State lawmakers consider oversight of youth sports

BOSTON — Sportsmanship, teamwork, camaraderie. There are many excellent reasons to participate in youth sports.

And oh yes, there’s arguably the most important one: fun — but critics say that’s disappearing fast.

“I would say fun and town pride have kind of dropped down the list,” said Walter Norton, Jr. a personal trainer and owner of the Institute of Performance. “Instead of we, it’s much more about me.”

Norton is one of several experts who testified on Beacon Hill at what State Sen. Barry Finegold billed as the nation’s first informational hearing on youth sports. The goal: to consider whether youth sports — played by kids in Grades K-8 — should be governed by an agency similar to the MIAA (Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association) — which oversees athletes in Grades 9-12.

Finegold said one of the issues he’s concerned about is the high cost of youth sports participation.

And it is substantial. Gitnux, which generates market data reports, estimates youth sports expenditures at $15.3 billion annually — with 2/3 of parents spending more than $500 per child, per sport, per year. And yet, Gitnux reports most kids give up on sports by 13 — because youth sports become increasingly competitive.

That does not surprise Norton — who said kids in youth sports often have more rigorous training schedules than the athletes on the professional teams he’s worked with, including the Boston Celtics.

“They don’t recover, they end up banged up and they quit sports because they’re tired and they resent that they have to do it,” Norton told lawmakers. “That they’re pushed so hard or that they have to live up to some obligation.”

“Money and the stakes and the influence of college — they’ve just become overly serious and all about adults,” said Linda Flanagan, author of the recent book, “Take Back the Game: How Money and Mania Have Ruined Youth Sports” and one of the experts testifying on Beacon Hill. “Adults have kind of hijacked youth sports and made them all about adults.”

Translation: adults are increasingly trying to use youth sports as a way to propel their children into college scholarships — or even to professional levels.

“Parents feel this pressure to start kids at younger and younger ages,” Flanagan said. “In my community, there’s a junior pre-academy for U4s in soccer. So a soccer program for three-year-olds.”

No state currently regulates youth sports — and it might prove unwieldy, given the massive number of organizations and companies that cater to athletes in the age group. But if oversight could impact the often unreasonable demands youth sports puts on kids — not to mention parents — it would seem Finegold might be all for it.

“I coach two hockey teams and a football team,” he said. “That’s why this hearing can’t go long because I have to be on the football field by 4:30 today.”

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