In the movies, school athletes are often portrayed as golden-haired villains. The Big Man on Campus leads his team to victory in football, basketball, and track and field; rules the school; and dates the head cheerleader. But he also bullies his peers and receives special treatment from teachers, administrators, and other adults.
In popular culture, Brandi Chastain—who captured public attention after the United States Women's World Cup soccer team won the 1999 title in front of millions of male and female fans—epitomizes the new sports hero. Popular, pony-tailed, and heterosexual, she is the girl next door and a role model for millions of young people who aspire to be professional sports stars.
In the real world, sports participation can help young people appreciate health, exercise, and fitness; learn about themselves and how to handle adversity; and experience teamwork and display sportsmanship, says Gregg Heinzmann, director of the Youth Sports Research Council at Rutgers University. As they are in the media, sports are associated with youth social structure, personal identity, and achievement. In fact, "sports are a microcosm of our society—this isn't a cliché," says Heinzmann. What is happening in society—both good and bad—is reflected in youth sports.
The Rise of Organized Sports
Vicki Davis sees evidence of the change in sports and in society every time she drives past the city park in Hastings, Minnesota. On summer afternoons, the park is empty, but starting at 6 p.m, "youth sports organizations fill the park with kids and their parents, who are home from work. Only rarely do young people organize their own games. What we're missing is kids playing in the park without spectators and people yelling at them," observes Davis, assistant principal of Hastings High School.
"Society is not as child-friendly as it used to be," notes Heinzmann, who, like many adults, remembers playing unsupervised in his neighborhood as a child. "Now the parents aren't home or they think the neighborhood isn't safe," he says. Kids' lifestyles are changing, agrees Merrill Melnick, a sport sociologist at the State University of New York, Brockport. "If both parents work, then what does that kid do at 3:00?" he asks. As a result, parents often turn to organized, supervised activity.
In fact, approximately 2 million young people in the United States, ages 5 to 17, participate in agency-sponsored sports, such as Little League Baseball. About 14 million participate in recreational sports programs, and about 2 million young people play club sports. In these organized sports leagues, adults make decisions, call the plays, and direct the players. What's lost is the opportunity for children to learn important social skills by organizing their own activities. "In the sandlots of yesterday, if there was a close call on the baseball diamond, the kids had to resolve the dispute," says Jim Unrath, who directs activities and athletics at United Township High School in East Moline, Illinois. "Sometimes the result was fisticuffs, but there was also negotiation."
Stephanie Schmidt, a high school sophomore in Alexandria, Virginia, notes other drawbacks to playing organized sports exclusively. "In organized sports, you are segregated from the boys," she says. "And it's more serious and competitive to be on an organized team. There's an emphasis on some players on the team over others."
Experts blame the media and adults for putting too much emphasis on the most gifted athletes. When children play sports together, they will often exchange players to make sure that the sides are evenly matched, says Unrath. But now, some parents see an event such as the Little League World Series on television and want to emulate that success for their kids. As a result, "we see parents manipulating coaches to create All Star teams," he notes.
Winning Isn't Everything
"The cliché that 'winning isn't everything: it's the only thing' still pervades youth sports," Melnick says. Experts emphasize that organized sports, in themselves, are not bad. Further, winning is important in sports, and striving to win is not unhealthy. "The issue is, as adults, what emphasis do we place on winning? We need to help kids separate how well they do in an athletic contest from who they are as a person," Heinzmann says.
The key to a good youth sports program "is for the program to be designed around wanting kids to get better or improve at the sport. And this changes how you structure the program," Heinzmann says. He also reminds adults that some children don't develop interests in sports until high school or beyond. "We need to view their athletic development in terms of years, not seasons or months. If kids have been cut from sports or are burned-out, we've missed an opportunity to get kids into fitness and health for life," he observes.
Within schools, athletics, like all co-curricular programs, "should support and extend the total education and individual development of kids," says Judy Young, executive director of the National Association for Sport and Physical Education. For example, at the elementary level, schools can give children adequate playground time and the opportunity to make their own rules for games, suggests Unrath. Young people should be well coached and well drilled, and be given the opportunity to try different sports, he continues. "If sports come down to winning and losing, and even coaches' jobs are dependent on that, then there shouldn't be athletics at the high school." Sports provide a vehicle for enhancing the educational, social, emotional, and physical development of each child, Melnick agrees, adding that "the process of sports participation, which includes learning skills improvement, honesty, self-esteem, and respect for authority," is more important than winning.
Identity and Cliques
One reason that sports programs need to emphasize character, discipline, goal setting, and respect is that sports can contribute to a student's self-concept and self-esteem, according to Robert M. Malina, director of the Institute for the Study of Youth Sports at Michigan State University. "In our society we place emphasis on sports," he says. "If a kid is good at computers, or sewing, or working on cars, that should be valued. But it isn't. Instead, we give positive strokes for highly visible things like participation in sports."
Many high school students know that varsity athletes are often the center of attention and are treated preferentially by adults. As evidence of preferential treatment, Malina cites the attention and space in local newspapers devoted to high school sporting events. "It's cool to see your name on the broadcast monitor in the cafeteria or in the local newspaper," agrees Schmidt, who plays lacrosse and field hockey at Mount Vernon High School in Alexandria, Virginia. "No one is going to get on the school intercom and say, Susie got an A on her Spanish test.'"
This emphasis on sports can have a profound effect on young people, who are still forming their identities. As social beings, "the way we value ourselves is contingent upon feedback from others," says Melnick. "It's natural for kids of a certain age to engage in comparisons: Who is taller? Who is faster? They come to identify themselves as athletic or unathletic."
In a society in which athletic achievement is highly visible and valued, sports participation and success often determine social status. "Jocks are the dominant social category in schools because athletics has a central position in forming the identity of schools and small communities," explains Malina. At Mount Vernon High School, "the football game is the biggest social event because people don't really go to dances. Everyone goes to the football games, even the parents," Schmidt says.
In fact, the cliques most prevalent at schools across the country are the athletes, the musicians, and the scholars, because their achievements are easily seen and evaluated. "The jock clique always seems to be there. If athletic programs aren't carefully managed, the standing of athletes—through no fault of their own—can be misused by the entire community," warns Young. Even in schools with losing teams, athletes in sports valued by the community still rise to the top of the social structure. "This year our football team isn't very good," Schmidt says. "But the rule is that a football star can't be a geek."
Within the rigid cliques in most high schools, students who aren't "sufficiently skilled, or who lack the size required for some sports, may choose alternative behaviors and may even become —alized from the mainstream," Malina notes. Another issue that often remains unaddressed is how athletes treat other students. "Does their elite status in schools translate into socially acceptable or unacceptable behaviors?" asks Malina.
To help ensure that all students in the school receive fair treatment, "we need coaches who understand the potential of athletics to help kids reach their education potentials," Young says. "In the past, almost all head coaches were teachers. Now we have expanded sports programs and have coaches who aren't teachers at the school—it's hard for them to have their fingers on the pulse of how athletes are treated at the school."
The bottom line, says Davis, is that the "attitude comes from the administration. If an athlete is tardy, he will get detention, just like everyone else. If the quarterback is late to school and the kids in front of the line tell him to go ahead of them, the faculty needs to tell the kids it won't happen."
How About the Girls?
Although the preferential treatment does not necessarily apply to them, the students who represent the biggest change, overall, to youth sports in the past century are the girl athletes. "Traditionally, the cheerleaders and girlfriends of the jocks have been part of jock cliques," says Young, but a girl basketball player who plays the clarinet is likely to identify with the band group. "With girl athletes, it depends on the school, because girls' athletic event are still not big, major events," Young says.
In general, though, adults and students say that being a girl athlete is considered cool—and the opportunities to play sports are growing. "You can't talk about sports in the lives of girls today without talking about Title IX," asserts Mary Jo Kane, who directs the Tucker Center for Research on Girls and Women in Sport at the University of Minnesota. The Title IX Education Amendment Act of 1972 prohibits institutions that receive federal funding from discriminating on the basis of gender in educational programs or activities. As a result of the law, "in one generation, we have moved from young girls hoping there's a team to hoping they'll make the team," Kane says. "Before Title IX, 1 in 27 girls played sports. Now it's 1 in 3." In Minnesota alone, according to Kane, 400 girls participated in sports before Title IX. Today, 86,000 girls in the state play sports.
Participation in sports can have positive effects on girls. "Sports allow girls to see that the definition of being female is consistent with being an athlete," says Kane. Sports provide girls with opportunities to see, think about, and use their bodies as instruments of force, she continues, which "allows girls to have a relationship with their bodies that is about strength, force, and respect."
Kane points to the Women's Sport Foundation 1998 report, which "showed that female athletes are less likely to get pregnant, and are more likely to have their first intercourse experiences later in life, to have fewer sexual partners, and to use contraceptives." She also cites the Foundation's 1998 Wilson Report, which reported that girl athletes are more likely to stay in school.
Although sports participation can have many positive benefits for both boys and girls, problems unique to girls' sports exist. "There's a stigmatization, especially for girls in team-oriented, physical sports, like softball, that if you look a particular way, you are a lesbian," says Kane. In her view, the United States Women's World Cup Soccer team was embraced by the media because of their all-American looks. "There's always an emphasis on who is married, looks heterosexual, and has kids. Those are the ones who get the coverage and the endorsement contracts," Kane notes. In addition to homophobia, what needs to be studied next, says Malina, is "the emerging jock mentality among girl athletes. As girls' sports receive equal billing to boys' sports, will schools start cutting female athletes slack as they do the boys?"
High Stakes
As girls' sports gain popularity and status, girl athletes may face many of the same pressures and problems that boys have faced. "We are a highly competitive culture, and parents want the best for their kids," Kane says. "The good news is that parents are taking their daughters' sports participation seriously. The bad news is that sometimes a college scholarship is at stake and the parents' value systems are out of whack."
For both boys and girls, the families of athletes have higher expectations than ever before for attaining financial aid for college, says Unrath. Moreover, parents of the best athletes are often looked to as leaders by other parents, so that "the parent's status also becomes dependent on the student's performance," he observes.
Whatever their motivation for wanting to succeed in sports, says Heinzmann, more young people are participating and specializing in sports at younger ages. "The stakes can be high when college scholarships and professional careers are on the line," he notes. Instead of playing a variety of sports through the year, a would-be athlete might become a year-round, right mid-fielder soccer player because that's what it takes to succeed, he explains. Such specialized activity could well increase the number of repetitive movement and overuse injuries and result in larger numbers of burned-out youth. For his part, Malina worries that children don't always have a say in whether and to what extent they participate in a sport. "Always ask, What is it doing to the child?" he urges.
In the end, very few boys and girls become professional sports stars like Brandi Chastain or even reach the top of their school's social pyramids. "We need to recognize that growing up in contemporary society is a complex process," says Malina. "Sports are only one part, albeit a very important part, of the process."
