Another junior quitting racquetball. Why? The answer is in this article maybe. All Children are not alike. Because they do not win now does not mean they will not become great racquetball players. Because they are tearing it up in the junior 12s does not mean they are going to break Kane or Paola’s records any time soon either. My advice; give your child some space. Stage mother and stage father situational love for winning will eventually backfire with most kids.
Coaches-you too can be very guilty of this. Loving your star student more than the also ran leads to resentment from your junior athletes.
Give the child some time to lose and some patience.
Here is the article I ran across recently.
by Dick van Londen, Total Sports Approach
An overview of the 5 main reasons children quit sports
1. Fun
The lack of fun for children is one of the most important reasons to quit a sport. . Fun turned out also to be the main reason to continue with a sport in the next 6 to 12 months
2.Performance pressure.
Pressure is an important quitting reason for young elite athletes, often in combination with (overtraining-) injuries. A key issue for sports academies to find a balance between the pressure to encourage young athletes and how to boost them to a long period to sustain. It turns out also that it makes sense to determine by whom exactly pressure is built up.
3.Parents and coaches
A study of youth football players showed that more than 50% of the pressure came from parents and coaches.
It turns out that especially fathers do not realize their own behavior in the exercise of pressure. Children who have experienced too much parental pressure create thereby fear of competition.
4.Skill
Skill is an important driver but seems to be more important for as soon as they get older. The feeling ‘ not good enough ‘ is often specified as reason to stop with a sport.Also here is the parental role crucial. A study to the perseverance, found that where they were supported by parents by a concerned and understanding attitude, they reached a higher level..
5.Matching school-sport time/ time for other things
For growing up kids the factor (study/free) time is every year a greater issue in their lives. This time almost never corresponds with the amount of time required to continue to perform on a particular sport level .