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Identifying Youth Sport
Koller, Dionne
Koller, Dionne
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Abstract
The United States is steeped in the prevailing discourse that youth sport
is part of a “good” childhood. With approximately 60 million children
participating, it would seem that the conventional wisdom is true. Yet
the dominant narrative occurs within a troubling empirical reality.
What is often referred to as the “professionalization” of youth sport,
which emphasizes early sport specialization, over-training to the point
of injury, competition, and the drive to win, leads the majority of
children who enter youth sport to quit by adolescence. Because
professionalized youth sport is also costly, millions more, particularly
children of color and children with disabilities, never have the
opportunity to play. Despite the known harms of the current system,
there has been little legal scholarly attention to youth sport and little
meaningful reform.
This article seeks to lay the foundation for a different approach by
taking a crucial threshold step: fully identifying what, in the U.S.,
youth sport is. While the answer may seem apparent, given our
perceived familiarity with sport, I argue that it is more complex. This
article explains that U.S. youth sport is a particular model infused with
the power of the legal and policy choices, including the choice not to
regulate, that reflect our historical moment. Youth sport occurring in
this environment is not, as commonly thought, just a private family
matter, but a site of significant societal production that supports all
other levels of athletics. It is, in short, much more than simply play.
Operating in this way, I argue that the U.S. youth sport model produces
a surplus value that is distributed across society, from parents and fans
to sports sponsors and state and local governments. By identifying
youth sport by what it is, and not what it purports to be, this article
reveals why the current system is resistant to change and sets the stage
for more meaningful approaches to reform.