What Is The Pressure To Drop Out Of Competitive Sports

Argument Essay

Today, many children are impacted by competitive sports. The pressure to win and do the best or even be the best can blind children from understanding the truth about competitive sports. The reality is that competitive sports have changed tremendously in the last 20 years. Sports were not anything like what they are today. For most kids twenty years ago, the sport starts out as a simple hobby which slowly turns into an ambition. What drove tens and thousands of athletes twenty years ago isn’t the same as what drives many young athletes today. Twenty years ago, it was the ambition that drove many athletes to success. Today it is just pressure. The pressure to win and meet expectations makes a child feel more stressed than driven.

The pressure put on by parents and coaches to perform well and win all the time can lead kids to carry that pressure through different environments, such as the school and home environments. Pressure put by parents and coaches can lead children to start disliking their sport tremendously. Matt Roth, a sports specific physician, describes sports as a “waste of money and time” because of the enormous amounts of data and statistics that show that due to all the pressure to perform put on children, 75% of children drop out of sports altogether by the time they reach high school (Roth). The amount of pressure and stress carried through by coaches and parents leads most kids to stop enjoying the sport they started off loving. In his talk, John O'Sullivan, the founder of the Changing the Game Project, starts by talking about his 5 year old’s soccer game and the 10 year old’s soccer game in the field next them. When describing the game compared to his 5 year old’s soccer game, he says, “It was completely different.” He says that the soccer game was a “competitive” soccer game, describing competitive as the coaches and parents yelling and screaming at their children, further building pressure ( O’Sullivan). The talk shows the importance of letting children enjoy their sports instead of making them seem like a burden. Another example of how pressure affects a

This can cause a child to drop out of a sport or be impacted tremendously by the effects of the injury. Every year hundreds and thousands of children end up in the emergency room due to sports related injuries. A study conducted by Stanford’s Children’s Health found that more than 775,000 children, ages 14 and younger, are treated in hospital emergency rooms for sports-related injuries each year. Most of the injuries occurred as a result of falls, being struck by an object, collisions, and overexertion (Stanford Children’s). This shows the amount of damage playing a sport can cause. Most parents tend to overlook the effects of participating in a sport when it comes to injuries, but the reality is that anyone can get hurt and traumatized by their injuries. This can lead to decreased enjoyment in sports. Some people might argue that with all of its health benefits, the chances of getting injured would be very slim. In fact, one article summarizes the many benefits of competitive sports, describing sports to help with stress and in maintaining a healthy weight (Josephson). Competitive sports may help with weight, but when an injury becomes severe, it can impact children on many levels. Injuries are said to become especially serious when children are not able to communicate their injury to an adult because of pressure. The pressure to do better and win all the time can keep a child from worrying about their