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."

Brian King, a great track & field coach in the Baltimore area, is also a teacher at Western HS in Baltimore. I have great respect for his work and you can check out his new blog here.

Copyright 2009 Gale Group, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
ASAP
Copyright 2009 Weider Publications
Joe Weider's Muscle & Fitness


June 1, 2009


SECTION: Pg. 124(5) Vol. 70 No. 6 ISSN: 0744-5105

HEADLINE: Not another teen uproar: high school athletes are infatuated with sports supplements. But when it comes to their anxious coaches and protective parents, where's the common ground? We open a roundtable debate that covers all sides of this controversial topic;
SUPPLEMENTS


Few topics are more controversial than that of teenagers and their use of sports-nutrition supplements.

With the general public still whipped into a frenzy over the various doping scandals in professional sports and the mainstream media too willing to lump protein powders and creatine in with illicit drugs, it's no wonder parents and coaches are more than a little confused.[paragraph] There have always been plenty of critics and paranoid skeptics throwing around hot-button phrases. Instead of getting caught upin hyperbole, we decided to gather a panel of diverse experts who live and work at the front lines of this debate. Along with our own twocents, we hope their insight provides a guide toward the best choices for teens looking to take their athleticism to the next level.

what's your biggest concern regarding teenagers and supplements?

FAIGENBAUM: "Definitely safety. Their bodies are still developing, growing and maturing. When it comes to any supplement, I'm more interested in the long-term health effects. Unfortunately, if you look at the science behind many products, most of the research has been done on adults. Just because a supplement has been found to be safe and effective for a college-level football player doesn't mean we can assume it's also safe for a teen."

SHAO: "I would say responsibility. From a social standpoint, the real question is, 'Are teenagers mature enough to follow product directions appropriately and in a responsible manner?' Granted, this applies to any consumer product, but it definitely pertains to dietary supplements as well."

STOUT: "I'm concerned about teens who rely on a supplement first, and diet and exercise second. If a teenager turns to supplements as acrutch, he could develop bad overall habits that might make him more likely to look for the same quick-fix response with other drugs as an adult."

NITKA: "I'd say lack of education. Their belief is that supplements are better than food. It try to educate them, [telling them] that if their diets aren't adequate, if their training is sporadic, if their intensity is too low, then they're not ready for supplements. But it simply doesn't match what these kids see on TV. They're always looking for a shortcut, and that's how many view supplements."

M&F SAYS: We agree with Stout: The focus should be on training and a whole-foods nutrition plan. If you have poor training and eating habits to begin with, you have bigger problems to tackle than choosing which supplement to take. Only after consistently training and following a solid nutrition plan to the point where a plateau is reached is it okay for kids to consider adding some basic supplements to their regimens.

If a teen is on top of his diet and training, which supplements doyou recommend?

M&F SAYS: The best supplements for teens to consider are those that are simply a concentrated form of a nutrient they already get in fairly large quantities in their diets. This means amino acids--including branched-chain amino acids, glutamine, beta-hydroxy beta-methylbutyrate (HMB) and creatine, which is actually an amino acid-based supplement--and protein powders or bars, healthy fats such as fish oil, and vitamins, minerals and other antioxidants."

SHAO: "A multivitamin, first and foremost. It has been shown that on average, Americans come up short in achieving recommended intakes of a variety of nutrients, especially vitamins C, D and E, calcium, magnesium and omega-3 fatty acids. There's less research on teenagers, but anecdotal evidence suggests that they're even more deficient because their dietary habits are much worse."

FAIGENBAUM: "Agreed. Also, in terms of hydration, I'm well aware that teenagers drink more flavored beverages than water. If a teenager prefers a sports drink, that's fine so long as he keeps in mind how many calories he's consuming."

Are there any supplements you discourage teens from using?

NITKA: "For me, something is safe only after I've found enough information about it in scientific literature. When a teen asks me abouta supplement, I encourage him to prove to me why he should take it. He may still take it, but at least that challenges him to first do his homework. However, I'm concerned about energy drinks being used to improve performance."

SHAO: "There's nothing specific that gives me cause for concern from a safety standpoint. Regarding energy drinks, there really isn't any need for teenagers to use them. It's their off-label use--exceeding the amount recommended--that might pose a problem, but that would be so for anybody, not just teens."

FAIGENBAUM: "In my view, under no circumstances should an adolescent ever take any type of prohormone or testosterone-booster such as DHEA [dehydroepiandrosterone] or and rostenetrione. A teenager's physiology is dynamic, and anything that manipulates his hormone levels should be off-limits."

STOUT: "I agree with several points. I don't believe in energy drinks because most contain stimulants that can cause various side effects, especially an increase in blood pressure. I also don't like any supplement that's druglike, such as anything that binds to receptors and causes a metabolic reaction. All of these prohormone products and estrogen-blockers should be avoided by growing kids. I prefer supplements that contain ingredients that aren't metabolic and are either absorbed if needed or excreted, such as protein, carbohydrate drinks, creatine, amino acids, HMB and CLA [conjugated linoleic acid]."

M&F SAYS: We all seem to be in agreement here: Teens should avoid supplements that contain stimulants, as well as supplements that alter hormone levels like testosterone. A teen's brain and body is still in the developmental stage. Stimulants and supplements that alter hormone levels can have harmful effects on developing body systems, which can have a long-term negative impact on teens' health and well-being. For example, there's some compelling data on the impact of stimulants on an adolescent's propensity to addiction. We are just as concerned about the gratuitous and apparently acceptable socialization of coffee and energy-drink consumption among adolescents as we are with the number of adolescents who may experiment with prohormones.

Are there other specific issues that teenagers bring to the table?

STOUT: "Lack of guidance is an issue. If their child is really trying to reach some sort of goal--improved athletic performance or lean muscle gain--parents need to keep a close eye on the ingredients in the products their teen wants to take. If they don't understand them, they should ask a professional if it's something they should be concerned about."

FAIGENBAUM: "I agree, but my research has shown that very few teenagers turn to a physician for information on supplements. Instead, they make the mistake of conferring with their peers. That's a huge problem in my opinion. I want young athletes asking [parents,] coaches and teachers about supplements instead of asking their friends or searching the Internet, mainly because there's so much misinformation out there."

M&F SAYS: The argument that teenagers should turn to physicians, parents, coaches and teachers assumes that the aforementioned have specialized knowledge on the topic, and they rarely do. Thus, when a kiddoes go to these folks, he often gets the "just don't do it" advice or is given misinformation based on the adult's own lack of specialized knowledge. That's why kids turn to their friends and the Internet. Instead, isn't it far better that they get advice from a magazine capable of providing quality information because it actually has an editor in chief who's finishing his PhD in exercise physiology and a science editor who did his PhD post-doc in cellular and molecular physiology at Yale University School of Medicine?

Why is it so difficult to find data on teens and supplements?

STOUT: "There have been a lot of studies performed to see how children react to certain nutrients. But it's much harder to gain permission to test supplements in children, which is why you see less data. Whenever you consider performing research on a specific population, you must have a solid hypothesis and an outcome that could benefit society. If you were asking permission to study a supplement's effect on muscular dystrophy, it's considered worth investigating because the benefits outweigh the potential risks. But getting permission to study a supplement's effect on teen athletes doesn't meet the same acceptance, mainly because it's not considered a benefit to society."

Any final advice for teens considering supplements?

NITKA: "First and foremost, they need to focus on diet. I do a diet analysis on teens interested in supplements, then show them which foods would fill any deficiencies that could be holding back their performance. It's time-consuming, but this information helps them begin to understand the solid nutrition an athlete needs to have in place, so they're not relying on just swallowing a pill or throwing back a drink."

FAIGENBAUM: "I agree. It's not what they take, it's what they do. If they're dehydrated, eat poorly or don't train properly, their performance drops a certain percentage. But if they can focus on sensiblenutrition, proper hydration, adequate sleep and a well-designed, periodized training program, the gains they could expect might range from 3%-Io%, which far exceeds anything a teenager might get from takinga legal supplement. It's money in the bank."

SHAO: "I always want to make sure the parents are involved as muchas possible when it comes to supplements. Just as they should be responsible for shaping their child's behavior, they should be equally responsible for helping educate their kid on the proper use of these products."

STOUT: "If [your child is] using a product that's safe for teens, make sure he's actually training while using it. Some teenagers believe that just taking a supplement yields results. Even though certain substrate nutrients can accelerated and/or enhance the benefits of training, if you're not exercising in the first place, no supplement iseffective. Period."

M&F SAYS: The bottom line is dietary supplements are just that: nutrients that supplement your diet. The primary focus should be training and diet. When you add supplements to an already strong training and nutrition plan, the results you see will be that much more dramatic.

RELATED ARTICLE: EXPERT PANEL

JEFFREY R. STOUT, PhD, FACSM, FNSCA, FISSN Vice president of the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA), assistant professor in the department of health and exercise science at the University of Oklahoma (Norman)

ANDREW SHAO, PhD Vice president of scientific and regulatory affairs for the Council for Responsible Nutrition (Washington, D.C.)

MIKE NITKA, MS, CSCS

Chairman of the High School NSCA Special Interest Group, head strength and conditioning coach at Muskego High School (Wisconsin)

AVERY FAIGENBAUM, PhD

Founder of strongkid.com, associate professor of health and exercise science at The College of New Jersey (Ewing)

CHRIS LOCKWOOD, MS, CSCS & JIM STOPPANI, PhD

MUSCLE & FITNESS' editor in chief and senior science editor, respectively