Student-Athletes: Multiple Sports or Specialization - "If and When" Part I of III

Student-Athletes:  Multiple Sports or Specialization “if and when…”

We wouldn’t ask a talented violinist to pick up the oboe in the winter and pursue the musical stylings of the tuba in the spring, would we?  Maybe Prince taught himself to play 20 plus instruments but that’s why he is…Prince.  Should we expect the same in youth sports? There are good arguments for both sides.

A big question for sports parents is “if and when” to allow their student-athlete to specialize in one sport or if it’s best to play multiple sports year-round – football in fall, basketball in the winter and track in the spring.  Looking at two extreme examples - Todd Marinovich started training to become an NFL quarterback at the age of 3.  On the other hand, Payton Manning didn’t play tackle football until the ripe old age of 7^th grade.  And things turned out alright for Payton.

It’s interesting what USA Swimming has to say.  Usually, with individual Olympic sports like swimming, gymnastics and skating, we hear about young kids packing up their stuffed animals and moving across the country to live and train with select coaches.  The kids who start these hyper-competitive sports at 10-12 years old, are well, old and behind the curve to reach the highest pinnacle of their sport.  But even USA Swimming “generally” suggests the following schedule for student-athletes:

Ages 6-10:           Initiation to sports
Ages 11-14:         Skill formation in different sports
Ages 15-18:         Begin specialization
Age 19 +:             High Performance specialization

Not sure there is a “correct” answer to the question of specialization vs. multiple sports but the above schedule makes sense for most situations considering how rare it is to reach the college and professional ranks in any sport.  And youth sports, for most families and young athletes, are about learning life skills that extend well beyond the field. 

So here are three, admittedly, one-sided reasons to consider multiple sports over specialization in youth sports:

1.   Different Pressure:  let’s take basketball vs. golf.  In basketball, there’s constant movement and adjustments to the clock, score, substitutions, presses and zone defenses, foul trouble, and changing momentum.  Basketball requires the student-athlete to make split second decisions and learn to cope with constant changes, and most of those variables are outside the athlete's control.

In golf, on the other hand, over an 18-hole tournament, there’s maybe a grand total of 3 minutes of actual swinging the golf club.  And unlike basketball, in golf a player may deal with an excruciating long 3-5 minute stretch to get their head straight before facing a critical 5-foot putt.  That requires a different skill set than hoops.  In golf, the athlete is up in his/her head for 98% of the competition.   That’s a very different kind of pressure and mental toolset required compared to basketball.  So maybe an advantage of playing multiple sports is the exposure it provides to facing and overcoming a variety of pressure situations.