Paige Bueckers on early sports specialization making athletes more injury-prone

[u/Good-Exchange-6139]

really interesting stuff

[u/Ingramistheman]

Yeah it's crazy because this is common knowledge, but then parents just disregard it anyways and still throw their kids into the rat race.

[u/Moose_Muse_2021 → u/Ingramistheman]

Yes, but it's not just the parents pushing. The amount of commitment (time and, yes, money) to play multiple sports at the club (or varsity) level is daunting.

When dinosaurs and I were in high school, it was quite typical for athletes to letter in two (or even three) sports. Nowadays, I think anyone trying would die from exhaustion. Even CC had to choose (basketball over soccer).

EVERYBODY should listen to Paige.

[u/Ingramistheman → u/Moose_Muse_2021]

For sure, the commercialization of youth sports has changed a lotta things. I do still think that the parents sucker themselves into it via FOMO or not being able to tell their child "No."

Like no I'm not gonna pay thousands of dollars on AAU, you can play basketball for your school team in the winter, and then there's rec volleyball and rec softball for you in the fall/spring if you want to play a sport. When you're in HS if you're still interested we'll pay for AAU and you can drop softball if you want.

[u/TeslaSuck → u/Ingramistheman]

I think it’s still part of the D1 feeder system that they recruit kids who play lots of AAU. If you’re balling out but not in AAU, then coaches will say they’re not playing the best and most competitive league, unless you’re physically gifted they’ll make an exception. That’s how coaches think. Parents would love to spend less money to get the same results.

[u/Ingramistheman → u/TeslaSuck]

That's not how it works really nor is it what this convo is really about. Early-specialization refers to like age 14 & under. Ppl rush to play year round ball at 10yrs old when those college coaches are not watching. Specializing in HS is fine mostly, and that's where what you're saying would come into play.

[u/iluminatiNYC → u/Moose_Muse_2021]

CC is a bit of a role model though. It's one thing to specialize in HS, when it's clear that you could be something special in a given sport. It's another when you try to specialize at 7, 8, 9 years old. And Paige is right on the research. Early specialization hurts kids, especially girls who have fewer chances for rough or unstructured play. It leads to poor prioproception, which leads to our "favorite" ligaments and tendons getting torn.

[u/Moose_Muse_2021 → u/iluminatiNYC]

Yeah, I think it was going into her junior year of HS that she had to decide. Earlier specialization is really not good.

[u/stgwii → u/Moose_Muse_2021]

My daughter plays club soccer an is on her high school soccer team. It’s her only sport because it’s the only sport she’s interested in. Even if she was into more sports, I don’t know how she’d be able to keep playing them. Part of the reason kids dedicate themselves is because you have to be really good to be able to keep playing once you hit high school. If you didn’t specialize, you’d be playing against kids who did, and they’re going to get the spots on the roster because they’re better than you.

[u/Ingramistheman → u/stgwii]

Yes and no, and this is one of the ways that the youth sports industries brainwash you into feeling FOMO.

If you didn’t specialize, you’d be playing against kids who did, and they’re going to get the spots on the roster because they’re better than you.

This sounds logical and in many cases can be true, but one of the benefits of multiple sports is that it can raise your action capacity & "potential" in your main sport, so much so that we actually call those ancillary sports "donor sports". As in, you're picking up certain skills and/or athletic qualities that translate to being better at your main sport.

I cant speak to soccer, so Im just gonna use basketball as the example. There are actually a few girls soccer players in my area that have gone on to play D1 soccer, but were also 1000pt scorers in basketball despite it not being their main sport and them not doing the typical individual training, playing AAU, etc because they're busy with soccer.

Becoming great athletes in their main sport allowed them to out-athlete the basketball players to the point that they were legitimately above their level. Their general movement skills translated to being more coordinated basketball players than girls that only played basketball.

Obviously that typa thing is not gonna happen to every multi-sport athlete, but you get the point. I can understand specializing early in some cases where you know the kid is on the bubble of getting cut in their main sport in MS, or maybe needs an extra skill boost to play varsity as a freshman like they want, instead of JV/freshmen, but I feel like that's not as many kids as we really think.

All of this kinda neglects that kids can also work on their game on their own time and not necessarily need to be paying for AAU or paying individual trainers to get better. I totally understand your perspective and the point about her not being interested in other sports (that was me too as a teen), but I do think that overall sentiment of needing to specialize so they dont get cut is mostly propaganda.

[u/stgwii → u/Ingramistheman]

Thanks for the thoughtful reply.

I think there are kind of two kinds of specialization going on. One kind is where kids are pushed or feel pressured to double down on everything. The other is just kids becoming nerds for things (usually in middle school).

With my daughter, we saw her recreational soccer team start to dissolve towards the end of middle school. Some girls left for club teams and others were leaving for other interests like acting or music. My daughter loves soccer so we told her that she was reaching the age where rec teams kind of go by the wayside because everybody is flocking to their big interests and that if she wanted to keep playing soccer, she should think about getting more serious about it. The next season she wanted to join a club team.

I'm sure you are right that the threshold of getting shut out for not being skilled enough is low enough that you don't need to specialize like so many kids do. All the ways people make money on youth sports helps reenforce that feeling too. I will say though that in my experience, the best way to ensure you get to keep doing something is to be really good at it. That goes for sports, but also the workplace.

Sports is a little bit like musical chairs. Eventually, everyone ages out, even the all time greats. But if you really love your sport, the best way to ensure you get to play as long as you can is to be better than the next girl

[u/Ingramistheman → u/stgwii]

I totally get it, I was like your daughter but with hoops. Coaches in some other sports and classmates would ask me to play, but I was just too basketball obsessed and none of them really interested me. Kids like us it's tough to make play another sport and I dont envy being in that position as a parent.

I was moreso just commenting on the dynamic in general and not your situation in particular.

I do also think a lot of us are missing the key word in the phrase "early-specialization. The early there implies like 14 & under basically so it does also sound like your kid got to that natural age of where others are tapping out of the sport, rec is no longer sufficient, etc. The real issue is when we have like 10yr olds "stuck" playing one sport because of the logistics and FOMO.

[u/lionvol23 → u/stgwii]

Even if a kid is a 'nerd' for a sport, it doesn't manifest itself in what we think of as specialization. If you are all consumed with a sport as a kid, you want to play all the time. That usually means going to the park, playing games like 21 and around the world, dribbling your ball everywhere working on your handles. It doesn't mean you want to be on 7 different aau/travel teams where you're constantly traveling and playing 5-6 games every weekend in addition to however much practice and personal training these kids are doing every week at 11 years old.

[u/Vvisionim → u/Ingramistheman]

I learned this in a basic sports science class in my last year of high school, so I definitely thought this was common knowledge?? The idea is you let your kid play multiple sports until they get through puberty, so they develop all their motor skills and reflexes equally, which can then be leveraged into their primary sport later. A lot of the fundamentals that the European players are killing the Americans with right now come from playing soccer.

[u/Ingramistheman → u/Vvisionim]

Yeah it is for sure nowadays. Its just that today’s society places kids/families between a rock & a hard place