The US results from this poll are very unsettling. We have lots of work to do to improve youth sports on many levels.


U.S, India Parents Seen as Worst Behaved at Kids' Sports


April 7, 2010


NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) - More than 35 percent of adults worldwide have witnessed a parent become physically or verbally abusive toward a coach or official at a children's sporting event, according to a joint Reuters/Ipsos poll.

The survey of 23,000 adults in 22 countries by market research company Ipsos showed that irate, screaming, over-enthusiastic parents are not only found in Hollywood films and on television.

People living in the United States (60 percent) were most likely to witness unsavory behavior by a parent followed closely by residents of India (59 percent), Italy (55 percent), Argentina (54 percent), Canada (53 percent) and Australia (50 percent).

But people in Hungary, the Czech Republic, Mexico, Japan and France were the least likely to see parents behaving badly while their children played sports.

"It's ironic that the United States, which prides itself in being the most civilized country in the world, has the largest group of adults having witnessed abusive behavior at children's sporting events" said John Wright, senior vice president of Ipsos.

"There is clearly a fine line between participatory enthusiasm and abuse and parents, as role models, have got to keep that in mind and keep themselves in check for the sake of their children."

According to the survey, men (41 percent) were more likely than women (33 percent) to have witnessed abusive behavior.

People in a higher income bracket and those who were more educated were also more likely to have seen parents acting physically and verbally abusive.

"There is no difference in terms of marital status," Ipsos added in a statement, with a nearly identical percentage of married couples and people who ticked "other" status seeing abusive parental behavior toward coaches or officials.

Copyright 2009 States News Service
States News Service


December 4, 2009 Friday


HEADLINE: CONCUSSIONS BILL: SEN. MENENDEZ INTRODUCES SENATE LEGISLATION TO HELP PROPERLY HANDLE CONCUSSIONS IN SCHOOL SPORTS
BYLINE: States News Service
DATELINE: WASHINGTON

The following information was released by New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez:

U.S. Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) today introduced legislation in the Senate to create a grant program that would help ensure proper prevention, diagnosis and treatment of sports-related concussions in U.S. high schools and middle schools. The Concussion Treatment and Care Tools (ConTACT) Act establishes a five year grant program, authorized at $5 million for the first year, to be distributed to states to implement proven concussion management strategies. Rep. Bill Pascrell previously introduced this legislation in the House of Representatives.

Our high schoolers playing in the state football championships, and all of our children playing school sports, should be able to focus on achieving their goals on the field without worrying about a concussion that can affect them off the field, said Senator Menendez. As the National Football League bolsters its own concussion treatment programs, many parents are wondering if enough attention has been devoted to concussions in school sports. Great strides in the prevention, diagnosis and management of concussions have been made in recent years. We want to make sure that the most advanced strategies are being implemented for our high school and middle school athletes.

People across the nation are becoming increasingly aware that traumatic brain injury isnt just a concern for auto-accident victims or soldiers in the battlefield. It concerns any family with a child who is athletically active, said Pascrell, the co-founder and co-chairman of the Congressional Brain Injury Task Force who originally introduced the ConTACT Act in November 2008. Senator Menendez recognizes the importance of this legislation in protecting middle-school and high school athletes throughout our country. I sincerely thank him for introducing this legislation in the U.S. Senate and look forward to working with him in seeing this bill through the legislative process.

Under the legislation, grants would be awarded to states to implement best practices in concussion management for school-sponsored sports and fund schools implementation of baseline and post-concussion neuropsychological testing technologies. Best practices would be developed by a conference of medical, athletic, and education stakeholders and will be used to model grant guidelines.

Facts on Concussions

Baseline testing has become common in professional and college sports but is far less common in high school sports.

Concussions are mild traumatic brain injuries (mTBI)

As many as 3.8 million concussions related to sports and recreation are estimated to occur in the U.S. each year.

As many as 41% of concussed high school athletes may be returning to play too soon.

A repeat concussion one that occurs before the brain recovers from a previous concussion can slow recovery or increase the likelihood of having long-term problems.

In rare cases, repeat concussions can result in second impact syndrome, which can be marked by brain swelling, permanent brain damage, and death.

Many national organizations including the American Academy of Neurology, the National Football League, the American Academy of Family Physicians, and the Brain Injury Association of America have adopted concussion management guidelines, but multiple directives have created confusion.

Parents who keep their kids back a grade to allow them to physically mature and possibly gain an advantage is a very contenious issue in the education and sport areas.

I just read the bestselling book Outliers and it addresses this issue by looking at the trend called "Accumulated Advantage" where kids born in the first half of each year get the coaching and necessary attention to progress farther in sport as they are bigger and stronger than their peers born later in the year. This was very interesting to read especially from a coaching perspective since coaches should be coaching everyone the same at the youth level.

See the below article regarding the pros and cons of keeping a child back a year in school.

Copyright 2009 The San Diego Union-Tribune
The San Diego Union-Tribune


May 10, 2009 Sunday


SECTION: SPORTS; Pg. D-1

HEADLINE: One step back, big step forward;
More parents are choosing to hold back their sons a year or delay their start in school, resulting in an athletic advantage

BYLINE: Mark Zeigler, STAFF WRITER


Remember the names. Tyree and Tyrell Robinson.

They are eighth graders at the Rock Academy, a Christian school in San Diego, and they are poised to terrorize high school basketball beginning next fall.

They both attended the Jr. All-American Camp last summer in Chantilly, Va., and received high marks. Some basketball recruiting Web sites rank them in the top 10 nationally at their positions.

"Just excellent, excellent players," says Clay Dade, the president and founder of the Jr. All-American Camp, which annually assembles the nation's top sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade players. "I would say from my years of experience, both of them have very high-potential futures in high school.

"Those kids are big-time talents."

They are both 6 feet 3 and growing.

They can dribble.

They can dunk.

They can shoot the three.

But the Robinson twins have another, perhaps more important, asset: They're a full year older -- in some cases, 18 months older -- than most kids in their grade.

They were born on April 14, 1994, and turned 15 last month as eighth-graders when most of their classmates are 13 or 14. One twin was held back in elementary school; the other is repeating eighth grade now.

Meaning: They'll turn 19 during their senior year of high school.

They're not alone, either. More and more, intentionally or unintentionally, either through something as innocuous as starting your son a year late in kindergarten or as calculated as having him repeat eighth grade, high school athletics are increasingly becoming a battleground between older and younger kids.

Of tall, muscled, experienced 19-year-olds playing against skinny 17-year-old seniors and even skinnier 16-year-old juniors. Guys with full beards against kids who don't shave.

Men against boys.

"We call it re-classing," Dade says. "We don't have spreadsheets or keep statistics on it, but we see the birth certificates when these kids register for our camps. I would say every year now, 70 percent of each (camp) class from seventh grade on is made up of kids who were re-classed.

"It is a burgeoning aspect of this whole world of grass-roots youth sports and the race to be elite. It's gone on for years, but now it has a real, real purpose.

"It's kind of like the secret is out."

* * * Jeremy Tyler, the 6-11 junior at San Diego High who has dominated local basketball since he was a freshman, recently arched eyebrows by announcing he would skip his senior year to play professionally in Europe.

Tyler turns 18 in June, making him older than many graduating seniors in the class of 2009.

Or take the case of Toby Gerhart, the all-time leading rusher for football in California high school history and now a running back at Stanford. He finished with an almost incomprehensible 9,662 yards at Norco High near Riverside, breaking the old record by more than 1,000. He played four years on the Norco varsity. He was 19 as a senior.

His coach at Norco was his father, and his parents wanted him to repeat the sixth grade for "social reasons." When the school district refused to allow Toby to repeat a grade -- this is a kid who ended up with a 4.67 grade-point average in high school and was accepted to Stanford -- his parents transferred him to the local Christian school. Enrolled him in sixth grade again.

The all-time leading scorer in CIF San Diego Section history for boys basketball is Tyrone Shelley. He completed his four-year varsity career, first at Christian High and then at Crawford, with 2,962 points.

Shelley, currently a sophomore at San Diego State, was born on Sept. 29, 1987, and says he started kindergarten a few weeks before his fifth birthday. That put him on track to start high school in 2001.

Instead, according to San Diego Unified School District records, Shelley began eighth grade in September 2000 and didn't complete eighth grade until July 2003. Records show him attending eighth grade at different San Diego middle schools in the 2000-01 year and again in 2002-03. Shelley says he spent the intervening year at La Mesa Middle School.

A few weeks into his freshman year of high school, he turned 16. By the time his senior season at Crawford began, he was 19 and had filled out his 6-6 frame.

Was success a function of age?

Shelley shakes his head.

"It's all about hard work," he says. "It doesn't matter how old you are if you don't work hard. I worked hard."

Adds his coach at Crawford, Terry Tucker: "I don't go to games worrying about how old a kid is. I worry about whether that kid can read or write ... Tyrone averaged 28 points per game as a freshman. Being 19 (as a senior) had nothing to do with him being a good player.

"I don't think I've ever coached against a kid who I've said is better just because he's older. A kid might be a little stronger, yeah, but can he put the ball on the floor? Can he put the ball in the basket? Those are intangibles that have nothing to do with age."

Others disagree, insisting an extra year (or two) amounts to an enormous advantage, particularly with boys, particularly in sports that place a premium on size and strength.

It is almost a moot point with girls, who mature earlier and often are finished growing by the time they reach high school. According to Center for Disease Control charts tracking average height and weight gain among Americans, girls in the 50th percentile grow one inch and gain 17 pounds between ages 14 and 19.

Boys, on average, grow five inches and gain 40 pounds.

"The most noticeable advantage is the physical advantage, the body physique and jumping ability and the strength," says Dade, who has been running basketball all-star camps for more than a decade. "But the other thing is that these kids are more confident on the court, playing against kids younger than me. I know I'm better. I'm more aggressive. They're mentally tougher and more advanced in terms of their psyche."

It isn't as much of an issue in youth sports, which in this country are generally divided into one-year increments. High school sports, though, are the one place where teens compete according to ability and academic class, and not age.

Or put another way: You won't find a 19-year-old dunking on kids in a 16-and-under youth league.

The other factor is that the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF), like most state governing bodies, has jurisdiction over only what happens in high school and not before.

"The clock starts in your first enrollment in ninth grade in any school anywhere in the world," says Bill McLaughlin, assistant commissioner for the CIF's San Diego Section. "But if something happens before the ninth grade, if you are held back a year in junior high, then there's nothing we can do about it."

The only applicable CIF rules are that once you start ninth grade, you get eight consecutive semesters (four years) of athletic eligibility; and that you must turn 19 prior to June 15 before your senior year.

The National Federation of State High School Associations recommends seniors are 18 or younger on Aug. 31 to retain athletic eligibility, and a 2006 survey found 29 states have less restrictive age limits. Most merely declare a student ineligible on his 20th birthday.

Now consider if you start kindergarten at the recommended age of 5, you will begin your senior year of high school at 17. In states such as California, where you can start kindergarten at age 4 if your fifth birthday falls before Dec. 2, some high school seniors will start the academic year at 16.

Do the math: In California and almost every other state, you can be not one but two years older than your natural grade and still be eligible to play sports through your senior year.

"It's simple," says Jack McCarthy, who runs the successful middle school basketball program at St. Jude Academy in San Diego. "The parents all want their kid to be as good as the kid next door, so they hold them back a year. It happens every single day. A regular kid goes to middle school and graduates at, say, 13 or 14, he's at a tremendous disadvantage when he gets to high school.

"Those kids are really behind the eight ball."

* * * Sociologists call it the relative age effect, or RAE.

It is a fancy way of saying that whenever children are grouped in one-year increments, those born immediately after the birthday cutoff can have mental and physical advantages compared to those born immediately before it. That the kid who is 11 years, 11 months old usually is a better pitcher in the under-12 league than the kid who just had his 11th birthday.

The older kid also gets the most playing time and often is selected to all-star or elite teams, where he is exposed to better coaching and a higher level of competition -- which, of course, just makes him better. At a certain point, researchers suggest, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Most RAE research has been conducted in Europe. One of the most extensive studies, published in 2005 in the Journal of Sports Science, compiled birth dates of 2,175 players (mostly boys) from youth national soccer teams of 10 European countries. The findings: 43.4 percent were born in the first three months after the Jan. 1 cutoff date, and only 9.3 percent in the year's final three months.

The RAE, the British and Belgian researchers wrote, "may result in significant differences in performance." Numerous studies in the U.S. and elsewhere have reached similar conclusions.

And that's just for children who are six to 12 months older. Imagine the benefits of being 18 months older, or a full two years older.

Fifteen members of USC's 108-man football roster from last season, or 14 percent, are at least a year older than their natural class. At USA Basketball's Youth Development Festival in 2007, which gathered 30 of the nation's top boys high school players, 19 were a year (and in some cases two years) older than their typical classmates.

In football-mad Texas and Ohio, there are stories of boys in middle school routinely repeating a grade so they'll be bigger and stronger in high school.

The same thing was happening in parts of Louisiana. At West Monroe Junior High in the late 1990s, 19 boys repeated eighth grade in the same year -- presumably to enhance their chances of playing on the town's vaunted high school football team. Aghast Louisiana federation officials hastily enacted regulations forcing anyone who repeated a grade in middle school for athletic reasons to lose his senior year of eligibility.

That seemed to work ... until some kids started suspiciously accumulating 21 days of unexcused absences -- which in Louisiana means repeating a grade no matter how well a student performs academically. Another rule was passed to close that loophole.

Then kids started failing the state's eighth-grade proficiency test. On purpose.

At least one school district amended rules to deter that.

In California, no such rules exist. And even if they did, what about the kid whose parents innocently started him a year late in kindergarten for social reasons? Or the kid who is genuinely held back for academic purposes?

No one formally tracks the ages of high school athletes or the real reasons why students repeat a grade, but the statistics that are kept indicate high school students are getting older and older.

According to a Dept. of Commerce survey taken each fall, kindergarteners age 6 or older have increased from 4.8 percent in 1974 ... to 9.7 percent in 1984 ... to 13.2 percent in 1994 ... to 17.4 percent in 2004. Add in the 12.1 percent of boys that a 2003 Department of Education survey says repeat a grade at some point, and soon more than 20 percent of high school students could be a year older than their typical classmates.

What happens then?

Do junior varsity teams become receptacles for the younger, smaller, skinnier boys who stayed with their normal class?

James Rahon, who recently transferred to SDSU from Santa Clara University, was among the leading basketball scorers in the San Diego Section in 2007-08 as a senior at Torrey Pines High. His birthday is Sept. 6, and his parents decided to have him wait an extra year to start kindergarten, as California school regulations allow.

The same went for Joe Rahon, his younger brother who has an October birthday. As a 15-year-old freshman at Torrey Pines this past season, he was named the Union-Tribune's Newcomer of the Year in boys basketball.

"I had a late July birthday," says Steve Rahon, their father. "I graduated high school at 17. I think that's how people thought about it a generation ago. Now families that have kids with birthdays in September/October are thinking about it differently, and I think that's a smart thing.

"I knew what it was like to grow up being the smallest kid in the class."