Once children have decided to participate in organized youth sports, the
next issue in terms of motivation is what keeps them in sport or, conversely, why do many
children drop out after only participating for a couple of years?
As one might expect, the primary reasons for continuing to participate
in sport are fundamentally the same as the reasons they first started sport, that is, to
have FUN, to learn SKILLS, to develop FITNESS, and because they enjoy COMPETITION. It is
interesting to note that in sports that are particularly physically strenuous, such as
swimming, fun drops down the list in terms of the order of importance as a motivating
factor. It's not that they don't enjoy the competition, it's just that practices tend to
be hard. Although many children continue to participate in youth sports for many years and
even move up to higher levels of competition, 25% of all children drop out
within the first 3 years.
There is a wide variety of reasons why this happens. In a recent study
of almost 700 youth sport drop outs, the top ranked reasons the kids gave for quitting
were: I lost interest, the coach played favorites, I was not having any fun, and I
developed other non-sport interests. Of these, only the development of non-sport interests
was related to the age of the child, meaning that as they got older they were more likely
to drop out because they became interested in activities outside of sport. Because
children rarely drop out for just one specific reason, we also did a cluster analysis of
the reasons for dropping out . In this analysis we found that the primary combination
of factors contributing to dropping out was related to the team environment.
Specifically, the children felt that their coaches were not doing a good job (see the
Coaches' article in this issue for further details), there was too much pressure to win,
and the members of the team did not get along well with each other. Fortunately, these are
problems that can be resolved. Dropping out of youth sports can be a very emotional
situation for children and their parents. It doesn't have to be if it is kept in
perspective. Children (and adults, for that matter) drop out of a wide variety of
activities all the time. Often it is nothing more than someone trying to find an activity
that they can enjoy and find worthwhile doing. Sport is not for everyone.
