Strike out, knock out DROP OUT

How as a society we are failing teen athletes

Lainey Akins

High school athletes may ‘throw in the towel’ for a variety of reasons. e most common factors, however, can be traced back to two ‘hitting points’: pressure from coaches, parents, teammates or internal, and the intensity that comes with that. is new pressure that grows as the athlete matures changes the structure of the athlete’s practices, games and the overall environment. Once athletes ‘join the big leagues’ they o en nd that their passion for the sport is ‘not up to par’ with what it used to be.

e competitive nature that is created by the pressure felt by the coaches leads to intense practices with seemingly no o -season. As a result, athletes develop many overuse injuries. According to the Journal of Advances in Sports and Physical Education, injuries are part of the top eight reasons why young people quit their sport. Some injuries that occur can be costly to x, many requiring physical therapy or other kinds of treatment. Other injuries obtained from youth sports can linger into adulthood, causing athletes to question if playing their sport is worth it. “Up to 50% of all injuries seen in pediatric sports medicine clinics may be related to overuse,’ said Lyle J. Micheli, the director of Sports Medicine at Children’s Hospital Boston, in an interview with ACSM’s Health and e increasing absence of oseasons forces athletes to have to ‘specialize’ in one sport, with little time for break periods or engagement in other sports or activities. is specialization can cause speci c sport related injuries.

Fitness Journal.

According to pubmed, “highly specialized athletes were more likely to report a history of overuse knee or hip injuries. Participating in a single sport for more than 8 months per year appeared to be an important factor in the increased injury risk observed in highly specialized athletes.” e decrease of multi-sport athletes in the teen years along with the intense training and game schedules, leads to burnout and ultimately the athlete quitting their sport. When sports start to take up a considerable amount of time, athletes may start equating their identity to their sport, which o en leads to athletes enjoying their sport less.

Athletes also may be striving to get athletic scholarships from colleges, which is yet again another way pressure can build in teen athletes. Some athletes will get these scholarships and then have to deal with the added intensity of college sports. Others, however, will fail to obtain these scholarships, which means they trained at a higher intensity than what they may have wished, for seemingly no reason. e pressure- lled environment o en created in teen sports by those involved can also a ect these athletes mentally. “ e professional consensus is that the incidence of anxiety and depression among scholastic athletes has increased over the past 10 to 15 years,” says Marshall Mintz, a sports psychologist in interview with the Atlantic. Many athletes feel the need to ‘jump through hoops’ to please their coaches or parents. But, while these spectators to the game are taking their own personal ‘victory lap,’ athletes are le to deal with their own mental exhaustion. When approached the right way, sports in general can have very bene cial impacts for athletes, both mentally and physically. e key to helping these young athletes is, in the simplest of terms, ‘keep the game fun.’ It is important to be mindful of the pressures that we may be putting on these teen athletes. Coaches, parents and others involved in the teen’s life need to work to create an environment where these athletes will not feel the need to quit. We need to ‘go to bat’ for these young athletes before they ‘strike out of the game’ altogether. Or else when these athletes ‘meet their match’ it will not be another player, but instead their own animosity towards the game they once loved.