In our effort to give coaches at all levels some more guidance as they lead athletes to greatness and as they navigate an often unpredictable sports world, we’ve asked our resident Licensed Psychotherapist and member of the Member of Florida State Athletic Behavioral Health Team Paul Peavy to step in for bi-weekly coaching-related Q&A sessions.
(Paul Peavy)
Paul has been helping us with our sports-related character development lessons since September, and now he’s ready to bride things over to the coaching sector.
Paul has counseled kids, teens, and families for over 20 years. He’s also a father, husband, and athlete with many Ironmans under his belt.
In this week’s advice column, we look at whether coaches should encourage their athletes to specialize in one sport or give them all a try.
Purpose 2 Play: Nowadays, for competitive reasons, kids who play sports often get locked into one sport at an early age versus playing multiple sports throughout the year. From a child development standpoint, do you think coaches should encourage young athletes to specialize in one sport? What are the pro and cons?
Paul Peavy: Wow! Great question because I have thought about this a lot and what I realize is that my primary belief has not changed over the past 20 years even though the sports industry has changed so drastically over the past 10 years.
My primary belief is that children should be exposed to different sports and be allowed to figure out what they enjoy and what they are good at. I also believe that flexibility is a great human characteristic that adds to the opportunity for happiness and growth.
What has changed is the development of year-round travel soccer teams, fall baseball leagues, and seven-on-seven football skill camps, etc., which make kids (and parents) feel like they are missing the boat that is sailing towards professional sports or a Division I sports scholarship if they are not on that boat 24/7 twelve months a year.
Let’s take a look at some elite athletes who played at least two sports for a long time:
Hakeem Olajuwon was a soccer goalie until he played his first basketball game at age 15. He believes that playing soccer laid the foundation for him having perhaps the best footwork of any big man in the NBA.
Charlie Ward won a Heisman Trophy as a quarterback at FSU and then had a 12 year career in the NBA. He credited basketball with helping his peripheral vision in seeing the field as a quarterback.
Russell Wilson left NC State his senior year and transferred to the University of Wisconsin because NC State wouldn’t let him play minor league baseball in the off season. (Sometimes you just need to let a kid do what makes him happy.)
Jameis Winston said he learned how to deal with frustration from playing baseball because he realized he was not going to get a hit every time up. He also credited FSU’s baseball coaches with recruiting him away from his home state of Alabama as much as the football coaches.
On one Spring Saturday morning, Deion Sanders ran in a track meet for FSU, played in the FSU Garnet and Gold Spring football game that afternoon, and then played baseball for the Seminoles that night against the University Of Miami. Later he would become the only player to score an NFL touchdown and a MLB homerun in the same week. (Okay, that’s just a cool fact, but Sanders did say he just enjoyed the challenge of baseball because he had to constantly work at it and that helped his focus and concentration.)
It’s not even about being multi-sport. This year in baseball’s American League Championship Series MVP Lorenzo Cain of the Kansas City Royals did not even play the sport until the 11th grade. His mother would not let him play football so he showed up to baseball tryouts in his football cleats and wore his fielding glove on the wrong hand.
Even if your child’s goal is getting to the division I level or to the pros, it can be done without the hyper mono-focus. So the first part of the question is about age and stage development. Up through middle school it is good to let kids develop their likes and dislikes, experiment with other sports and figure out the why they like things and what they are good at it.
My own daughter just earned a swim scholarship to FSU by being strictly focused on swimming year round. It’s the only sport she ever wanted to really compete in even after spending her formative years in gymnastics. So I would be hypocritical if I said that a parent or coach should make a child explore other sports. Swimming became her joy, her passion, her life, her identity, and most importantly, swimmers became her peer group and her best friends. That is where she’s definitely always the happiest.
One of her friends went through the fall ball, travel ball, year-round baseball circuit all of his life and was drafted in the second round by the Chicago Cubs and he is quite happy (and rich) because of his choices.
I would definitely listen to a kid as well as read his/her non-verbals as he/she started into something year-round to see where he/she is genuinely still enthused about that one sport or needs a break. I would emphasize that I don’t think that the year-round routine should start until high school if it does at all. (Also remember that I am not a medical doctor so I did not at all address the issue of overuse injuries here.)
P2P: How can coaches best keep interest high within the sport that they coach (Ex. perhaps giving appropriate time off)?
PP: I think coaches can keep things interesting year-round by certainly having training blocks where loading phases of training and tapering are clearly spelled out for kids. In a sport like track, cycling, or swimming you do not want kids to freak out or get burned out about their performances. You need to tell them, “Okay, we have been training really hard. Don’t freak out here if you don’t have a best time. We are just here to get the competitive juices flowing.”
In team sports, having games within games or frequent scrimmages are important because a kid (and adults) mostly want to compete and play games. I also think having kids play or practice out of their favorite position keeps things fresh. It also helps them develop new skills and perspectives and may create more respect for teammates.
Timing breaks that fit with the school year make sense. Spring break should be Spring Break and Winter holidays should be holidays. Now I know some travel teams want to take advantage of that time away from school to play in tournaments or go to big meets. If that is the case, a lot of fun should also be involved to make sure the kids truly feel like they had fun during the break.
P2P: Let’s flip the script. Do you think a head coach who coaches a year-round competitive team should stick to coaching one sport throughout the year?
PP: Ideally that makes a lot of sense to me, but practically, I don’t see how coaches that specialize in travel teams and year round training can do that. I like that many high school and middle school coaches also coach other sports and this gives them exposure to other people and ideas. So what I would do is definitely pay attention and consult with other sports’ coaches.
For example if I were running the Oregon Ducks’ wide open football offense, I would want to talk to some soccer coaches about spacing. I know Jimbo Fisher at FSU was looking for material on sustaining excellence and he read up on how Phil Jackson did it with the Bulls and Lakers. I know of a swim coach who took his swim team to a track practice to see how they paid attention to detail. When I give talks to companies, I always tell them to not look at their own industry to find the next trend, but to look outside their industry and find out how they can bring in an outside idea to truly become a leader in their respective industry.
P2P: What are some strategies for coaches to get their athletes interested in different sports?
PP: A coach’s word is absolute gold to a young athlete so I think the biggest thing is to suggest something in a positive light such as, “I know you love baseball. You have really worked hard at learning the playbook. Why don’t you take some this spring and play baseball and miss some of the spring football practices if you need to.”
Or it could be something as simple as acknowledging the specific techniques that could be gained by being on a weightlifting, wrestling, or track and field team. Or suggesting a kid take gymnastics or a martial art to help with their coordination. Besides a change of scenery, those things could really build some small usable changes in a young athlete.
