POINT OF VIEW: KEEPING TEENS INVOLVED IN SPORTS

NOW that Labor Day has passed, the autumn youth sports season will begin,
and that means thousands more disillusioned teenagers nationwide. These are
the boys and girls excluded from local programs or humiliated as
bench-warmers. Earlier this summer, a 14-year-old from a nearby town told
me he wanted to join our ice hockey program this fall. He has given up
soccer because he and his parents see the handwriting on the wall after two
years of bench-warming for coaches paid to develop the top players. His
town maintains sports programs open to all elementary school students, but
teenagers have only "select" teams or the high school varsity or junior
varsity.

Being washed up at 14 is tough. My young visitor questioned me about our
hockey program's open-enrollment policy. "You mean, you let everybody
play?" "Nobody gets cut?" "Nobody warms the bench?"

In the 1960s, my friends and I would have been astonished if local sports
programs turned us away. Today, many kids are astonished when local
programs let them play.

Programs controlled by adults have replaced the sandlot and playground
choose-up games children once organized for themselves. This
"adultification" of children's sports has created a youth-league pyramid.
Like any pyramid, the strength is at the middle and bottom, not the top.
Select teams are fine for the few top players, but communities fail their
youth when they deny equal opportunity for the 80 percent of players lower
on the pyramid.

"Equal opportunity" means enrolling every child who wants to play. It means
letting children compete against opponents of roughly the same ability
level, with select teams for the more experienced players and open teams
for the others. It also means guaranteeing meaningful playing time because
bench-warming cheats children, who deserve fairness from the adults in
their lives.

I know the nearby town whose sports programs shut out most teens like the
ex-soccer player who visited me. The local newspaper regularly complains
about high levels of teenage drug and alcohol use. The connection is no
coincidence. Teens need to "belong," and they seek out peer groups. Nobody
should be surprised when many teens shut out of team sports begin running
with the wrong crowd. Or when teens denied the chance to "turn on" to
sports turn on to something else, often drugs and alcohol.

Until adults stop taking children's sports away from children, we will all
be the losers.

Abrams, a professor at the University of Missouri's School of Law in
Columbia, has coached youth ice hockey for 34 years.