If your child came up to you and said, “I’m only going to eat carrots for the rest of my life,” would you let her do so? Of course not. Because it’s important for children to have a balanced diet. So, even though carrots are nutritious and kids should eat plenty of them, it wouldn’t be good if carrots were the only food your child ate. The same argument applies to sports. There is an alarming trend in youth sports with young athletes specialising in one game/sport from an early age. Fuelling this trend are rising college fees, exorbitant salaries paid to professional athletes, multiplying number of single-sport coaches, and the growing number of clubs competing with colleges/universities for the best athletes. Not to mention ambitious parents whose paranoia about their children’s success has even spawned a new psychiatric condition: the ‘achievement by proxy’ syndrome. I know the power of this condition when you discern athletic talent in your children. You want to nurture it to the optimum. And it’s hard not to experience this when you hear about other parents hiring pitching coaches and sending their kids to elite baseball camps and stuff like that. Therefore when your child’s coach comes to you and says, “You know, if your kid wants to have a shot at a scholarship or something bigger, he/she needs to just stick to baseball,” it’s natural to turn her into a one-sport athlete. You can’t help conjuring dreams of that big scholarship, and an even bigger professional sports career. It’s very easy to be taken in by such superficially attractive considerations and encourage your child to begin focusing on a particular sport or track/ field event at an early age. But think twice before you make that decision. Better yet, think three times. For every compelling reason why you should encourage your child to specialise in one sport, there are equally compelling reasons why you shouldn’t. One of the great dangers is the possibility of your child sustaining an overuse injury. As a growing number of children train and compete year-round and specialise in a single sport at ever younger ages, doctors are reporting a spate of overuse injuries. Because children (especially boys) are still developing musculoskeletally until the age of 17-18, their bodies just aren’t ready for the stress of focused sports participation. Playing the same sport, say basketball, carries a high risk of injury in the arms or ankles. But by playing multiple sports, your child can reduce the risk of overuse of particular body parts. Different sports mandate variable usage of the body, which builds all-round development of a child’s physiology and overall fitness — a better option to single sport fitness. That’s why parents and coaches should encourage athletes to either take periodic breaks or participate in more than one sport, so that different parts of the body are active at different times. Another reason for avoiding early specialisation in one sport is to prevent psychological burnout. In a classic case, in 1997, Ryan Jaroncyck, who…
