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Whose Dream Is It Anyway?
UNTIL IT HURTS:
America’s Obsession with Youth Sports and How It Harms Our Kids
By Mark Hyman
160 pp. Beacon Press $23.95
Reviewed by Julie McGuire
On October 6, 1978, The Mike Douglas Show contained a star lineup: Jimmy Stewart and Bob Hope. But a third guest stole the show—a precocious two-year-old carrying:
A few clubs in a golf bag made by his mother, Tida...Tiger Wood’s precocious cameo on the Douglas Show was kitschy entertainment. Yet for the millions of parents watching...it sent a powerful message: it’s possible to turn your kid into a champion if you start early enough.
What a hypnotic promise! Spend enough money and start early enough and my own child can follow “Tiger’s Path.”
As a mother of two boys who opted not to succumb to the frenzy, I’ve felt guilty for having deprived my children of the experience. When my oldest son didn’t make his middle school’s football team because he didn’t have enough experience, I was depressed. Had I made a costly mistake? As I write this, however, I hear the boys playing catch with a group of neighborhood kids. Their laughter is contagious. After reading Until It Hurts, I’m reassured that my sons are reaping the most important benefits of sports; they’re having fun, and learning sportsmanship.
Mark Hyman’s Until It Hurts is a wake-up call. Our obsession with creating the next Tiger Woods is hurting, and sometimes killing, our kids. A journalist, coach, and father, Hyman spent fifteen years attending practices, and coaching teams; he “cared deeply about [his kids’] successes and setbacks in athletics. Too deeply.” Hyman didn’t make scenes on the sidelines (though notorious adult behavior at youth athletic events has made headlines), but he admits he was so anxious during games that the only thing worse than watching his children play was not watching. When his son Ben suffered an injury that required major surgery on his pitching arm, Hyman thought maybe he’d gone too far.
Through anecdotes, meticulous research, and astounding statistics, Hyman explores how parents are turning the potential for sports to have positive, transformational power in a child’s life into a nightmare. Stakes are high, and big bucks are on the line. Eric Small, a sport psychology consultant, had a patient who suffered a severe blow to his spleen during a high school football game. He came to Small to figure out when he could play again:
After examining the patient, Small...explained that the injury had been quite serious, and that if the boy played football again he would risk being exposed to another blow, this one life-threatening...Rather than consider themselves lucky to snatch their son from the football field before something truly awful happened, they searched for ways to keep him in the game...Could their son play with a little padding around his waist? Okay, a lot of padding?
This family had put so much—emotionally and financially—into their son’s football career that they couldn’t give up their dream even when faced with life-threatening consequences.
Parents don’t set out to harm their children. And Hyman acknowledges that participating in team activities can have tremendously beneficial effects on children. But there is a fine line between work and play, between wanting what is best for our kids, and destroying their spirit in the process. As parents shell out larger sums of money, there is increasing pressure on kids to deliver results. But the likelihood of the kind of success that parents hope for is depressingly small:
Just 5.8 percent of high school football players, one in seventeen, will suit up for a college squad. The odds are bleaker for men’s soccer (5.7 percent), baseball (5.6 percent), women’s basketball (3.1 percent), and men’s basketball (2.9 percent). Of overall scholarship aid handed out to college students each year, sports awards are a sliver: 18 percent at public colleges and universities and just 7 percent at private ones...In short, being a gifted biology student pays much better.
Imagine the odds of a full-time sports career. But for a chance at the dream—whose dream is it anyway?—some parents are willing to take on second mortgages, work multiple jobs, and spend hard-earned savings. With so much money on the line, no wonder the joy is sucked out of sports. The physical and emotional price kids are paying is too high to put a value on. Sports psychologists are seeing increased suicide attempts. Not just because kids feel they aren’t good enough—for an alarming number of kids the fear of telling their parents they don’t want to play anymore is so great they’d rather die.
Hyman’s book is a must-read for parents, coaches, and all who care about how sports affect our children. Hyman avoids being completely bleak by offering practical solutions and celebrating inspirational parents and model programs that emphasize sports as recreation, not career.
There is no doubt that participation in sports holds many benefits for children. Playing on a team teaches children valuable life skills such as sportsmanship, and provides a fun way to keep bodies and minds active. Hyman doesn’t condemn sports. He urges a return to fundamentals—programs designed “for kids, about kids, and with the best interests of kids in mind.”
Julie McGuire, fiction editor of The Internet Review of Books, is a paralegal. Her personal essays and poems have appeared in the Christian Science Monitor and several small periodicals. She and her family live in Virginia.
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