Improving the Benefits of Participation of Participation in Youth Football
Abstract
This paper seeks to help reduce the negative outcomes associated with the involvement of youth in football. Specifically, the paper addresses the manner in which negative outcomes such as physical injuries and others have been affecting involvement in the sport. It gives the rationale for the program adopted, suggesting that involvement in organized sports before the age of fifteen years has a detrimental effect on the development of players. Therefore, a team of six sports psychologists, a kinesiology psychologist, a sport and exercise ethics psychologist, a sport and exercise stress psychologist, a motivational psychologist, a sports culture psychologist, and an athletic injury psychologist, will be useful in the implementation of the program.
Introduction
While people might consider that participation in sports such as football is advantageous for the youth, there has emerged a body of literature in the past that warns against over engagement. Such studies point at the fact that participation in youth sports exposes the players to a variety of risks such as concussions, brain damages, sexual abuse, substance abuse, and others. As such, parents around the country have started being concerned about the levels of involvement of their children in sports. Their main worry relates to the idea that sports could be more detrimental to their development than it may be useful. The objective of this paper is to help the concerned parties address the problem. Specifically, the work seeks to increase the benefits of participation in youth football around the world in areas such as enhancing development, decreasing aggression and violence, among others.
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Rationale for the Program
Participation in one type of sport at the early developmental stages and during adolescence is a topic of controversy in the contemporary society. As the adults prefer organized youth sports to encourage positive development among the youth and children, they discover that most of the programs need to encourage early specialization. The growth of such programs has resulted in a notion of normality in the need for children to specialize in one sport all year round. Such trends have resulted in questions concerning the benefits and drawbacks of youth participation in specialized sports. Literature reports that most of the negative outcomes of youth sports such as football are related to specialization in a single sport (NASPE, 2017). For instance, children are exposed to a higher rate of physical injuries and other problems when they are exposed to repetitive, consistently intense movements that might stress their bodies because such movements could be done unevenly, compromise bone development, and foster unbalanced development of muscles (Danish, Petitpas, and Hale, 1993). Such injuries are mostly manifested as spinal injuries, joint injuries, stress fractures, ligament and tendon injuries, and little league elbow injuries. The program described in this paper, therefore, is informed on the following ideals:
The participation of youths in a variety of sports and physical activities on a regular basis results in many documented social, psychological, and physical benefits that have a relationship with both long and short-term development as well as to participation in competitive and recreational sports in future.
The youth that specialize in one sport all year round meet with many document risks that result from overtraining and extra commitment of their time to a single activity, which are disruptive to their overall development when they are no older than fifteen years. During such times, the youth are unable to make informed decisions concerning priorities that may affect their future life.
Positive development among the youth is likely to be realized more when they are exposed to diverse opportunities of exploration and development of a range of social, psychological, and physical abilities from different sports and activities. Some of such programs and activities many be competitive while others could be focused on self-mastery and adventure under a variety of environmental and social conditions.
Positive development of youth is rarely attained when the adults motivate them to engage in programs of sporting that require specialization for periods longer than three months. In addition, when the parents verbalize their expectations that their children should take part in practices, private lessons, associated camps, and clinics, they are likely to reduce the benefits associated with such sports.
The use of specialized and intense participation in sport as a method of wining championships and scholarships as well as creating successful careers in athletics is often counterproductive for the fact that it results in burnout and undermines the development of children through their childhood and adolescence.
The motivation among the youth to attain excellence is maximum when the youth have experiences in a variety of sports and when they can make informed choices concerning the sports of their choice.
Description of the Program and the Barriers Likely to be Met during Implementation
Based on the above considerations, the program adopted in this work seeks to encourage the youth to try engaging in different experiences and relationships that different organized sports bring for them to discover what they may find to be enjoyable and could be useful in their overall competence to maximize their sports success. While the focus would be on youth football, it is encourage that the children have a wide range of other sports, which the coaches, parents, and teachers will evaluate in terms of their effectiveness of producing self-efficacy, self-esteem, and insights of competence among the children (NASPE, 2017). The program will also focus on supporting the coaches to motivate the youth to engage in developing their fundamental skills, which results in increased ability and skills such as proper skills for stopping, changing direction, throwing, running, and kicking.
The program will also target to inform the youth concerning the options for sport participation that are available to them, motivate them to diversify their physical and sport activity experiences. The youth will also be empowered to make choices of participation on the foundation of their knowledge of the risks related to specialization in youth football. The focus of the program will also be the organization and supporting the youth to learn new skills, developing their levels of confidence and nurturing their abilities and nurturing lifelong preference for physical activity among the youth regardless of the levels of physical training and development experience. The program will further minimize overuse injuries and raise the overall levels of physical well-being and competence trough empathizing development of the core skills of the sport such as speed, balance, and agility as well as flexibility and aerobic fitness, muscle strength and well as power. Some of the youth drop out of the sport because of boredom and burnout, which means that the program should deal with the maximization of the probability of individual development and success in the sport. This target can be attained by demotivating them to specialize in football alone until they attain the age in which they will be able to make informed decisions, which is beyond fifteen years.
The program also seeks to involve support coaches who will be used in explaining how the sports activities would be used in improving the overall physical fitness and make the players to understand that athletic scholarships may not be as comprehensive or plentiful as most people could perceive them since they only cover parts of college scholarships (Kennedy, 2007). The players will also be taught the need to enjoy the sport and to love physical and movement challenges that will be useful in allowing the youth integrate physical activity as a motivation to attain overall fitness. The concern of the program will also be on sexual abuse, and substance abuse. On the issue of sexual abuse, the program will help the players understand circumstances that would result in sexual abuse and how the players should handle them. The fact that the physical demands of the game might lead the youth in substance abuse means that the program should sensitive them on the effects of such behavior.
The main challenge that this program is likely to meet is resistance from parents. This conclusion draws from the fact that literature reports parents to be the most fundamental force in determining what their children engage in while at school. In this regard, different parents have different experiences with the sports and will want their children to engage in them because of what they believe is good for them (Schwab, Wells, and Arthur-Banning, 2010). For example, most of the parents that will want their children to engage in organized sport below the age of fifteen years will do so because they want their children to earn college scholarships and develop their careers (Danish, Petitpas, and Hale, 1993). For this reason, trying to implement programs that will reduce specialization may be considered irrelevant for this group of parents. In addition, those parents that may approve of participation in different types of sports may disapprove the involvement of their children in youth football. Their decision might be related to the fact that the sport has been reported to have negative physical development effects such as injuries as well as the promotion of violent behavior among the youth (Silverman, 2017). Overcoming this challenge will require public education on the importance of sports in society. Such education will entail transforming public opinion on the importance of not specializing in a single game during the early developmental stages of the children.
Description of the Influence of Course Information on the Program
The information used in the development of this program is based on the learning outcomes of the course. For instance, throughout the course, it has been clear that youth sports face a number of challenges. Such challenges have affected the participation of the youth and the outcomes of their participation. The course informed the need for concerned parties to address the concerns raised such as dealing with parent pressure to participate in specific games. It is now understood that players and their parents have different perceptions about the role of youth sports. For example, while players consider the games opportunities for their self-development, their parents want them to participate because of different reasons. For instance, the main difference in the perceptions of the two groups is that parents might always want their children to be professional football players in the National Football League or to obtain sportsmanship scholarships to offset the cost of college education. This means that the players, the children, might have ended up engaging in sporting activities that they do not like because they want to please their parents.
The occurrence of negative outcomes because of youth participation in organized sports such as football has been occasioned by the pressure from parents for the youth to develop according to their demands. Therefore, the course informed the program through providing the causes of the negative outcomes of youth participation in sports and how such outcomes could be managed effectively. Specifically, the manner of handling such problems is based on the psychology of sport, which is wholly a concept of the course. The psychology of sport directs that policy makers must not pin down players on the types of games they are required to participate. Rather, the players should be allowed to explore opportunities and experiences that each type of sport brings, comparing the challenges and benefits before they choose what would suit them the most. The overall framework of the program described above is founded in the fact that allowing people to participate in as many sports as they wish improves the positive outcome of such participation, which is enjoyment. Enjoyment then allows the players a chance to advance their career in future depending on their experiences.
Description of the Team Members and Their Role in the Program
A team of six members will be hired during the implementation of this program. The six members are each required to address a specific concern that the program seeks to address. Before describing roles of each consultant, there is a need to dissect the program’s concern into the six categories. The program first seeks to deal with issue of injuries in youth football. In addition, the program will deal with motivational process for the players, sport exercise, ethics in exercise and sports, sports in the American cultural context, and Stress during exercising in sports. The six areas to be addressed will then be dealt with by kinesiology psychologist, a sport and exercise ethics psychologist, a sport and exercise stress psychologist, a motivational psychologist, a sports culture psychologist, and an athletic injury psychologist. The roles of each of the consultant are described in the subsequent paragraphs of this section.
The kinesiology psychologist will be concerned with teaching the youth football coaches the appropriate body and muscle movements of the players. This element of the program is one of the many factors that the program seeks in attempting to reduce the rates of injury and the promotion of personal development. Kinesiology will be useful to enable the coaches to train players to avoid movements that are likely to result in body strains and injuries. The sport and exercise ethics psychologist will be concerned with teaching the concerned parties on the relationship among exercise, health promotion, and competence among the youth players. This role blends with that played by kinesiology since the periods of exercise and the types of movements involved affect the physical and psychological outcomes of the exercising process. The sport and exercise stress psychologist will be concerned with interpreting the ethics of exercising with the youthful players and the physical and mental pressure such activities might cause to them. For instance, this consultant will be concerned with informing the coaches on the appropriate parameters of measuring the intensity and duration of training on players against the desired outcome. The value of allowing children to participate in sports of their choice may come in as a way of allowing them to reduce the pressure resulting from training and specializing in one game. The exercise psychologist who will help the coaches to focus their activities on allowing the players enjoy their participation in football and not feeling that they are obliged to take part will complement this role.
The American sports cultural psychologist will be concerned with dealing with the culture of sports in the American context. They will collaborate with the motivational psychologist in explaining the challenges that youthful footballers may encounter because of their interactions with others. For example, the cultural psychologist might explain the most inherent challenges such as substance abuse, sexual abuse, and others. They might also describe the perception of parents towards organized sports in the US and the pressure that the players might be subjected to while offering the solutions to such pressures. The role of the motivational psychologist will be to train the coaches on how to deal with youth players that might be considering dropping out of their sport because of pressure from coaches and parents.
The program devised to deal with negative outcomes of the participation of children in youth football seeks to achieve six fundamental aspects of the sport. For instance, the program first seeks to deal with issue of injuries in youth football. In addition, the program will deal with motivational process for the players, sport exercise, ethics in exercise and sports, sports in the American cultural context, and Stress during exercising in sports. The main challenge that this program might face is that of resistance from parents since it discourages specialized training for children in football before they are fifteen years. The fact that some parents want their children to start their career path while early elaborates the nature of the resistance that the program is likely to meet with. The success of this program relies on a team of six youth sports psychologists that include kinesiology psychologist, a sport and exercise ethics psychologist, a sport and exercise stress psychologist, a motivational psychologist, a sports culture psychologist, and an athletic injury psychologist.
References
Danish, S. J., Petitpas, A. J., & Hale, B. D. (1993). Life development intervention for athletes: Life skills through sports. The Counseling Psychologist , 21 (3), 352-385.
Kennedy, R. D. (2007). A historical study of the development of the total person program: The evolution of academic support services for student-athletes at the University of Missouri (Doctoral dissertation, University of Missouri--Columbia).
National Association for Sports and Psychology Education (NASPE) (2017). Guidelines for Participation in Youth Sport Programs: Specialization Versus Multiple-Sport Participation . Retrieved September 22, 2017 from http://www.shapeamerica.org/advocacy/positionstatements/pe/loader.cfm?csModule=security/getfile&pageid=4651
Schwab, K. A., Wells, M. S., & Arthur-Banning, S. (2010). Experiences in Youth Sports: A Comparison Between Players and Parents Perspectives. Journal of Applied Sport Management , 2 (1).
Silverman, S. (2017). The Negative Effects of Youth Sports . LIVESTRONG.COM . Retrieved 22 September 2017, from http://www.livestrong.com/article/95532-negative-effects-youth-sports/
