This three part blog post was written by one of my former athletes, Mara White.  If you haven’t read the first two posts, please look through this blog to find it.  Mara did specialize in one sport in high school and this post is in her words why she felt that wasn’t the right decision.

To bring it back to my personal experience, during any given track season I was expected to triple, and come post-season quadruple event, on the track nearly every weekend.  You would see me in anything from the 4×800, 1600, 800, 3200 or 4×400 on any given weekend.  We wanted to win every track meet all year and it was often done at my [and a few other athletes’] expense.

This wasn’t just expected of me as a more physically and mentally mature junior or senior, but rather from my freshman year forward.  It was incredibly irresponsible, unproductive and just simply didn’t work.  

By the time I was 17 I had a stress fracture in my femur.  You have to do some pretty dumb stuff to stress fracture the strongest bone in your body.  I wish someone had stepped in and encouraged me to do something else for some part of the year to make sure my body got the diversion it needed to be healthy.

No one did and I only broke more bones trying to score points for my team.  It also would have helped to curve the very real mental burn out I experienced under the very heavy weight of how much I was expected to give to one sport for too long

More and more we are expecting our kids not only to pick a single sport, but then to come out and go to the well all year long their whole high school careers for that sport.  

For the millionth time in this essay I’ll say it again, these are children and we should let them play.  It’s our job to take care of them both mentally and physically and that includes not encouraging them to over specialize before they should, or running them into the ground -they’re young, or lifting them into oblivion in the weight room when they’d rather be participating in a different sport in the off season.  

No one particularly pressured me to make the decision to specialize, but even though that wasn’t necessarily a part of my story the ridiculous expectations placed on our young athletes, which is at the root of this same problem, was.  

Most of my current athletes specialize simply because they love to run, but I am intentional about being responsible with their training and what I ask of them over the course of the year in addition to keeping their training varied.  

However, I currently coach a very talented freshman who can run a 5:30 mile on next to no training.  I would be lying if I said it wasn’t tempting to want her running most of the year.  She plays tennis, and loves it.  If she were running all fall and winter instead of playing tennis she’d be clicking off quicker times and scoring more points earlier in the season.

Regardless she’s a happier, healthier kid because of tennis and you can be darn sure I’m going to make sure she plays as long as she wants.  In the end I can make her just as fast, I just have to be smarter, more patient and less selfish with how I do it.

In conclusion we owe it to our kids to foster their love of other things besides the sport we coach.  It is our job to take care of their bodies and minds and be reasonable and fair with what we expect.  

Contrary to popular belief it’s not our job to win every weekend.  This whole athletics thing is a process and the adults need to look at the long run.  Once more coaches do that, less kids will specialize and our athletes will get better and be healthier.

Photo courtesy of Tableatny on Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/53370644@N06/