Essay time...

Should youths be encouraged to take part in competitive sports?

In recent years, it can be seen that there is an increasing trend to cultivate youth talents in the area of sporting. High-profile sporting competitions have also been held in order to bring renown to these talents, such as U-14 football matches, Commonwealth Youth Games, and most recently, the Youth Olympic Games, the youth equivalent of the prestigious Olympics games. However, is it necessary to push our world’s youths to enter such highly competitive events at such an early age?

Firstly, it is known that youths often have more pliable bodies and are much more ideal for training in specific sports, such as gymnastics, where sportspeople with highly flexible bodies are greatly valued. Therefore, it would probably be recommended to start the training of such children since young so that they will be able to achieve better results rather than wait till their developed bones have stiffened, creating difficulty for them to perform more elaborate stunts.
Secondly, youth sports is a good counteract to the growing issue of obesity that is soon running rampant in many countries. By introducing athletics into youth’s lives, exercise is now portrayed as a cool thing to do, thus reducing the number of overweight teenagers, who would be more eager to take up exercise.

Also, competitive sports can be character-building, as the young sportsperson would learn to overcome setbacks on the playing field, taking minor pains and aches in his or her stride, and emerge a much stronger person at the end of their training. Team sports, especially is a highly social activity, and an efficient team would be able to foster a strong sense of belonging and community in the children involved.
However, there are some harmful effects resulting from such training as well.

Firstly, the cost of maintaining the training of youths in competitive sports is very high, and can indeed put a strain on the pockets of parents unless the child is precocious enough to obtain the backing of sponsors willing to support the child.
Second, taking part in competitive sports at a young age puts the child at a high rick of injury or even death. In gymnastics, training is often extremely rigorous and if precautions are not taken, there is a high chance that the bones of the child could be twisted, or their muscles sprained. Minor injuries could be easy to heal, but more serious ones could deform the child permanently, affecting his entire life, stopping him from ever engaging in sports ever again, whether recreational or competitive.

Thirdly, exposing the youth to the competitive nature of sports at such a young age may not be beneficial to his mental health in the long run. This is because children should be thinking about fun and games at this age, and not the highly aggressive arena of sports. If they were to be cultivated to think in such a manner, it is possible that they will grow up to be assertive or even uncompromising people, only thinking about winning or achieving their own goals at all costs.

Lastly, parents who have kids that participate actively in competitive sports might become tuned to trying to work their children harder to do better, even if the child might not want to. Many parents push their children to specialize in one particular sport, at the expense of their general health and conditioning, often in the hope that the child would be offered an attractive college scholarship. They may try to motivate and coach their children to an unrealistic extent, calling for levels of devotion that add unbearable pressure that add onto the child’s life. Family life also suffers because of sports schedules, and pressure on one or both parents to support and transport the young athlete.

Therefore, I feel that there are more cons than pros for introducing youths to competitive sports. However, I remain supportive of getting extremely precocious sporting talents to join the sporting fraternity, as such people can indeed stand up to the test of grueling training, and emerge as winners in future sporting competitions.