Specialization in Youth Sport: Necessary or Harmful?

In the world of sports, young athletes are able to see their favorite athletes perform at such a competitive level and develop aspirations to compete on the same professional stage as their role models. To accomplish this, kids (and their parents) will do whatever it takes as early as possible to achieve their goals of being a high-performance athlete in a particular sport. This usually means that athletes will pick one sport at a very early age to specialize in and do not get the ability to compete in any other sports growing up. As this methodology usually helps increase the skill level of a particular sport in an athlete, the side effects of specializing in a sport (ex: burnout, depression, etc.) can increase and cause a child to lack certain developmental traits that they would have obtained by playing multiple sports. So the question at hand becomes: is specializing in a sport at an early age necessary to achieve success?

While being a former competitive volleyball athlete, I understand the pressures of wanting to reach a certain level of success in a sport and the hard work required to achieve this dream. Because I am a master’s student in Counseling with a focus on Sport Psychology in the youth population, I was curious to analyze the current research on this topic and find out what positive and negative consequences come with specializing in a sport at such a young age. After examining four different studies on youth specialization in sport, there are a few main themes that seemed to occur:

1. There is correlation between specialization in sport and high level of performance (1, 2)

2. Diversification in youth sport leads to higher levels of enjoyment in sport (1, 2)

3. Positive developmental skills were associated with athletes who sampled different sports at a young age versus the specialized athletes (3, 4)

By discovering these findings related to specialization in youth sports, I believe there needs to be more awareness related to the positive and negative consequences for these young athletes. Parents play a huge role in their child’s involvement in extracurricular activities and should understand what their child wants before investing in specializing in one sport or activity at such a young age.

References

(1) Baker, J., & Cote, J. (2003). Sport-specific practice and the development of expert decision-making in team ball sports. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 15, 12-25.

(2), 4 Wall, M., & Cote, J. (2007). Developmental activities that lead to dropout and investment in sport. Physical Education & Sport Pedagogy, 12(1), 77-87.

(3) Law, M. P., Cote, J., & Ericsson, K. A. (2007). Characteristics of expert development in rhythmic gymnastics: A retrospective study. International Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 5(1), 82-103.

(4) Strachan, L., Coté, J., & Deakin, J. (2009). “Specializers” versus “samplers” in youth sport: Comparing experiences and outcomes. The Sport Psychologist, 23(1), 77- 92.