And it’s not what you think, either.
“Many won’t say this out loud, but I will.
The largest sports performance enhancing stimulus our modern youth athletes will benefit from is:
Time OFF.
You don’t have to play year-round.
They push this stuff not for youth development, but for adult $’s during slow periods.”
-Ray Zingler on X
An abundance of anything is rarely a good thing.
From alcohol to dessert, too much can have negative implications.
Heck, even too much water (by itself) can dehydrate you.
The key is to find a balance.
And I think most know and would agree with this statement.
However, it seems like when we get to construct that is youth sports we tend to throw this concept of balance out the window.
We get wrapped up in the abundance of offerings, recognizing that (it seems like) everyone else is doing it too, so we may as well jump on the wagon.
This is the very definition of FOMO (fear of missing out).
The problem for you (the consumer) is that those financial incentive know and understand consumer behavior patterns.
“If we throw it out there (whether there is any validity or necessity) via an ‘extra’ <insert anything> the consumer will feel obligated to jump on it and this will line our pockets in the process!”
This is why you see all these random extras popping up during traditional sports slow seasons.
It’s not because the kid’s need it. It has nothing to do with “development”. It has everything to do with leveraging naïve people to pay more money to line adults’ pockets.
Don’t believe me? Take even a fraction of the money associated with all this stuff out of it and watch the broken youth sport model correct itself literally overnight.
The “developers” wouldn’t show up.
“But, uhh, umm, yeah.. go play, ummm multiple sports, as they build more robust athletes, I think that’s what they say!”
But when? When do you expect them to fit in an additional sport as these, again, financially motivated adults work on tying our youth’s identity to a single sport at every turn?
It’s impossible.
We’ve allowed youth sports to be monopolized and they are using our kids (the most important part of the youth sport equation) as leverage. The kids are the ones who end up broken, battered, and burnt out, while Coach has extra funds to buy that Ford Raptor or book that vacation.
You know what our kids actually need?
Rest. Time off.
They need to be able to shut off for a minute.
God forbid they are kids.
We need to let them be kids.
