Physical activity is important for normal growth and development. However, our technology-driven, sedentary lifestyle is producing an epidemic of obesity and disabling illnesses in our young people.

Free play and games have been traditional venues for youngsters to get physical activity, but opportunity for spontaneous back yard and vacant lot play is diminishing. At the same time, organized sport activities with set regimens of training, competition and teams have enjoyed phenomenal growth. Now, most children get most of their exercise in these organized programs. Unfortunately, many are eliminated or discouraged practically before they begin.

Competitive selection and cutting players from teams can serve to reject children long before they have had a chance to know their own potential. Cutting less able youngsters from teams to promote chances of winning is a negative sports experience that can dissuade them from ever wanting to participate again. This trend seems to be especially detrimental to young adolescents. More youngsters drop out of sports in middle school than at any other age, and often there isn’t an alternative sports activity for them to join.

According to a survey of Maine middle schools, conducted by University of Maine Professor Edward Brazee, 96 percent of the approximately 120 schools responding sponsor interscholastic athletics, but only 42 percent sponsor an intramural program. In addition, 68 percent of schools allow students to be cut from teams, but only 8 percent have intramural offerings in those sports. Seventy-three percent of schools reported difficulty in finding qualified coaches, and only 20 percent of coaches are required to complete a coaching education program similar to that required at the high school level. And, there is no statewide oversight body for middle level sports such as the Maine Principals’ Association provides for high school interscholastic athletics.

Far too often, middle level sports are viewed and operated as feeder programs for competitive high school athletics. The situation is incompatible with the middle level philosophy that emphasizes the importance of young adolescents experiencing a variety of activities and having fun in a non-competitive environment.

Professor Brazee serves on the Maine Center for Coaching Education (MCCE) Middle Level Task Force, which has spent nearly two years examining the status, needs and concerns of sports in grades five through eight. Their findings and other relevant issues will be presented and discussed in a variety of workshops at the March 5-6 conference, Opportunities and Challenges Confronting Middle Level Sports. This statewide conference, sponsored by the MCCE and the UMaine College of Education and Human Development, takes place at the Augusta Civic Center and includes informative free, public sessions on the evening of March 5.

As a sports medicine physician, I have seen the many benefits of sport, as well as the damage that unrealistic expectations, improper play and poor coaching can wreak on young bodies and minds.

Organized sport for children has two general patterns. The first is community based and aims to instruct and organize particular sports and other forms of recreation. The second is the pyramidal training of children for elite sports activity and is usually directed by national governing bodies. In both situations, children are exposed to repetitive training and to acute traumatic injury. It is important to know that children have different patterns of injury than adults and to understand the psychological stresses associated with young people and organized sport.

The Middle Level Sports conference presentations raise and examine some critical questions, such as:

. How do – and should ? sports fit into middle-level education?

. What should be emphasized in middle level sports?

. What do coaches need to know about young athletes at this age level?

. Should play-offs and championships exist at the middle level?

. Who should participate on middle level teams?

. What is the role of parents in middle-level sports?

. And most important of all: What do the kids want from sports at the middle level?

More information about the conference and safe, appropriate sports for children and adolescents is available from the Maine Center for Coaching Education, 581-2443.

Dr. Gary Parker of Bangor is a member of the Maine Center for Coaching Education Advisory Council and a founding member of the former Maine Sports Medicine Advisory Council.