Our Broken Youth Sports System Is Failing Kids

As March Madness kicks into high gear, it’s a terrific time to think about youth sports. The athletes we’re watching under the bright lights of March are truly the best of the best—only a tiny fraction of even varsity high school basketball players ever get to play college hoops. But sports have a crucial role to play in rearing healthy, happy, and grounded kids, whether or not they’re ever going to develop a decent jump shot.

This has never been truer than in our post-pandemic era in which children have been isolated, exhibit fragile social and emotional health, and spend too much time online at the expense of hanging out with their flesh-and-blood friends. Sports are good for developing fine motor skills, self-discipline, gumption, and the ability to handle failure. Coaches can be invaluable role models and mentors. Teams can be invaluable sources of friendship, experience, and camaraderie. There are, of course, terrible coaches and toxic teams. But, on the whole, team sports are the single best thing we know of for the healthy development of kids.

Unfortunately, even as sports have taken on new importance, school leaders have neglected their previous commitment to athletics. This is not a positive development.

We fear that too many well-meaning educators, focused on concerns about safety, learning loss, and instructional minutes, have lost sight of the role that sports can play. School officials have retired playground games from dodgeball to tag, grown nervous about letting kids play in rainy weather, and often treat sports as a distinctly second-order concern.

Meanwhile, helicopter parents intent on landing their children spots at coveted colleges have made travel sports a $20 billion industry and fueled an arms race among youth athletes. A lot of families might not be enthused about a fifth-grade travel soccer team that entails long drives, extended hours, and logistical headaches from Labor Day through Memorial Day. But they’re told that, if they don’t make such commitments, their kid won’t have a shot at getting to play in high school or college. Kids feel similar pressure to “pick a lane” and specialize in a sport early for fear of getting left behind.

Between the erosion of casual programs and the explosion of intense ones, it feels like we’ve hollowed out the middle—the place where kids play hard, learn from beloved coaches, and have fun with their friends and classmates in ways far healthier than mastering the latest TikTok dance moves. The skills that sports aspire to teach—perseverance, self-discipline, leadership, and teamwork—are the very ones that help students succeed in school and life. We fear too much of this has gotten lost.

So, how can we do better? For starters, we need to work at filling the middle that’s getting gradually hollowed out. This requires a “more-things-at-more-levels” approach that stretches from Kindergarten through graduation. Schools and communities should work to expand after-school offerings, weekend sports, intramural offerings, and more.

That means setting up thriving intramural programs where kids can play refereed, competitive games on organized teams, which would allow many more kids to play. It means establishing regional middle school programs with tiers differentiated by skill level, enabling kids to play against similarly skilled peers without extensive travel. If parents knew there’d be good opportunities for their kids to play for as long as they wanted in organized, well-coached leagues, it might help alleviate the arms race dynamic that’s becoming ever more prevalent in youth sports.

Unlike March Madness, youth sports shouldn’t be dominated by a “win or go home” mindset. School-age coaches are right to value a culture of effort and commitment, but they should also foster an ethos of teamwork, trust, friendship, hard work, and enjoyment. A sign of a well-coached team is when the kids enjoy the practices at least as much as the games. Indeed, successful teams provide camaraderie, healthy one-upmanship, and a chance to socialize in a place that’s neither home nor school. When kids barely know the names of their teammates, worry they won’t have anyone to play with, or complain about having to attend practice, something is wrong. That’s not what youth sports should be about.

Look, we certainly don’t intend to sound anti-competitive. We’re big fans of accomplished teams, in high school, college, or the pros. And there’s obviously a place for gifted kids to play in more competitive leagues, especially as they enter their teens. The problem, as with so much in youth culture today, is that we’ve allowed adult wants and fears to alter the landscape of childhood. And that’s not good for anyone.

A lot of sports programming got shuttered or simply atrophied during the pandemic. Rejuvenating it hasn’t been a priority for educators or community leaders. But it should be.