous conversations, greater dependence on external stimulation or less confidence navigating face-to-face interactions.

For generations, growing up involved looking around — at other kids, adults, classrooms, neighborhoods, sports fields, dinner tables and eventually the larger world.  Today’s kids have access to more information about that world than any generation before them.  Perhaps we should spend less time asking kids what they’re seeing on their phones and more time asking what they aren’t seeing, practicing, experiencing and learning while they’re looking at them.

Final thoughts

Maybe the greatest developmental cost of smartphones won’t ultimately be traced to any single app, post, or hour of screen time, but instead be found in the thousands of ordinary moments that quietly disappeared — the conversations that never started, the faces that weren’t studied, the boredom that wasn’t tolerated, the surroundings that weren’t noticed, and the uncomfortable feelings that weren’t worked through.  Childhood development has always occurred partly through these seemingly insignificant experiences.  Kids today may have unprecedented access to the entire world in the palms of their hands, but growing up still requires occasionally putting that world down, looking up, and experiencing the one directly in front of them.

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