Sports Crazy

     The orange dust cleared out, but not before the shouting began.  First it was the umpire yelling, "out!"  Then it was my coach rushing the plate, "You must be blind!"  Then it was a coach from the other dugout screaming, "You're crazy, he was out!"  I was seven, and all I knew was that my coach told me to run, I ran, my knees were bleeding, and all of these grown ups were really angry.  At that moment I wasn't sure whether I wanted to continue my first season playing baseball. 

     Unfortunately, every season there are children left wondering why they are playing ball when it doesn't seem to be much fun and why a game makes so many "grown ups" behave so badly!  It's not only baseball that elicits the poor behavior of adults.  This behavior can be found in any youth sport.  The questions this kind of behavior raises in me are, "Why are these games so important to these adults?" and "Why is there so much pressure on kids to win?"

     Now that my son has begun playing baseball, and my family and I are learning to juggle 2 practices and a game per week, I'm also wondering how much is too much when it comes to youth sports.  Other parents at my church in Sanford, Florida have told me how their kids are required to practice 5 days per week and spend their Saturdays at the football field.  Really?  Do we demand our kids spend that much time on their homework or their spiritual lives?  Does this time bring our families closer together or pull them further apart?  All of my questions lead into one big one:  "How important are youth sports anyway?"

     I love sports as much as, if not more than, anyone.  I love the life lessons about the importance of practice and team work, about the joy of accomplishment, and about learning how to win and lose in life.  Yes, I love winning and hate to lose.  But somewhere amidst the shouting matches and the overscheduling of our kid's lives I have begun to feel like we are taking them too far.  Surely, I am not alone.  Yet very rarely have I heard anyone question why we place such a heavy emphasis on youth sports.  Do that many parents truly believe that their little Johnny is going to make the pros and supply them with retirement cash and prestige?  Is that Little League win really going to be reviewed by the college scouts?  And do we really believe that if we don't push our kids to give so much of their time and ours to these sports during the fleeting days of childhood that, no matter how talented they are, they will miss out on their only opportunity to make it big in the sports world?  The truth is that very few kids will ever make the college or pro levels.  The other truth is that kids pretty much enjoy sports because it is fun, they make friends, and it feels good to learn something new.

     There is an old word that may be useful to reclaim as we consider the role of sports in our world:  recreation.  It is true that sports teach us many valuable life skills, but the sports themselves are not life or death issues.  Sports are opportunities for re-creation, times to be renewed, refreshed, to have fun and to break from work.  Doing surgery, caring for the hungry, educating the next generation, raising children, these are life and death issues.  Maybe when we get a more clear perspective on the role of sports, we'll question why it costs so much to buy a ticket to the game, why we're willing to spend so much of the precious time we're given watching the games, why athletes get paid as much as they do, and why so many adults find themselves yelling at the youth fields.  I think we're pushing the kids too far.  What do you think?