Elite betting in children's sports - yes or no?
Academies are popping up on every street corner, and many are looking to train up the next world star! Both clubs, coaches and not least parents. Understandably... We are a sports society, where sports stars are lauded!
Recently answered 10% (!) , in a survey of 6000 handball players between the ages of 8—12 in Denmark, that they are considering quitting handball. When they elaborate on why, too much elite focus is a clear tendency to reason.
Big upside
The upside of sports activity is huge. Sport helps to prepare children for life's many challenges:
- How to deal with hardship and hardship?
- How to relate to other people?
- How to develop the ability to learn? Both motor and mental.
I don't think anyone will enter into a discussion about whether sport has a health-promoting effect or not.
Superstars are going to be superstars anyway?!
My experience as a child coach is that many of those with the highest skill levels are so eager to learn more, that their ears almost flutter when challenged with new exercises and challenges. At the same time, individual children, on the same team, are cheering that this weekend's game has been cancelled.
The difference in interest could not be greater.
I see that those who reach the peak of sports often have an inner drive to put in the thousands of hours of training required to become the best. I myself did not practice handball more than 1-2 times a week, on half a court in Stovnerhallen, in adolescence. But I played football, tennis, basketball, ice hockey, bandy, etc. on the loop. It will be thousands of hours like this.
The Norwegian School Model
The school has the same challenges. The level differences are huge. How are we going to manage to keep everyone, and at the same time challenge those with the highest skill levels?
“No one has dared to budge on the Norwegian school model of investing in talent in 100 years,” I read in an article in Aftenposten. Now more people think it's time to invest in talented kids. Skeptics fear for the equal Norwegian society.
It is clear that this debate does not extend only to sports.
The cabal and the $100 million question therefore becomes: How to please everyone?
Sports scientists point to three motivational factors:
- Competence development and sense of mastery
- Affiliation
- Possibility of self-determination
My question therefore becomes. By professionalizing in sports. Do we strengthen, or weaken, these three points? Run debate!
References
- Everything you should know about talent development in sport - Kristoffer Henriksen, Carsten Hvid Larsen and Louise Kamuk Storm
