The Importance of Sports in Youth

I can not tell you how many times during my work career that I have been grateful for the fact that I played sports growing up. It taught me two important lessons, team work and preparation. It is for those two reasons why I believe every child needs to be exposed to at least one but preferably many sports in their early days of youth.


For starters it builds hand eye coordination and gets them used to being outside or away from the house. I would like to think i don't have to dwell on the importance of either one of those two basic points. My theory is that through multiple exposure to many sports between the ages of say roughly four and nine allows them to choose the sport or sports that they enjoy the most. By ten years old the competition starts to get a little better and the child can start to focus on what I call the life lessons of sports. Let's start with what I call preparation. By the age of ten sports teams tend to practice more because the competition gets better and as a side effect more emphasis is put on winning. which, no ones likes to lose but coaches need to not overemphasize it. Preparation takes many forms.

It is through practice and repetition that a child gets better to perform at a higher level during the game. Some sports require advance studying of an opponent or memorization of where you and others on your team will be at specific points during the game. Sometimes you practice specific plays that occur during a game and how you will react to those situations that arise. Team work to me was always most important. I played on some teams that did not have top individual talent but we all did the little things well and rarely made mistakes and there we were up near the top of the standings. Sports teaches kids to work together for the greater good of the team over whether or not you like the kid next to you. It isn't structured but kids have to on their own figure out how to co-exist with the kid they don't particularly like.

For example in high school we had a back up point guard who was not a favorite of mine outside of basketball. However on the court him and I took on some of the top individuals on the team in 2 on 2 drills because we executed a fantastic pick and roll play together. My strengths complimented his strengths fantastically where the team benefited. Also the comradeship of your teammates increases your desire to not let them down when they depend on you to execute your part. The memories of your teams will carry with you as well. I can't tell you how many times I stopped while writing this article to cherish another of those memories.