The Importance Of Sports And Stress-Relief For Youth Athletes

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Title The world has come a long way from fighting to the death for a scrap of food, but child athletics is quickly becoming primitive. Imagine the scrap of food as a Division I college scholarship, and the parents are fighting to the death to get their child to the top. There will be few professional athletes, but there are millions of children involved in youth athletics. Along the way to the top, someone has to be left behind, and the course is littered with former athletes struggling with physical and mental health issues. It is similar to the things one would watch in popular movies, like The Hunger Games. Only one child gets to be the champion. In 2000, a Boston father was charged with manslaughter after he recklessly assaulted the …show more content…

They can see what their body is capable of doing; athletes do small things to help their level of play which can also help their overall fitness. These small things will become daily habits. Sports are a tremendous way to stay active everyday; Sports offer tremendous stress-relief for youth athletes. “During exams, Duke University opens its gyms twenty-four hours a day to provide stress relief for its students” (Watkins 13). A good practice can change the course of a bad day. Also, kids can feel satisfaction and accomplishment through mastery of a specific skill. It’s an immediate gratification when an athlete finally fixes what they were struggling to do. They can see the changes in their performance as it is …show more content…

Growth sites are on the ends of longer bones and involve joints like the knee or elbow. Common growth site injuries include: runner’s knee, jumper’s knee, Achilles tendonitis, and shin splints. In some rare cases the growth plate will stop growing completely. Young, girl runners are at a risk for the female athlete triad. The female athlete triad includes disordered eating in the runner. Running stresses a lifestyle that needs a specific diet to keep the runner in good health. Disordered eating is also likely to occur in young gymnast going through puberty. During puberty a young lady’s center of gravity can change making tricks that were easy before seem nearly impossible. In order to stay smaller, the gymnast will lower their intake of food. Runners tend to want to stay skinnier and this pressure may cause them to restrict their nutrition. This lowered intake of nutrients will cause the second factor of the female athlete triad. Puberty is an important time for a girl’s bones to grow. By lowering the nutrients that a girl is receiving, the bones become fragile and can cause early osteoporosis. Osteoporosis is the weakening of bones and is normally thought to be a condition for only older women, but some extreme runners have been known to get osteoporosis during their twenties. Runner’s bone are so fragile that they may suddenly break and stress fractures are much more

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