Children are professional athletes, the evil of good sportsmanship, or the myth of Big League

Children are professional athletes, the evil of good sportsmanship, or the myth of Big League How much is too much? Sport for young people, the obvious answer is nothing. An average professional hockey, basketball, or football players, games for 80 years. Eight or nine years, children often play the same, together with the practices and weekend touaments.So what? S is going on? What? S happened, children and adults to ruin the sport. We? Ve young professional sports, organized games for children playing in school or in parks. Instead of endless fun and unstructured, parents driving their children to games and practices where the coaches tell the kids what to do and how to do it. This goes beyond five, six, seven times a week. Sure, just go as a superstar professional athletes, but? Recovery of one percent of one percent. The rest out.Is bu really need to travel every week for another touament? It is the third practice during the week really adding to a couple? And the fun? If society has forgotten the law of diminishing retus? There is something wrong with budgets $ 30,000 for a hockey team for 12 years? More is not necessarily better. The magic number is a game from three to two, and practices a week. Until a child is 13 or 14, which extends from an activity. Is to develop a range of interests - sports, reading, music, and maybe hang with friends, once in a while 'time. After this age, if the interest is still there, then we should leave to a sport or activity. Two or three sport athletes go the way of Dodo bird. We have no shortage of great athletes, but we are forcing our children to specialize at an early age. Cross training is widely recognized by experts as an essential part of an athlete? S development. But I do not see many children cross-training on all.Naturally when all my children were Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods, I would encourage them to concentrate. Unless you belong to that elite class, but maybe the child would be better to perform a variety of sports, and ensure that they have time to play after school, without a coach and referee whistles blowing all time.There worrying is also a commercial side to this problem. Leagues and touaments have become a big business, with the purchase of equipment and sports facilities. Ironically, all this money depends on a steady stream of children, a wide range of sports. The more games, more money is being made. I find it hard to ignore this connection, nor to believe that the company is an active partner in fostering the widespread belief among parents and coaches who have children to play? Your sport? every day of week.We must remember that youth sports for kids - not for the spectators of the margin, or the touament organizer or equipment manufacturers. Professional athletes will be at 80 million games a year, what are our children to professional athletes to 8-years? Skuy David is the author of "Off The Crossbar", a novel for kids sports. You can visit his website to him is a popular lecturer, in conversation with children and groups of parents about the importance of education and sport for children.