The Value of Playing for Fun

In his book Late Bloomers, Rich Karlgaard explores the world’s “obsession” with early achievement and young talent. From the business world — think Mark Zuckerberg — to the film industry, Karlgaard argues that we seem to crave prodigies and actively seek out the same outcome for our own kids.

The side effect of this hunger for fresh talent is the immense pressure placed on young people to reach that same level. Sports are one of the most flagrant examples. Phenoms like Simone Biles, Patrick Mahomes, and Luka Doncic have parents thinking that with enough dedication and enough practice, their kids can reach stardom, too. As Karlgaard puts it, “according to the prevailing theories on grit, focus, and practice, any child with enough deliberate practice — and parents with a lot of money — can become a concert-level cellist or an Olympic equestrian.”

But here is the truth: out of over eight million high school athletes in the United States, six percent will compete in college. From that group, an even smaller number manage to become professionals. Football is a good case in point: out of about one million high schoolers, 73,000 will play at the collegiate level. Just 254 hear their names called on NFL draft night. That adds up to two-hundredths of one percent, or about 1 in 5,000. For reference, the odds of getting struck by lightning in a lifetime is 1 in 3,000.

Why, then, is so much focus placed on prodigal youth athletes? Why is it a $19 billion industry of strength-and-conditioning coaches, talent scouts, developmental camps, and tournaments? Why do we push our kids to the absolute limit, breaking their bodies and minds in the process?

What happened to playing for fun?

Take this article by the Washington Post. A whopping seventy percent of kids decide to quit sports before the age of thirteen because it’s “just not fun anymore.” As young athletes get older and the competition gets tougher, playing for the fun of it is just not acceptable in the current youth sports culture. We seem to expect serious athletes focused on winning and reaching the next level. Kids that are not good enough should just cut their losses and find something they are better at, we seem to say.

The immense pressure we place on kids to succeed has achieved the opposite effect. We drive them away from the valuable benefits of playing sports. They miss out on developing healthy habits of physical activity and nutrition, learning how to work as a team, and setting and achieving personal goals, all because they had a one-in-a-million whiz kid like Sabrina Ionescu as a comparison. Most of all, they miss out on having fun. As Karlgaard puts it, “we give young people precious little time to be kids.”

In a world obsessed with prodigies and early bloomers, we often forget the real purpose of youth and interscholastic sports. It’s important to encourage children and young adults to keep practicing the activities that bring them joy, not because there is a chance they will compete at a high level one day, but simply because it’s fun. Kids have a lifetime of competition and hard work ahead of them. There is no need to burden them with it now.