Initiative on youth sports buds

Robert Cobb, dean of the University of Maine’s College of Education and Human Development, was in Rhode Island last weekend when a story in the Providence newspaper caught his eye.

It told of a youth baseball program in New Bedford, Mass., that had to be suspended because the overzealous parents of the players had gotten completely out of control. The parents of opposing teammates were fighting with one another in the stands, berating the coaches and mercilessly haranguing the umpires.

Finally, the league’s directors were forced to call a time-out until they had a chance to meet with every adult involved with the program and figure out how to end their offensive, unsportsmanlike behavior.

Coincidentally, the Parade magazine in that same newspaper carried a feature titled, “Who’s Killing Kids’ Sports?” The article examined how the excessive pressure, intense competition and unrealistic expectations of adults – the very kind of behavior exhibited in New Bedford and so many other American communities these days – were sapping the joy right out of sports for many kids and causing 70 percent of them to abandon sports in frustration by the age of 13.

And while many communities have been trying to get a handle on the problem, the article stated, “no reform effort is more aggressive than that of the state of Maine, where educators, student-athletes and others have teamed up to launch a counterrevolution” called Sports Done Right.

Cobb, who happens to co-direct that Maine-based counterrevolution with former state Education Commissioner J. Duke Albanese, was obviously delighted with the publicity in Parade, which reaches an estimated 85 million readers a week. The initiative has also been featured in the American School Board Journal, Education Week, and on National Public Radio. The National Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association plans to send a copy of the Sports Done Right report to all athletic directors in the country hoping one day to have its recommendations adopted in every state.

“We certainly believe we have struck a resonant chord across the country,” Cobb said Wednesday. “I think people everywhere are recognizing that things need to be done to eliminate the excesses that are damaging youth sports.”

Cobb admitted that he wasn’t sure how the federally funded initiative would be received when it was launched more than two years ago as a national model to help raise the aspirations, academic performance and satisfaction level for student-athletes while encouraging more kids to know the lifelong benefits of sports. Questioning such a deep-rooted tradition as sports in America, he figured, might be a tough sell in certain towns where winning is everything and the number of trophies in a school’s display case is a measure of communal pride.

“But there have been no real barriers raised, and that’s been extremely encouraging,” Cobb said. “Maybe the population as a whole has seen the sense of this, and the need to develop some standards and to do sports right. We’re getting letters and e-mails from people all over who appreciate the challenge of this undertaking. We’re hearing it from school leaders, kids, parents, and coaches.”

So far, a dozen Maine pilot sites representing 29 middle and high schools have begun to implement the Sports Done Right recommendations. The Portland school system, one of the pilot sites, has purchased more than 2,000 of the common-sense guidebooks to be distributed to all student athletes and their families.

Despite the initial success and widespread publicity, however, Cobb said the most difficult challenge is just beginning.

“We still have a lot of work ahead to get all of the communities in Maine and every state on board,” he said. “It will be so important for us to see the communities through the pilot process and work with others who want to get started in putting these standards in place. And that’s a tough road, because there are just so many overzealous adults out there who are using the professional model as their only guideline for youth sports. Many are not thinking straight when they picture their youngsters as one step away from a college scholarship or the major leagues. It has distorted their judgments and expectations, and the kids are the ones who suffer.”