'Until it Hurts' and children's sports

For those who are deeply interested in youth sports and how it impacts children’s personalities and how adult behavior especially in the playing arena has twisted the innate noble objectives of children’s and youth sports, Mark Hyman’s book, “Until it Hurts: America’s Obsession with Youth Sports and how it Harms Kids”, is must reading.

By his own admission in the book, Hyman says he is the father of two sons, each of whom played organized. For 15 years he attended their practices, games, postseason tournaments, and team parties with the punctuality of a school principal.

Hyman says “he cared deeply about their (his two sons) successes and setbacks in athletics. Too deeply. I am not one of those adults who becomes notorious for spectacularly inappropriate acts at youth sports games – like the overheated father who ensured his son’s defeat in a high school wrestling match by leaping onto the mat and attempting to pin his boy’s startled opponent – but watching one of my sons’ games can be a trial for me. (Not watching is the only thing that’s worse.).”

In an interview with Sports Letter (SL), Hyman was described as a journalist coach and sports parent who has been immersed in the culture of youth sports. His book is characterized as an indictment of what he sees as the myriads of problems that have beset kids’ sports.

He covered the business of sports for Business Week and has been writing for some time about the business of youth sports. He says, in response to a question why he wrote the book, “I’m very interested in the ways that adults have shaped youth sports. Over time, I came to the conclusion that youth sports has been re-engineered in ways that suit the interests and tastes of adults, sometimes at the expense of kids. So, I wanted to write about how that happened and how that has shaped the culture of youth sports.”

In researching and writing the book, Hyman interviewed coaches, parents, children, psychologists, sports medicine experts and Olympic athletes. What he discovered disturbed him. “Across the country, young players are all to frequent victims of a sports culture that seemingly is turning its back on them. Injuries are just one troubling manifestation. With each passing season, youth sports seem to stray further and further from its core mission of providing healthy, safe and character-building recreation for children.

Hyman says in the interview with SL that much of the blame falls on parents’ laps who have usurped control of youth sports. “It’s not the presence of adults that is distorting youth sports. Rather the issue is our well-documented impulse to turn sports for children into a de facto professional league. Only the kids are losers here. Their voices are rarely heard, and then only to justify the questionable judgment of adults.” Hyman emphasizes that “already we’ve turned youth sports into highly rated prime-time TV programming worth millions of dollars to networks and their sponsors.”

To be sure, not everyone shares Hyman thoughts. SL states that “Until it Hurts” has been reviewed in several newspapers. One review, in the Wall Street Journal, attacked Hyman’s stance and some of the statistics he cite in the book. Hyman states that the reviewer had two issues with the book. One, he said it was overwrought. Hyman says he can live with the comment which makes an issue of his being overexcited. Hyman adds that the book is about kids and parents who have problems with youth sports. He claims that he wasn’t going to write three chapters on kids who’ve had idyllic experiences; that’s another book, he says.

SL says that the reviewer also questioned whether he sufficiently backed up the book with data. Hyman asserts that he used the numbers that he thought were important to illuminate the problem, adding that there’s a lot we don’t know. He however adds that the most compelling about this issue are the human stories claiming that that’s what he spent his time doing, finding families and others who are involved with this (to) tell him the stories that they think illustrate the problem. And he’s convinced that his book precisely does that.

Hyman traces the involvement of parents in sports in the US when the schools started eliminating sports programs in the late 1920’s and 1930’s. Prior to those years, sports for kids were primarily school based. A void was created when schools abandoned their school sports programs creating the opening for organizations like Little League Baseball which Hyman claims opened the floodgates in terms of the involvement of parents, especially after World War II and moving into the decade of the 1950’s.

Next week – how the founder of Little League eventually fought the concept because of the issues raised by Hyman.