This trend in professionalizing youth sports has only intensified over the decades, such that, today, parents and coaches, obsessed with children’s athletic success, often encourage youths to specialize in one sport year-round. Obviously, children’s bones and musculature are not nearly as developed as those of adults.
Still, parents and coaches see exceptions like the Williams sisters in tennis or Tiger Woods in golf, and think their kids should start incessant specialized training in one sport at the earliest age possible.
Experts, however, know that when children engage in the same type of physical movements repeatedly, stress fractures and tendonitis are far more likely to develop and cause permanent damage (Cary, Dotinga, & Comarow, 2004).
And it’s not just in the sports considered stereotypically macho where youthful athletes are abused by parents and coaches.
The 2008 Olympic Games are right around the corner, in which the world will focus in on the hallmark sports of track and field, swimming, and gymnastics. Earlier this week, I noted the danger of gymnastics here.
What the mainstream media spotlights are the heart-warming success stories, but what they often ignore are critical facts about gymnastics (and other sports), buried in academic journals and critical magazines. Many gymnasts, only 10 years old, are forced to train six-to-eight hours a day!
A study carried out by the University of Utah found that 59 percent of elite U.S. Olympic hopefuls in gymnastics admitted to having at least one type of eating disorder. Another study found that 62 percent of college gymnasts (generally considered too old for world-class competition) practiced at least one form of anorexia (vomiting or the use of laxatives, diuretics or diet pills) (David, 1999).
Why don’t we hear these stories, and the other stories of elite gymnastics coaches who abuse children?
Because only 3 percent of the top gymnasts make the Olympic Games. Hence, the multitude of abused athletes (mostly minors) are lost in the sporting machine’s wake, while the success stories are profiled in short “feel good” biographies that draw in mainstream viewers.
And then there are the parents of youths who have yet to make it to the elite sporting levels (and probably never will), the enraged moms and (more so) dads, who try desperately to recreate their own athletic dreams through their children.
Although the most horrific types of violence are not common, homicide and manslaughter have been known to occur when parents of youthful athletes lose control.
In 2000, an enraged parent was so upset about violence occurring in practice that he became violent himself and the supervising coach was killed (Docheff & Conn, 2004; Lord, 2000).
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