When I was younger, I was really awkward. As I became more involved with swimming, I developed friendships and became much better with social interactions. I looked up to the older kids on my teams and stayed out of trouble. I learned how to channel my emotions properly into a positive outlet. Personally, I really believe that athletics can have a significant effect on children's’ lives because I have experienced it first hand.
"According to researchers at the Institute for the Study of Youth Sports at Michigan State University, kids who participate in organized sports do better in school, have better interpersonal skills, are more team oriented, and are generally healthier."
Being involved in a sport exposes children to positive role models: older, more mature athletes, or coaches.
The presence of a positive role model encourages children and adolescents to avoid bad influences and malignant situations. The University of Arizona did a study which found that "high school athletes are more likely to stay in college and earn higher grades than peers who don't."
Such positive influences can help to deter negative ones. A study completed by the State University of New York in Buffalo "discovered that female high school athletes have sex later and less frequently than nonathletic women." So, being involved with sports helps to deter promiscuity. (?)
Athletics helps kids to develop self confidence! According to The Young Athlete: A Sports Doctor’s Complete Guide for Parents, "Participation in sports provides opportunities for leadership and socialization.“ Kids who aren’t involved in athletics do not always receive the opportunity to feel like a valuable part of a group, or to be a leader. Being a part of a team sport helps to suppress selfishness; athletes work "for the good of the group."
Athletics fosters children in a supportive environment and helps to develop social skills. Social benefits include "relationships with other kids, teamwork, diversity, relationships with adults, and participating in a community.“Athletics exposes kids to a larger variety of children than they would be exposed to in school alone, which facilitates tolerance and acceptance, ability to work with kids different from themselves.
Friendship! “Sports engage the child as a complete human being: all facets-not just physical, but also social, cognitive, and psychological-are engaged harmoniously in striving toward peak fulfillment."
According to my research, females in particular benefit from being involved with sports. Benefits of female participation in athletics include improved self esteem, healthy body image, and "significant experiences of competency and success, as well as reduced risk of chronic disease." Physical benefits include fitness, stress relief, mastery of skills, and healthful habits. Female athletes also "do better academically and have lower school dropout rates than their nonathletic counterparts." Females also experience other benefits of a different variety; less likely to become pregnant, less likely to begin smoking, more likely to quit smoking, more likely to do well in science, and more likely to graduate from high school and college than their non-athletic counterparts. While I agree with all of these positive points about females in sports, I disagree that girls benefit more from sports than boys do. I have personally seen males benefit from involvement in athletics. My good friend Ryan McWilliams is now a social butterfly, but was once a bit of a hermit. (insert Ryan’s special interview here!)
Sports helps kids to develop real life skills, like handling disappointment, time management, etc. Medical Director Jordan Metzl and PHD Carol Shookhoff from The Young Athlete periodical agree that “Participation in sports helps to teach how to react positively to real life situations, like how to deal with success and failure in appropriate ways.” This suggests that being involved in athletics helps teach children not to be a braggart: that humility is the ideal reaction in the case of a win or a loss. Such a skill translates to all other planes of life. Being gracious rather than self-important is a useful, attractive attribute in not only social situations, but in the workplace and in the academic arena. Involvement in athletics also fosters a sense of competition. Coaches moderate the levels of intensity of that competition, but it is a skill which is useful after involvement in athletics ends. Obviously being competitive in terms of a career means working hard to achieve goals, and competing against adversaries. A healthy sense of competition is fantastic, and athletic arenas allow for a sense of competition to develop "but within a restricted and safe system where the consequences of losing are minimized." Personal benefits include "valuing preparation, resilience, attitude control, leadership, identity, balance, time management, long-term thinking."
Being involved in athletics exposes kids to a positive, supportive arena which their peers who do not participate in athletics are not exposed to. “Sports engage the child as a complete human being: all facets-not just physical, but also social, cognitive, and psychological-are engaged harmoniously in striving toward peak fulfillment." Being part of a group and belonging to something helps kids and teens to identify with their peers and to feel more comfortable with their own identity as well as their identity within the group/team.
As part of my project, I interviewed my peers on the high school swim team, my younger counterparts from the Springfield Aquatics Club, and alumni Dan Bell…..hi Herr Martin! I’m filming high school interviews today, Wednesday December 16. Hopefully I will be filming SAC interviews this weekend. I’m planning on the two separate sets of interviews being my audio visual aids. If that’s not acceptable, I can make a slide show?
Skills developed in the athletic arena can translate to real life situations, especially academics. Statistics show that student athletes do very well scholastically, and that there is a strong correlation between involvement in athletics and good grades. According to The Young Athlete: A Sports Doctor’s Complete Guide for Parents , female athletes also "do better academically and have lower school dropout rates than their nonathletic counterparts."
