US
Youth Participation Weakens in Basketball, Football, Baseball, Soccer by Ryan Wallerson, courtesy The Wall
Street Journal January 31, 2014
- If there's an unofficial national day for America's sports passion,
it is Super Bowl Sunday, and one of the largest U.S. television
audiences of 2014 is expected to watch the Seattle Seahawks face the
Denver Broncos.
But ahead of this
weekend's spectacle in New Jersey, there is some sobering news about
the country's most-popular team sports: Fewer children are playing them.
Combined participation
in the four most-popular U.S. team sports—basketball, soccer, baseball
and football—fell among boys and girls aged 6 through 17 by roughly 4%
from 2008 to 2012, according to an examination of data from youth
leagues, school-sports groups and industry associations.
Lacrosse participation
was up 158% in 2012 from 2008. Washington Post/Getty Images
During those five
years, the population of 6-to-17-year-olds in the U.S. fell 0.6%,
according to the U.S. Census.
Organized sports have
long been regarded as a valuable defense against increasing rates of
disease-inducing inactivity among America's youth.
Declines in youth
sports participation could bear long-lasting consequences, says William
W. Dexter, a Maine physician who is president of the American College
of Sports Medicine. "It is much more likely," he says, "that someone
who is active in their childhood is going to remain active into their
adulthood."
The trend has business
implications, too. U.S. baseball-bat sales in 2012 fell 18% from 2008
sales in dollar terms, while football sales dropped about 5% and
team-uniform sales for basketball and soccer were flat, according to
the Sports & Fitness Industry Association, a trade group.
From 2011 to 2012,
total sporting-goods dollar sales rose 2.1%, half the projected
increase, the SFIA says. While the association doesn't poll members
about the reasons for the soft sales, "there is certainly the potential
for those declines to be connected" with decreases the SFIA has noted
in youth-sport participation, says VJ Mayor, the association's research
director.
In recent decades,
while some outdoor play—climbing trees, jumping rope, playing tag—faded
as a childhood pastime, organized sports remained relatively strong.
But that bright spot is dimming.
While football still
draws crowds to the TV set, participation in the sport in U.S. high
schools was down 2.3% in the 2012-13 season from the 2008-09 season,
according to the National Federation of State High School Associations.
High-school basketball participation fell 1.8% in the period.
While high-school
baseball participation rose 0.3% in the period, some data on the next
generation of players presage a decline: Little League baseball—the
biggest children's baseball league—reports that U.S. participation in
its baseball and softball leagues in 2012 was 6.8% below that in 2008.
Signs of that
dwindling participation among younger players show up in other popular
sports, too. A new survey by the SFIA and the Physical Activity
Council, a nonprofit research agency funded by seven trade groups,
found that participation by players aged 6 through 14 in organized
football in 2012 was 4.9% below that in 2008.
Basketball
participation fell 6.3% in the 6-to-14 group during that period,
according to the survey of nearly 70,000 households and individuals.
Even soccer, which has
seen strong gains in recent decades, shows signs its numbers are
stagnating. The high-school federation reports that soccer
participation was up 7.4% in the 2012-13 season from 2008-09. But the
United States Soccer Federation, which governs U.S. youth soccer
leagues other than school-based leagues, says its youth soccer
participation was flat between 2008 and 2012.
The causes of declines
in youth sports aren't clear. Experts cite everything from increasing
costs to excessive pressure on kids in youth sports to cuts in school
physical-education programs.
In Ohio, where the
high-school federation data show high-school participation in
basketball fell 15% to about 39,400 during the five years ended last
spring, the less-elite players are going missing, says Greg Nossaman,
president of the Ohio High School Basketball Coaches Association. "The
kid who practices hard and who takes pride in being part of the team
but who gets only a few minutes in the game—that kid has too many other
options," says Mr. Nossaman, head basketball coach at Olentangy Liberty
High School in Powell, Ohio.
Fifteen-year-old
Jessica Cronin is the daughter of a former three-sport high-school
athlete. But Jessica doesn't participate in high-school sports,
choosing to spend her time outside of class volunteering in her
community and going to her temple youth group each Wednesday. "I
considered doing track, but it takes up so much time," said Ms. Cronin,
a sophomore at Bethlehem Central High School in Delmar, N.Y.
Social networking,
videogames and other technology may be drawing children away from
sports. As many as 140 kids used to try out for 45 slots on the
baseball team at Shawnee Mission North High School in Overland Park,
Kan. Today, fewer than 45 kids try out, says George Sallas, the
school's athletic director.
"Kids are more trained
now to stay at home and play videogames," he says. "Sports don't
intrigue them."
The main reason kids
fall away from youth sports "is that the sport isn't fun to the child,"
says Michael Bergeron, Executive Director of the National Youth Sports
Health & Safety Institute. "We have to be aware of single sport
specialization, overuse, overworking kids searching for the elite
athletes; all of these things are causing kids to leave youth sport and
not return."
Football faces another
hurdle: growing concern that concussions and other contact injuries can
cause lasting physical damage.
Several high-profile
former players have said they wouldn't want their kids to play the
game—a sentiment echoed by the nation's sports-fan-in-chief. "If I had
a son," President Barack Obama told New Republic Magazine in one of
multiple interviews he has given on the subject, "I'd have to think
long and hard before I let him play football."
Some public-health
officials believe the risks associated with playing football and other
sports are overblown, especially compared with the risks of not playing
anything at all. "In terms of overall health, I'm more concerned about
an inactive child than a child suffering a head injury," says Cedric X.
Bryant, Chief Science Officer for the American Council on Exercise.
Dr. Bryant says he
worries that media attention on the safety risks of contact sports may
be turning parents against not only football but also hockey, baseball
and soccer.
The
soccer-participation data may be the biggest surprise, because the
sport has been one of the brightest spots in U.S. sports.
In the past quarter
century, Americans have embraced the sport, giving rise to Major League
Soccer and making heroes of U.S. women's Olympic teams. Among American
youth, participation grew in leagues governed by the U.S. Soccer
Federation to about four million in 2007 from about two million in 1990.
Then growth sputtered.
From 2008, the annual number hovered around four million. In 2012, the
last year for which the figures are available, the number of youth
soccer players in the federation fell slightly below four million.
The SFIA/Physical
Activity Council survey, which included youth league and school-based
participation, found a steeper drop in the period, with soccer
participation down 7.1% in the 6-to-18 age group.
"Booms like the one we
experienced can't go on forever," says a soccer federation spokesman.
"A ceiling or end to such rapid growth is to be expected. I see the
fact that we've maintained this high point of participation among kids
as more important than the fact that the rapid increase has reached its
end."
The shift in youth
participation worries youth-health officials who see organized sports
as an antidote to growing problems like youth obesity. The federal
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has noted a sharp increase
in youth obesity since the 1980s.
The percentage of
inactive 6-to-12-year-olds—youths involved in no physical activities
over a 12-month period—rose to near 20% in 2012 from 16% in 2007,
according to the SFIA/Physical Activity Council survey. Inactive
13-to-17-year-olds rose to 19% from 17%.
Because organized
sports provide supervision, coaching, structure, social interaction and
team-building skills, many health experts believe they represent an
ideal solution to youth inactivity. "Youth sports can become the choice
solution to the public-health problem based around inactivity," says
Dr. Bergeron of the sports-health institute.
Sporting-goods sellers
are concerned as well. So far, new products and rising prices have
helped sustain sporting-goods dollar sales, says a spokesman for the
National Sporting Goods Association, which represents sporting-goods
retailers and dealers. But, he says, "decreases in team sports
participation are a significant concern in the long run for sporting
goods retailers who sell team sports equipment."
There are a few rising
stars in youth sports. By one estimate, from the SFIA/Physical Activity
Council survey, 770,000 youth participated in organized lacrosse in
2012, up 158% from its 2008 estimate. The sport uses many of the same
skills as football, though with less contact, and may be gaining some
participation from football's losses.
The survey showed
ice-hockey participation growing 64% from 2008 through 2012 among the
6-to-18 age group. But that sport, too, is small: The council estimates
that 549,000 youth played it in organized teams in 2012, compared with
about seven million participants in basketball and 6.6 million in
soccer.
