Clarion Content

The Clarion Content probably spends far more time writing about the negatives than the positives that come out of the world of sports. And we love sports! This week we saw a delightful and encouraging article about the nature of sports in the New York Times. It verified something we heard out of radio row at the Super Bowl on the Jim Rome show. We can't quite recall which it was of the many NFL players whom Rome had on his show that said it, but of the many NFL vets, Rome got one of them discussing his favorite times playing football, and he ranked them from best to least favorite; high school best, college next, NFL last. He said in high school, one knew all the cheerleaders and had grown up with his teammates. At each level after that it got more impersonal and more professional. It became more of a job. The New York Times article made a similar point.

A high school sophomore in Darien, Connecticut, Peter Barston, has surveyed hundreds of young, local athletes about why they play sports. The New York Times reports the project was born of curiosity when last summer, Bartson's father, Mike, attended a workshop by the Positive Coaching Alliance, a national organization advocating a kinder youth sports culture. There he saw a presentation that referred to a 20-year-old study by scientists at Michigan State’s Institute for the Study of Youth Sports. They had polled young athletes about their reasons for participating in sports. Barston, inspired, attempted to emulate the survey locally.

In a reminder that kids rule until adults cynically co-opt them, Barston found something very similar to what Michigan State's much more formal survey discovered. His survey a single page list of 11 reasons children might have for playing sports, included lifestyle (to have fun, to make friends) and the competitive achievement (to win, to earn a college scholarship). Just like the Michigan State researchers, Barston instructed the local Darien athletes to assign points based on the importance of the reasons for a total of 100.

Barston found a striking pattern. No matter how he categorized the responses, the most important reason youngsters gave for playing sports was the same: to have fun! This was the number one response from football and basketball players, from boys and from girls, and from players in each grade from fourth to eighth. In the basketball survey, 95 percent of boys and 98 percent of girls cited fun as a reason for playing, nearly twice the number who mentioned winning.

Michigan State's professional researchers found the same thing. According to the Times, "Their study of 28,000 boys and girls around the country asked, Why do you play sports? The top answer then was “fun,” followed by “to do something I’m good at” and “to improve my skills.” “Winning” did not crack the top 10."

Barston's work has resonated in his home town of Darien, the Times quotes a member of the local junior football league’s board, saying the survey was a “touch of reality” for adults.

“It reminds us why kids play sports in the first place,” he said. “It’s not about winning a championship in the fourth grade and having that be a life achievement.”

Can we get a hooray?

Labels: Pop Culture, sports