Academic success proven to be one of the big benefits of youth sports
As another school season gets underway, daily life for many children turns from relaxed schedules and late nights to fresh starts and a focus on academics. But researchers at the University of Sydney suggest that children who are involved in sport might already have a leg up in the next school year.
According to this article, researchers analyzed the sports participation and academic performance of over 4,200 students between ages four to 21 using data from the federal government’s Longitudinal Study of Australian Children.
What they found was that children who participated in sport were more likely to achieve better scores on testing, had better school attendance, and had a higher likelihood of being accepted to university.
While this might sound familiar, as previous links have been made between physical activity and academic achievement, this study is unique in that it demonstrates the link between sports and academic success over time—during the course of a child’s schooling from elementary school to high school and into university. And children who continued in sports into adolescence continued to perform better at school.
Further benefits to youth sports
While academic success is definitely key, and it’s important to know the research behind this, there are many additional positive things children can take away from both team sports and individual sports, including positive mental health, physical health, improved self-esteem, and development of life skills and social skills. In addition, being part of a team and improving as a team is one of the things children report they find most fun about playing sports.
How can we keep kids in sport?
Knowing this, parents and caregivers might have obvious reasons for hoping their children will continue in sports. However, we also know that by age 14, girls are dropping out of sports at approximately twice the rate of boys.
While there are many barriers to sport, including cost and time commitments, Dr. Katherine Owen, lead researcher on the Australian study, shared one of the main issues for young athletes: “A lot of the research we have done has shown kids drop out because it gets too competitive. The sports themselves need to work at providing more social games for kids of that age.”
An important thing for coaches and parents to remember is why kids play sports. For young people and high school students alike, a focus on fun plays a very important role in their enjoyment of sports.
If clubs and organizations, as well as coaches and parents, have a common goal of creating a welcoming, fun community for children to participate in, the benefits of sports can be vast. And the research continues to support this.
