Get out of the way!

The paper is entitled, "Decline in Independent Activity as a Cause of Decline in Children's Metal Wellbeing: Summary of the Evidence." From February, 2023 and compiled by PHD's  Peter Gray, David Lancy and David Bjorklund, the paper spells out two main areas of concern.

First, "Although most current discussions of the decline in youth mental health emphasize that which has occurred over the past ten to fifteen years, research indicates that the decline has been continuous over at least the last five or six decades."

And the cause of this decline? According to the authors, "Our thesis is that a primary cause of the rise in mental disorders is a decline over decades in opportunities for children and teens to play, roam and engage in other activities independent of direct oversight and control by adults."

Free play and autonomy...

The other paper to look at is entitled, "Starting and Specialisation Ages of Elite Athletes across Olympic Sports: An International Cross-sectional Study." by Veerle De Bosscher, Kari Descheemaeker, and Simon Shibli published in September of 2023.

In this research, the authors studied 2,838 world class athletes to assess when they began their sport journey and when they specialized in the sport they now excel in.

This chart shows the time when an athlete begins their sport (in the gray) and the time they choose that sport as the one they will specialize in, (In the black)

Sports that favor small frames and younger participants, like gymnastics and swimming are very short durations from beginning to  specialization. And sports that many folks pick up later in life or become second sports, like archery and bobsledding have much later specialization ages.

Volleyball is listed as 6 years in the making, from an 11 year old trying the game out to a 17 year old deciding they want to further their  career in college or professionally. This study highlights that there is a 6 year window between a beginning level and a level of expertise that would give an athlete the confidence to want to play on at the highest levels.

These two studies, within a 8 months of each other, go hand in hand.

What the latter study doesn't include is the athletes that quit the sport. The average age of volleyball players quitting the sport is 13!

THIRTEEN!

There is a level of focus, engagement, learning and performance that these young 11 year olds need to become world class in our sport. But sadly, most will never get that chance. They are discouraged from free play with their friends; just grabbing a beach volleyball and having fun with some school mates or neighborhood buddies.

As important as we think we, as coaches and parents, think we are, we need to check ourselves. If a young athlete can explore, solve problems and most of all have fun and stay engaged, they will learn oodles more than any private lesson or libero camp.

A wonderful coach once said, the best thing coaches and parents can do for their athletes is to just get out of the way!

Not every sport interaction for your child or player has to be organized, commoditized, specialized or privatized. We don't need camps, clinics, clubs, academies, privates, leagues and tournaments if the player is overcoached, over scheduled and overwhelmed.

How about just asking them? What do they want to do?

Once in a while, just let them play. 

Get out of the way.