Youth Sports – The Role Of Organized Sports In Your Child’s Life
Sports provide your child with many benefits including physical exercise, fun, confidence and a sense of community. And for many children, sports are the most natural and joyful way of expressing grace and excellence in their young lives. With these benefits in mind, and hoping to provide the best opportunities for your child, you and other parents dutifully sign up your young children for the local youth program of choice. Surely this is the single best way for children to pursue their interest in sports, develop their abilities, and get the most out of the experience.
- Benefits of Organized Sports
Organized sports, administered by adults, offer one path for a child to learn and appreciate sports. Skill clinics and traditional developmental youth leagues ideally enable knowledgeable coaches to teach children specific sports skills and team play along with sportsmanship and life lessons. Proper instruction, balanced with competition suited to the age group and skill level, can provide the program’s youth participants with a great experience. In addition, activities are supervised, helping to ensure the safety of your child. Organized sports are only one part of the equation.
- Rich Beginnings
It began with my Dad introducing me to sports by playing catch and providing some basic instruction In elementary school, a gym teacher began our basic instruction in a variety of games and modified sports. Games of kickball during gym class and recesses provided a fun introduction to team sports.
- Learning to Become Self-reliant
But it is essential to understand that these neighborhood games were much more than just playing sports. We learned how to recruit neighborhood kids, organize the game, deal with arguments, balance our individual competitive instincts against the needs of others in the group, and otherwise manage the game so that everyone wanted to play. Often, it was a balancing act to keep everyone satisfied and the game going. Depending on who was playing and our mood, the games emphasized either relaxed fun or more serious competition. For us, the organized sports activities of our youth were separate, complementary experiences that helped fill our weekday evenings and Saturday mornings.
- Organized Sports Today
Title Nine, for example, has opened the world of sports to millions of young girls. Other changes include more two paycheck families, more single parents, 24hour news that sensitizes us to the potential dangers our children face on their own, and an expanded universe of non-sports activities available to a child. Unlike Title Nine, these changes are more mixed in their benefits and drawbacks. But one truth is certain, parents now lead lives filled to the brim with personal and family activities.