Reasons Why Adolescents Should Compete In Sports

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According to Siegenthaler & Gonzalez (2010) the starting age for the youths participating in competitive sports have lowered intensely in the last two decades. When selecting the youths to compete in sports, one should consider the chronological and developmental age of the child being chosen to participate in the sports. According to psychological, cognitive and physical development, a child should have attained an age of 6 years before taking part in a structured team sport such as basketball and soccer. However, age is an imperfect measure for use by coaches and parents in gauging progress and setting expectations because children mature and different rates. Participation is sport has some benefits such as holistic development among the young people, higher self-esteem and giving the young children the opportunity to learn virtues such as honesty, adherence to rules, teamwork and fair play and in building healthy activity habits. The effect of healthy sports among the youths can be classified into five critical components of positive development which are: competence, connections, confidence, character, and caring.
The long-term and short-term consequences of intense training among the children should be further investigated to come up with a concrete …show more content…

Injuries occur among the children and require lengthy recovery periods, and others may lead to long-term complications among the young people. Numerous unique risk factors result from burnouts and overuse injuries in adolescents and children. Teenage female sports people should be assessed for menstrual irregularities as a sign of bone stress injuries. Injury risk is greater among the youths at the age adolescence, and, therefore, careful training and monitoring is required during this stage. At a young age, the players may ignore rules of the game, and this leads to increased possibilities for injuries during the competition (Smith,

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