Identifying Youth Sport

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.