Why Kids Really Play Sports
I know, most of us look at a photo of little kids at a soccer camp and say, “Aww, how cute are they?!” And they are, but take a closer look. One adult coach, giving instruction to one child, while ten other kids wait around, standing, staring into space or distracted by more interesting things, losing interest. Two teenaged assistant coaches, also waiting around rather than keeping things active and lively. Soccer balls are in the picture, but there’s only 2 of them (for 11 kids) and they’re not moving and not part of the action.
So, given all that, let me ask you a question: Is all that how you would define fun, learning, or socialization?
Or this: Why do kids play sports?
While you’re thinking about that, let me tell you what the evidence says: Groundbreaking research has been conducted by Dr. Amanda Visek and her team out of George Washington University over the past 10 years, in youth sport environments in the US and abroad, ranging from soccer (the original study) to tennis, basketball to cricket, volleyball to swimming; what it shows, over and over, is that what kids really want from a sport environment can be boiled down to the following (Visek et al, 2014 & 2017):
Kids want to belong: The first and most crucial element of any space - in this case, sport, but that’s not exclusive - is that the participants feel socially connected, welcome and valued for who they are – not just how they perform or how skilled they are. Kids in this case, and people in general, need to feel like they have an intrinsic investment in what’s happening in order to experience motivation to stay in it.
Contributors to “belonging” include playing with friends, supportive peer and adult relationships, shared goals or purpose, consistent team rituals, equity and autonomy, and identity affirmation.
These are crucial elements of a team or group environment at any age; often, in youth settings, we adults create a space, design the parameters, come up with the rules and goals, and then say “all are welcome here” as long as they abide by our standards and rules. This is called a transactional space, one in which acceptance is bought through compliance while crucial elements of identity are suppressed, actively discouraged, or – explicitly or implicitly - forbidden.
It happens over and over: The idea to create a so-called kid-centered sport program is actualized and implemented without asking any kids about how to do it. We’re not always totally wrong, and we will hit on some kid things; very often, though, we focus on the very adult things, like robust registration numbers (hello, transaction). After all, parents like to sign their kids up for new and exciting opportunities, especially those that claim to be “player-centered” and “elite,” and all of this eliteness requires money. We apply adult definitions of success (things like, again, registration numbers, revenue, or trophies), then congratulate ourselves for succeeding.
This leaves some or many of the kids standing around bored and left out - figuratively, and sometimes literally - or burned out by the weight of adult priorities and expectations. In order to create true belonging, we must account for what kids want and center them in the space, not based on what we assume we know or what we’ve decided will help us come out on top of the transaction, but based on 1) what the research is telling us and 2) the answers the kids give when we ask them…
Kids want to get better. This is the part that we fall back on as adult creators of youth spaces. Adults who become involved in youth sport often have a background in it, usually as athletes or coaches, and we focus on skill improvement because we can see it. This is called competence – possessing the skills and abilities to meet the demands of a task – and is the focus of most coaching. This approach isn’t wrong, it’s just incomplete.
Real improvement is not just what we can see from the outside, and building competence isn’t as simple as just running drills and explaining things. While explanation and/or demonstration help, it’s not enough to only study and become versed in the teaching of the technical aspects of a sport.
True competence is built through experience, especially the experience of failure, followed by calm evaluation and then applying what’s been learned to the next attempt. What many adults fail to do is create the type of environment that is conducive to building competence for anyone but the most naturally talented, those kids who are easy to coach because “they just get it.”
We love coaching the naturals because it’s fun and easy and exciting and validating for us; I’ve been there and I’ve seen coaches there, giving more coaching to the kids who are easy to coach and taking a little ego boost from their improvement and performance. However, these kids are rare, and where the importance of dynamic coaching comes in is with all the ones who don’t “just get it” – and that is pretty much everyone.
Getting better is a process that involves not just the instruction of skills in ways that help the “elite” kids – in quotes because, as a reminder, it doesn’t exist developmentally at the youth level outside of marketing schemes. Getting better happens in spaces in which performance and ability are not used to measure personal worth (transaction), and in which failure is embraced as an opportunity for learning and growth. Otherwise, the acquisition of skill comes with pressure, expectation, and narrow definitions of success that are impossible to meet.
External improvement is something that adults love to see, but it’s not about us; we have to also help kids feel themselves improving, and that happens in transformational spaces.
Kids want to have fun. We struggle with this one, as adults. In our obsession with excellence and results and status, we write off fun as a casualty of the war on scarcity; there are only so many [scholarships, stats, wins, trophies, accolades, achievements] to go around, and it’s more important to succeed (or to have my child succeed, hello FOMO) than to enjoy the process. We convince ourselves that the ends justify the means, leaving kids anxious, injured, and burned out. We have somehow some to a place where we accept a lack of fun, joy, and levity for our children, if it means that they’ll become “elite” (once again, in quotations because it doesn’t apply to children).
But have we stopped to consider what we’re sacrificing? And, more importantly, we keep using that word “fun,” but does it even mean what we think it means? We write off fun as silliness, unseriousness, goofing off, lack of focus, horseplay – and when kids are very young, those are often group activities that can lead to social connection and joy.
But that’s not all fun is: According to the above research – which led to what is known as Fun Integration Theory – youth athletes define fun as working hard, competing, being a good sport, receiving positive coaching, building friendships, learning and improving, mental bonuses like improved confidence, high-energy practices, and positive support from coaches, parents, and fans.
Is it worth throwing any or all of that away for some made up status that only the adults care about? And ok, you’re might say, “but Aaron, I know that kids care about that stuff too, I’ve seen it,” and you’re not totally wrong. What is critical to understand, however, is that kids take cues from the adults in the environment; if a child is obsessed with results and has adopted a fixed mindset about mistakes and status, if they seem to lack resilience or joy, it’s because they learned it from somewhere. Those kids are having less fun and sticking around in sport for less time because of the pressure exerted on them by the (usually narrow) adult definitions of success and the adult priorities and expectations that they feel obligated to fulfill.
So, how do we create better – developmentally supportive, growth-focused, truly kid-centered, depressurized – spaces in which kids can play sports, express themselves, and thrive? We must begin by following the evidence. Fun Integration Theory points us toward what kids really want out of a sport experience: In order for us to create spaces that facilitate belonging, improvement, and fun, we can do the following:
Decenter the adults. This starts with a good, honest look in the mirror. With all of our good intentions and exciting ideas and adult knowledge, we often fail to create transformational spaces because we attach the validation of our own ego needs – sometimes our own self-evaluation as parents and coaches and teachers, or the vicarious fulfillment of our unrealized dreams through the kids – to the performance of the kids in our charge. Kids can’t be the currency used to buy our own validation. Speaking of which…
Shift away from the transactional mindsets, language, and environments. Remember No Child Left Behind, when they started paying teachers and funding schools based on student test score performance? How did that work out for anyone involved? The big picture here is a shift away from a scarcity mindset and towards abundance. But to keep it simple:
Remove the language of possession from your vocabulary – they are not “your guys” or “our girls,” they are the kids you coach. If this belongs to anyone, it’s them, not you.
Reward the things that they control – courage, effort, compassion, sportsmanship, relentlessness, kindness, willingness to learn – rather than stats or natural abilities.
Understand that kids are not registration numbers or commodities whose performance conveys status on your club; their long term development, well-being, and transformation is the only reason for the club’s existence.
If you don’t believe me…
Follow the evidence. Fun Integration Theory (Visek et al, 2014 & 2017), Self-Determination Theory (Deci & Ryan, 1985 & 2000), and Ecological Systems Theory (Bronfenbrenner, 1979) paint us a very clear picture of the things that motivate human beings and influence their development. As for creating transformational (as opposed to transactional) spaces, we could do a lot worse than Don Hellison’s “Teaching Personal and Social Responsibility (TPSR) through Physical Activity” (1995). But ok, if you’re not a research nerd like me…
Ask them what they want from the experience – and then act on the answers. The simplest way to create a youth-centered environment is to ask the youth, and then use those answers – combined with what the evidence tells us, and using transformational principles – to build what they’re asking for. This collaborative process will foster a sense of belonging, it will create the conditions for real improvement, and most importantly it will be fun, by their definition. More than anything, this is what keeps kids active, engaged, growing, and thriving.
References
1. Visek, A.J., Achrati, S.M., Mannix, H.M., McDonnell, K., Harris, B.S., & DiPietro, L. (2014). The fun integration theory: Towards sustaining children and adolescents’ sport participation. Journal of Physical Activity and Health, 12(3), 424-433.
2. Visek, A.J., Mannix, H., Mann, d., & Jones, C. (2017). Integrating fun in young athletes’ sport experiences. In Knight, C.J., Harwood, C.J., & Gould, D. Sport Psychology for Young Athletes. Routledge.
3. Deci, E.L. & Ryan, R.M. (1985). Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination in Human Behavior. New York: Plenum.
4. Deci, E.L. & Ryan, R.M. (2000). The “what” and “why” of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11(4), 227-268.
5. Bronfenbrenner, U. (1977). Toward and experimental ecology of human development. American Psychologist, 32(7), 513-531.