EDITOR’S NOTE:
To celebrate the imminent release of the new title ‘Sports Parenting: Negotiating the Challenges of the Youth Sports Journey to Help Kids Thrive’ we are sharing this special post. The excerpt featured is from the chapter ‘Choosing the Right Programme’.
Environment is everything when it comes to developing talent. Parents are naturally highly motivated to find the programme that provides most optimal conditions to allow their child’s talents to flourish. Seeing past the sales pitch and making the right choice is however not a straightforward proposition. Being successful on this endeavour begins with understanding the key features that make for the most conducive setting to enable young performers to realise their athletic potential. In this chapter we aim to provide parents with some criteria to guide the search.
CONSUMER CHOICES AND MARKET FORCES…
Depending on the sport and what part of the world you happen to be in, the talent development environment might include community sports clubs, commercial academies, national development programmes or academy systems linked to professional sports teams. Schools are another crucial environment for inspiring and nurturing sporting talent, not least as they are often the setting where kids are first exposed to the sports that they subsequently choose to pursue. In turn, certain schools prize their reputation for excellence in particular sports such that they invest in facilities, coaching and support staff – and some even go as far as recruiting kids who excel in a targeted sport.
It pays to be a discerning consumer when it comes to choosing the training environment, given what rests on the decision. The ‘user pays’ model is prominent in North America and the ‘youth sports economy’ is estimated to be worth over $15 billion in the United States alone. This introduces market forces, for good or ill, which makes it all the more important that sport parents are well informed in their consumer choices. Giving the customer what they want can easily be hijacked by aggressive and misleading marketing that seeks to tell the customer what they should want. As a jaded youth soccer coach recently told me, young athletes are a renewable revenue source – each year, there is another cohort of unsuspecting kids (and parents) to exploit.
A more optimistic view is that by providing sport parents with the knowledge to make wiser consumer choices we can make the market forces work in the favour of young athletes, rewarding more reputable organisations in their recruitment and retention of kids, such that they outcompete the less scrupulous opposition. Certainly kids are already voting with their feet, based on the rates of drop out in participation. In particular, the steep decline once kids reach their teenage years indicates that there is a glaring gap in the market for those with the foresight to provide an alternative that better meets the needs of young performers.
RECOGNISING THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY…
A big part of what distinguishes a legitimate youth development programme is that the training content and how it is delivered is appropriate to the age and stage of the young performer. What constitutes ‘optimal’ training depends on our timeline. The question then becomes are we concerned about what training will yield best results next month or next year (or the years after that)? In the case of youth sports, clearly we should be thinking on a longer timeline.
Without doubt the most common mistake with youth sports athletes is getting too specialised too soon. It takes foresight to recognise that highly specialised types of training which appear to transfer most readily to performing the sport are generally not what will develop the foundations to enable superior performance in the medium- and long-term.
When parents and kids (even some coaches) hear the term sport-specific many naturally assume it means that every exercise employed in training should simulate or mimic the sport. This is arguably the biggest misconception that parents need to guard against when assessing potential options. Unethical commercial programmes and opportunistic coaches and trainers are all too ready to take advantage of this misapprehension.
There are universal capacities and capabilities that are foundational and thus necessary for any sport, and these should be the mainstay even of programmes that are designed for a specific sport. For instance, developing fundamental motor skills and the pillars of global athleticism are essential for young athletes regardless of their chosen sport.
“Don’t rob Peter to pay Paul”
Parents should be very wary of facilities and programmes using marketing slogans such as ‘train like the pros!’. The trend for prominent private schools with a reputation for sport to hire high profile ex-players to coach their school teams is an example of a similar scenario creeping into school sports. At present it is beguilingly easy to succumb to what has been described as early professionalism (Sweeney, Horan et al. 2021). Chasing short term results and wins at junior level is ultimately futile if it is at the cost of sacrificing the young performer’s long-term development. Parents and young athletes alike need to keep the notion of not robbing Peter to pay Paul very much at the forefront to avoid being drawn in by marketing. The youth sports industry, for that is what it is, is fraught with these issues.
The final threat for parents and kids to guard against can be encapsulated as ‘too much too soon’. What is highly revealing is that young athletes who are selected to talent squads at an early stage in their development also exit the pathway earlier (Güllich and Emrich 2016). The fact that kids who are identified and supported early prove less likely to enjoy success at senior level than those who enter the talent development pathway later on illustrates some apparent flaws the system. We might expect that kids who receive dedicated support and intensified training earlier on would progress quicker than their non-selected peers, whereas the objective data indicate that this is not necessarily the case.
With all this in mind, parents should seek out facilities and practitioners that focus on establishing the bedrock capacities and developing the scaffolding of capability to support the young athlete’s ability to perform at a higher level in the future. In the long run this will yield a far better outcome. Parents would be well advised to steer clear of environments that promise short-term results by narrowly focussing on specialised practice and preparation to the exclusion of building the foundations for long-term success.
FACILITIES VERSUS ENVIRONMENT…
Growing up I vividly recall watching on with envy at the acres of sports fields, courts, athletics track, swimming pool and world class training facilities boasted by the private schools in the town in England where I attended school (the state school I attended had neither the means nor the will to compete on this front). On the surface such advantages seem to be borne out by the data indicating that a disproportionate number of athletes who compete for Team GB at world and Olympic level are products of the independent (fee-paying) private school system in the United Kingdom. However, if we delve deeper the apparent differences in outcomes we see in the UK example are not simply attributable to facilities. Another crucial point of difference with these independent schools is that they affirm their commitment to sport by investing in quality coaching (Morton 2021). Sport and physical education are also prioritised in the school timetable, which contrasts sharply with state schools that continually cut back on the time allocated to physical education. We should also note that the same data from the UK reveal that there are other sports such as (soccer) football and rugby league that demonstrate no such over-representation of independent school-educated athletes.
Facilities alone do not necessarily confer competitive advantage and certainly do not guarantee success. An illustration is that the elite sport schools in central European countries have failed to yield the expected returns in terms of national team representation and success at senior level. The empirical data fail to support that attending the German elite sport schools increases the likelihood of success at senior level (Emrich, Fröhlich et al. 2009). A large survey of elite athletes in Belgium similarly reported that whilst they rated the facilities at the elite sport schools as superior, what was delivered and the outcomes for graduating student-athletes were not rated as meaningfully different to attending a mainstream school (De Bosscher, De Knop et al. 2016). Finally, a retrospective analysis indicated that attending the ‘top talent schools’ in Holland made no difference to young performers’ level of performance or highest level attained in junior or senior competition (van Rens, Elling et al. 2012). Aside from the lack of apparent benefit, another worrisome finding was that those who attended these elite sport schools also performed worse academically.
Clearly facilities alone are not a reliable guide, so a sport parent seeking to identify the best programme for a young performer needs to look beyond the amenities that they see on a tour. Creating an environment that reliably cultivates talent is not straightforward. As the sport school example illustrates, investing in facilities and attempting to bring the highest performing kids of their age together does not necessarily confer success! I have observed first-hand that what actually makes the difference are the less tangible aspects of the environment, which are predominantly created by the coaching staff along with the athletes themselves.
INCUBATOR, CLASSROOM AND CRUCIBLE…
The talent development environment must fulfil a variety of functions at different times. Each of the following elements will feature, albeit the blend and the relative emphasis shifts over the course of the journey.
An incubator to inspire and nurture talent. Performers should be encouraged to aspire and strive towards the highest goal they can envisage. The role of the individual in the process is paramount, so those involved need to ensure young performers retain a sense of agency. They should be reminded often that it is their choice to be there and it should remain clear that what they invest each day is ultimately up to them.
A classroom to instruct and inform. The programme must satisfy certain key objectives with clear outcomes that can be assessed. The time spent in the practice environment should develop the young person’s sporting IQ – depending on the sport this might include game sense and decision-making faculties. Likewise, the staff in the training environment should help teach the performers how to look after themselves. For instance, there should be some effort to educate the performers on relevant aspects of athlete life and performance health, much of which concerns the choices they make beyond the environment, including nutrition and sleep habits.
A crucible to forge young performers and test their mettle. An important function of a talent development environment is to equip kids to cope with the challenges they will face. Part of the function of training and practice is to bring out their innate strength and render them more resilient both in body and mind. Youth athletes should be encouraged and afforded ample opportunity to voluntarily challenge themselves to perform under pressure under relatively low stakes so that they are prepared to do so when it matters in competition. Aside from preparing the performer to execute under competitive conditions, they should be provided guidance and support to develop coping strategies.
To close the chapter, below is a summary of the key points for parents to look for when assessing potential options:
The marketing material is free of obvious red flags (slogans such as ‘train like the pros’) – take the opportunity to interrogate those leading the programme on anything that seems dubious!
Meets minimum standards from a facilities and equipment perspective. In other words, facilities are sufficient, necessary equipment is available and everything is well maintained.
Those leading the programme exhibit humility and express genuine regard for the young athlete’s best interests.
The approach outlined is based on sound principles and favours long-term development over chasing short-term wins.
There is a code of conduct and expectations are made clear and explicit from the outset.
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