Youth Sports: What’s It Really All About?

05/16/2019

2 minute read

Youth sports play an important role in your school’s curriculum. Unfortunately, what this role really is is often forgotten.

It’s not just about winning. Winning is great, and it can draw attention to your programs, but it’s a secondary goal. The primary goal is developing your young athletes, both physically and mentally. This is something that many parents and coaches often forget in the mad dash to win.

Encouraging Lifelong Physical Fitness

When you’re young, the habits you learn stay with you for life. That’s one major benefit of youth sports. Children who develop a good relationship with physical activity during their youth often stay that way. Keep that in mind when developing your programs. The goal isn’t to push every athlete to their physical limit. In fact, that can often set them up for failure in the future as they learn to resent exercise. The goal is to instill a real passion for physical activity, and that includes the ability to pace yourself.

Learning Valuable Life Lessons

There are many valuable lessons that you can learn from sports. The power of practice. The value of hard work. How to get along with others — even when you’re exhausted and frustrated. How to turn off the phone and live in the present. The ability of sports as a teaching and life development tool is almost unparalleled. Unfortunately, many of these lessons are cast aside in favor of winning. Young athletes only end up learning that the adults in their life have zero tolerance for anything less than perfect. That’s just not a healthy attitude to have.

There’s A Place For Winning

Sports isn’t all about winning, but it would be a lie to say winning doesn’t matter at all. No one is excited to be on a team that never wins. No one wants to come to watch a game when the outcome is a foregone conclusion. The point is that it shouldn’t be all about victory. The experiences and healthy habits you develop playing sports stay with you for life, whether you win or lose. One final note. In order to win, you have to engage and develop promising athletes. It’s not enough to want it. You have to work for it and convince your students to come along for the ride.

Engaging Young Athletes

So that’s what youth sports are all about, but how do you get kids interested? It’s not so easy to do these days. Research has shown that participation in team sports is declining overall. There are a number of reasons for this. Kids are in worse shape, they have more responsibilities and are more strapped for time, they have distractions around every corner. Ironically, this is an age where they need exercise and the valuable life lessons that sports can provide more than ever.

Getting kids engaged in your programs isn’t easy, but it’s worthwhile. And when you do, they’re going to need a way to train. 360 Hoops is a new product designed to train your young athletes in an engaging way. You get classic games with a twist. New drills that emphasize the fundamentals. And most importantly it all comes with a minimal space footprint. For more information on how 360 Hoops can help your school engage your students and develop your athletes, please contact us today.