Can I just play one sport?
In life, we are usually taught to focus on what we are good at to become better in what we already know, but is that good advice when it comes to sport? Many parents feel a tremendous pressure to pick one sporting activity for their kids and concentrate on that alone, but is that really a bad thing?
Understanding the impact of playing just one sport
In general, sticking to one sport is generally worse than playing multiple sports. There are many sports out there that each offer vast opportunities to learn new skills and grow as a athlete and a person. On top of that, playing one sport leads to a much higher likelihood of injury and sports-related burnout.
In our culture, we often look up to global sports stars and the lifestyle that they live. All you have to do is switch on a TV or look up at a billboard, and the chances are you’ll see a Lebron James or a Tom Brady. This glamorization of sporting greatness perpetuates throughout our society and often manifests itself in children and young athletes aspiring to make it to the big leagues.
Coaching and Parent Pressure Can Limit the Child in The Long Run
Parents and coaches heap tons of pressure on kids to focus on one sport and try to master it. Children are then positioned to make difficult choices early on in their life as to what sport they want to play, and then from that point on, they stick to that one sport without ever veering too far astray, thinking that if they do otherwise, they’d be wasting their time.
But it turns out that kids can enjoy a whole host of benefits from being multi-sport athletes. The idea of niching down into one sport and exerting all of their energy into a single area is narrow-sighted and often has the opposite effect of what some parents and coaches want from their children. Let’s dive deeper into this.
Problems with specializing in one sport
While focusing on one sport may give people the best chance to make it as a professional, there are a whole bunch of reasons why it may not be the best route to take. Let’s take a look at varying of the problems that can arise:
Very few make it to become professional
First thing’s first: it’s important to realize that very few people ever make it to the elite level of sports. If we take a look at it from a purely mathematical standpoint, the odds of making it to one of the top leagues in any of the major sports in the USA is less than 0.01%.
The NCAA compiled the data for becoming a professional athlete, and it is shown that out of 156,000 male high school basketball players, only 44 of them got drafted into the NBA. Now that’s a tough job to land.
If your goal is to get your kid to reach sporting mastery, then just know the odds certainly stacked against them. But if you don’t shoot, you don’t score, right?
It risks burnout in one sport
Playing the same sports day in day out, over and over again, is going to get tedious for anybody. When you start at a young age, no matter how much passion and love you have for the game, the chances are you will start to become disinterested and burnt out before long.
Don’t forget, training sessions are hard, going to practice is arduous, doing the drills and keeping up fitness is tough, and there is only so much a kid can take before they’ve had enough.
Repetitive injuries
One of the most significant risk factors from focusing on one sport is the increased danger of sustaining injuries. This is particularly prevalent in sports that require the same repetitive movements over and over again, such as golf, tennis, hockey, and so on.
Depending on the age of your child, the likelihood is that their bones and muscles are still developing. During this stage, it’s vital to protect their bodies as much as possible, so they do not sustain any recurring injuries later on in life.
According to sports medicine surgeon Dr. Scott Pepin, kids that focus on one sport have a 70%-90% chance of increased injury.
They could be missing out on a sport that they love
There are hundreds of sports out there to be enjoyed, each of them with unique elements that make them interesting and exciting to play. If your kid is stuck playing one sport all of the time, they could be missing out on a sport that they would fall in love with and could even have a natural aptitude for.
Maybe your kid could be the next Michael Phelps, but they are playing baseball five times a week, who knows?
An unhealthy obsession with winning
A lot of children and their parents want them to stick to one sport because they want their kids to be good at it; they want them to win.
It’s not a nice feeling starting a new sport while being inferior to other players. It’s tough to take on these new challenges, but that’s precisely why we should do it. There are tons of value in these difficult lessons that we could all learn from, children and adults alike.
They miss out on learning multiple skills
The skills acquired when we play tennis are far different from the skills we pick up while playing soccer. For a start, one of them is a team sport while the other is individual.
Playing a sport like tennis can help to promote a strong sense of independence, developing mental fortitude in a sporting environment, and learning how to depend on yourself and nobody else. With an individual sport, your chances of success are riding on your shoulders alone. For some people, that’s a relief, for others, it’s a burden.
Learning how to cope with losses and wins on your own will really help in later life, so too will the ability to motivate yourself and dig deep in the moments of trials and tribulations that sport brings.
Team sports, on the other hand, provide a great opportunity to develop social skills that transfer extremely well to real-world scenarios. Dealing with conflict, having shared responsibility, learning how to respect and motivate other teammates, as well as improving communication are all valuable skills that are incredibly beneficial in day to day life.
They miss out on working with multiple coaches
Coaches play an important role in children’s development when they are growing up since sports provides a fantastic platform to teach us many important lessons. Things like competition, rivalries, conflict, and sportsmanship – each coach will have their own take on how to best teach these aspects to their players.
It’s also important to work with a variety of coaches from a skill standpoint. There’s a reason that most professional players change their coaches regularly. It’s essential to keep adapting and learning new skills. Growing in one sport usually leads to overall growth as an athlete.
From My Experience In Competing Against One Sport Athletes
Playing one sport is not recommended. Many parents and athletes do it because their child will develop a decent skill level early on at the youth level. But in reality, I have seen many athletes hit a ceiling because their athletic ability is limited due to lack of understanding of body movements, competition, and other invaluable experiences gained from competing in several types of sports. We go into this in detail in our Athlete’s Guide!
Yes, playing more than one sport is tough. It’s physically and emotionally demanding on the athlete, and it can be a burden for parents. It’s time-consuming to take your kids to numerous different practices, and it isn’t cheap to buy new equipment and sports kits for each new sport they decide to play.
But most of the time, your children will get far more out of playing multiple sports than the effort they and you put in. Just know that the benefits of playing all of those sports are profound and will pay dividends for your child (and you!) later on in life.
Thanks for reading.
Is it bad to play only one sport?
Choosing one sport later in a child’s athletic development cycle, such as 15, is not a bad thing. But forcing kids to play one game at a young age like 5 – 10 years old can cause repetitive injury issues later on in life. Try implementing a well-rounded training routine to build a healthy, fully development athlete later in life.