Trends in Youth Sport- Declining participation

                                                         To Play?... Or Not to play?
                                               
                                                                 By: R.J Swartz


             On February 18th, 2014 we discussed some of the major trends in youth sport in our country. One of the major trends we looked at was the increase in participation is alternative sports such as snowboarding, skiing, skateboarding and many other of the X-Games competitions. This article looks deeper into the decrease in youth participation in the 4 major sports, football, basketball, baseball, and soccer. This article also looks into the other reasons why kids are choosing not to participate which ties into the decision making model we discussed on February 13th, 2014. With the kids in today's america finding things such as social media and video games to be more intriguing than playing a sport.  This also ties into the discussion we had about how in youth sport today there is an over emphasizes on winning and an unnecessary amount of pressure is put on by significant others such as parents or siblings on how well the child preforms.
                        This connects to Coackley's text on pages 96-98 when he discusses a study he did with a colleague on why young people did not participate in the highly publicized sports. The study showed and reinforced our notes section on benefits on youth sport benefits. It showed that kids that did participate in youth sports because of self-reflection, social support, social acceptance and cultural factors.The study also showed that no one is born into a sports vacuum meaning we are never stuck playing a sport just to play. We are faced with the decision to play sports everyday, and the decision directly is effected by the relevance the sport has toward achieving our life goals. Which is showed in our notes when we talked about how 70% of kids quit playing sport by the age of 13. The study done by Mr. Coakley and his colleague, the article presented and our notes can all be summarized by showing that the youth in today's society become less interest in our common sports and more interested in alternative sports or achieving other life goals.