Sports Without Pressure

A Guide for Parents and Coaches of Young Athletes

Eric Margenau

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317855194
• Print ISBN:
  9780367108847
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology

First published in 1990. This book offers important guidelines to help parents and coaches make the right decisions for children by laying out a program of athletic activity and parental involvement through the age of 11. Margenau exposes the myths that parents use to justify pressuring their kids too early in life.

CHAPTER

△1△

Sports in American Society

IT WOULD BE hard to overestimate the importance of sports in American society We are an active people, a nation of participants, spectators, bettors, and second-guessers.

An estimated 100 million people of all ages regularly participate in organized and individual sports that range from bowling and softball to swimming and mountain climbing.

Hundreds of millions of people watch live and televised sports events on a regular basis.

Untold billions of dollars are legally and illegally wagered annually on horse races, boxing, football, baseball, and nearly every other sport.

It’s a rare conversation that doesn’t turn to sports at some point, and true sports fanatics can spend hours replaying, dissecting, and second-guessing every play in yesterday’s big game.

This American passion for sports is no more clearly evident than in the news media. Virtually every newspaper of any size has a sports section, though it probably doesn’t have a special section for books, music, or even international news. Every radio and television news program has a sportscaster who reports on events of local and national interest. Most major cities have at least one radio call-in show devoted entirely to sports, and nationally there are several cable TV channels that carry sports events exclusively. In addition, there are at least seventy-five nationally distributed weekly and monthly sports publications (not to mention scores of privately published newsletters) that treat every aspect of the sporting life in exhausting detail. And the summarizing, categorizing, and analyzing of sports statistics is a business all its own.

The total annual revenue generated by sports-related activities in this country, including collegiate athletics, has been estimated conservatively at $20 billion. And the salaries of professional athletes, which have skyrocketed in the last ten years, are further evidence of the public’s insatiable interest in watching sports events live and on television.

Even our language has been permeated by sports-related jargon. Such everyday expressions as “out in left field,” “game plan,” “ballpark figure,” “hard ball,” “Monday morning quarterback,” “roll with the punches,” and “feeling up to par,” are only a few of the phrases that have originated in sports and have been integrated into the vernacular. These expressions are in daily use from Wall Street to the White House and they are part of the conversations of doctors, real estate brokers, barbers, housewives, and children of all ages. Interestingly, some of the people who so casually use this sports jargon have only a passing interest in sports and no real idea which sport a particular expression comes from. But no matter. It’s a rare American who doesn’t have an interest in some sport, either as a participant, a spectator, or a gambler.

This American fascination with sports is nothing new. Historically, sports have played a large role in our cultural life, though until this century athletics was the nearly exclusive province of men and boys. Often the first toy introduced into Johnny’s crib was a ball (Mary was given a doll to play with) and as soon as he could walk Dad had his son out in the backyard playing catch and swinging a bat. When Johnny was old enough to play ball with the other boys in the neighborhood his mother would keep his dinner warm in the oven until he came home exhausted and hungry. He was rarely scolded when he stayed out until it was too dark to see the ball even when it was thrown straight up in the air. Only young girls, called “tomboys,” were included in this “boyish” play and they did so at the risk of taunts from their girl friends and their mothers, who thought they should be acting like little Mary down the street.

Sports remained mostly a man’s and boy’s world until the 1950s, when the steady growth of leisure time and a burgeoning interest in sports by girls and women brought a dramatic increase in sports participation at all levels by both sexes.

Then, in the mid-1970s the fitness boom hit this country and people who had never seriously considered playing a game or doing formalized exercise got caught up in the frenzy to get fit. When medical findings—the by-products of the jogging and exercise explosion—began to show that regular vigorous physical activity was good for health in general and cardiovascular fitness and weight control in particular, the ranks of the exercisers swelled again. Millions of people, recognizing the significance of these findings, saw the potential rewards of working up a sweat and they too turned to jogging and other exercise as a way of buying insurance for the future.

Running, the easiest and most natural of all athletic movements, quickly became the most popular alternative for those who had only dabbled in exercise and it made instant “athletes” of a whole new group of people who, until they began to run, never thought of themselves as athletes at all. These new converts quickly became “competitors” by entering ten-kilometer races and marathons as if they were strolls around the block. Through their running, many of these people—almost as many women as men—became habitual exercisers who spent almost as much time proselytizing as running. The younger members of this group, who went on to get married and have children, have inculcated their offspring with the same desire for fitness, and this has created a new generation of exercisers and sports fans.

Sports and exercise have reached new highs in participation, and now that all age and sex boundaries have fallen, young and old, men, women, and children alike, are in the gyms, the parks, and the streets pursuing their favorite recreational and fitness activities.

The most popular sports in America today, in the order of the number of participants, are walking, swimming, running, tennis, and golf, but such activities as aerobics, racquetball, soccer, hiking, softball, and bowling are also immensely popular in every part of the country. Even the most conservative estimates put the number of people who actively participate in one sport or another above 50 million. The most optimistic surveys say that 120 million people are involved in some kind of athletic activity on a regular basis, and in this case means three or more times each week.

As the popularity of sports has grown, several new industries devoted to meeting the special needs of exercisers have also developed. The clothing industry responded immediately by providing special clothes, shoes, and other equipment to eager athletes. Today there are special shoes for every sport from walking to mountain climbing and special clothes to go with those shoes. The sporting goods industry has adopted the newest techniques in space age technology and have introduced lightweight racquets for tennis and racquetball, new shafts for golf clubs, and special materials for bicycles, skis, surf boards, and home exercise machines which make them more useful and affordable. The related business of health and fitness clubs has also grown from a specialty service to one that serves hundreds of thousands of members a year, and the vitamin, health food, and diet businesses have skyrocketed.

There are two basic reasons for this national sports mania. The first is physical. Man is a physical animal, made to move, to walk, to run, to jump, but not to sit still. Sports and games provide the kind of physical activity that meets man’s basic needs to be active and vital and healthy.

The second reason, and possibly more important, is psychological and emotional. Sports provides both participant and spectator the opportunity to satisfy two important psychological needs that are vital to healthy development—fantasy or escapism, and self-esteem.

Fantasy is a form of escapism that we all engage in from time to time. Fantasy can have a negative effect when carried to extremes, but the natural use of fantasy can be a positive diversion from pressures on the job, at school, or in personal relationships. In short, fantasy is a healthy form of release that allows the mind to wander and wonder.

Sports provides an abundance of fantasy opportunities for spectators and participants alike. As spectators, we can quite easily transport ourselves into a fantasy in which we are part of the action—probably the star of that action—and this boosts our psyches and helps to relieve our anxieties. Like Walter Mitty, whose fantasies took him to the cockpit of a fighter plane and the operating room of a hospital, we can use fantasy as a release from the pressures of reality. This is a healthy process unless it becomes a way of avoiding reality.

As participants, we used fantasy differently. Very few people can play games at the professional level or even the high amateur level, but anyone can put on a pair of running shoes and go out and jog and pretend to be in an important race. Anyone can grab a tennis racket and hit a few with a partner or against a wall and pretend to be in the finals at a big tournament. Anyone can buy a baseball hat and throw the ball around with his son and pretend to be the star pitcher. And in these activities there is that moment, probably only fleeting, when the participant can fantasize that he or she is not just any star but Eammon Coghlan winning the mile at the Millrose Games, Chris Evert serving at match point at Wimbledon, or Roger Clemens striking out the side with his blazing fast ball. These healthy fantasies are readily available in sports and they can be realized anywhere from the backyard basketball court in Kansas City, Missouri, to the dusty ball field in Tyler, Texas.

Its an interesting psychological point that sports fantasies are easier to create than fantasies about being a ballet dancer or a Shakespearean actor. The healthy mind finds it much easier to send the image that you are someone who does the same things you can do in everyday life only better. It’s much harder to put yourself in the position of declaiming a soliloquy from Hamlet on a Broadway stage than to imagine swinging a bat in the style of Pete Rose. It’s easier to visualize yourself as a golfer stroking a perfect putt than as a prima ballerina dancing the lead in Swan Lake.

Another reason people have sports-related fantasies is that sports images are more readily available on television. It’s almost impossible to spin the television dial and find modern dance at any hour of the day or night, but at almost any hour, twenty-four hours a day, the dial spinner can find a sports event of some kind on television even if it’s only a rerun of last season’s Super Bowl game.

Fantasy and escape are important psychic elements that sports provide, but the most important psychological reward offered by sports is the opportunity to experience and build self-esteem, to actually go out and do something as well as you can possibly do it, even if that means doing it only adequately. The level of skill displayed is much less important than the act of participation itself.

The link between sports participation and the development of self-esteem is direct. Sports offers the opportunity to at some point (and possibly only one time) execute a single movement perfectly, so perfectly that no star could do it better. If a ten-year-old plays basketball long enough, there is going to be that one sweet moment in time when he’s shooting baskets in the driveway just before dinner and imagining himself as Larry Bird of the Boston Celtics. As the clock winds down in his head, that ten-year-old is ready for the last shot with two seconds to go in the championship game. That youngster can sink that shot and go into the house and sit down to dinner feeling just like a sports star. Little in life is quite as sweet as a sports fantasy fulfilled, and there is little that builds self-esteem as well as a sports experience.

The other psychological dynamics that come into play in athletics are:

The identification that comes from belonging to a group and being part of a team;

The satisfaction of peer approval;

The joy of being involved in trying to achieve something your friends are also trying to achieve.

These are all critical elements in the development of the psyche.

Additionally, sports are so important in society because they offer opportunities for the whole family to be involved in an activity, whether it’s throwing the Frisbee on the beach or playing touch football in the backyard. Sports gives every family member, regardless of age or ability, the chance to share a common experience. One of the beauties of sports is that it isn’t necessary to be completely knowledgeable to express interest. Obviously, detailed knowledge enhances the degree of enjoyment of anything, but that knowledge is not a necessity in sports. Games may sound and look complicated at first glance but there is no sport in which the essence can’t be described in one or two sentences and that’s simple enough for most everyone to understand.

Finally, no parent should find it hard to utilize a child’s interest or participation in sports as a vehicle for establishing better communication with that child. In many families, this is the bridge that gets everyone through the tough times. Sports can be the great equalizer.

The reasons sports...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• 1. Sports in American Society
• 2. Winning Isn’t Everything
• 3. The Value of Athletics
• 4. The Movement Years—Zero to Three
• 5. The Sports Years—Four to Six
• 6. Take the Pressure Off—Seven to Eleven
• 7. Whose Life Is It Anyway?
• 8. Making the Big Decision
• 9. The Recreational Path
• 10. The Professional Path