Fun & Skill Development v. Winning

With the increasing focus in youth sports on success, a sports psychologist and former elite short track cyclist says parents should emphasize practice to play, leaving their expectations at home on game day, and being motivated by a desire to have fun, not achieve results.

The overlap between youth sports seasons is only getting worse and the degree to which kids are specializing at ever-earlier ages in a single sport is a troubling trend in youth sports, says one longtime baseball coach and author.

A mom of seven says parents of youth athletes need to make sure that their kids' sports promotes values and life lessons consistent with their own.

Adults involved in youth sports are the ones who are ultimately responsible for the quality of a child's sports experience. To create a positive sports environment for youth athletes to ensure they have fun, parents need to ask six key questions.

It's unfortunate that so many coaches and parents see each season's won and loss record as the only measure of success, instead of being just a part of having fun and the learning experience. The real journey in youth sports, says youth basketball commissioner and founder of Respect Sports, Frank White, should be that each season's learning builds upon the previous season's fundamentals as athletes strive to achieve enough skills to play at the varsity high school level, or just enough achievement to enjoy playing the game, at even the recreational sports level.

Youth sports may have become more and more about competition and winning, but kids are, in a word, still kids: the number one reason they play sports is still to have fun, and, even at the high school level, most would still rather get playing time on a losing team than sit on the bench of a winner.