Put me in, coach: how to spark kids' love of sports

Sports can help kids stay fit, make friends, and develop important qualities like determination and discipline. Unfortunately, 70 percent of young athletes drop out of team sports by age 13, citing lack of fun as their main reason for quitting.

Enter sport psychologists, who are using theory, research and applied strategies to help kids enjoy sports more and stay in them longer and in some cases, go on to be pros. In particular, they're working with coaches and young athletes to foster climates that nurture kids' effort, dedication and team cohesiveness. They're also looking at what exactly "fun" means to kids, and are helping to foster enjoyment in practical ways, such as helping kids set and achieve goals and support their teammates, and helping coaches deploy better communication skills. These are also using these skills to develop mental skills frameworks that are effective and easily comprehensible for kids.

A focus on effort

A centerpiece of this work is an approach developed, studied and validated over the past 35 years by University of Washington psychologists Ron Smith, PhD, and Frank Smoll, PhD. Called the Mastery Approach to Coaching, it includes training coaches to praise athletes for effort and dedication, not just for winning; to deal with athletes' mistakes by praising things that went right and offering positive coaching on what went wrong; and to help teams make their own rules, so they are more likely to abide by them.

This approach stands in contrast to what are called ego-involving approaches that encourage winning at all costs, even at the expense of team relationships and athletes' well-being.

The researchers' method "isn't a focus on the outcome of competition, on winning and losing, but on something that occurs during the process of competition—personal effort," Smoll says. This is recognized as a major mental skill that can be taught to both players and coaches.

In dozens of studies, Smith and Smoll have found the approach leads to better coach-athlete relationships; lower performance anxiety; and more fun, mutual respect, self-esteem, team harmony and self-mastery, both in sports and in school. It has also reduced youth sports dropout rates from 30 percent to 5 percent. Over the years, the duo has trained more than 26,000 youth sport coaches in the intervention, and scores of researchers use the model or variations to test new issues in the field.

One example is University of Southern Maine sport psychologist Erin Hatch, PsyD, who has combined Smith and Smoll's mastery model and another evidence-based model called the Coping Cat to help support young athletes who are anxious or have anxiety disorders. Besides mastery skills, coaches and athletes learn such anxiety-­reducing techniques as cognitive restructuring, deep breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, problem-solving and reinforcement of anxiety-related coping skills, tailored to the youth sport setting.

In a May 2015 paper in the Journal of Sport Psychology in Action that is based on her dissertation, Hatch describes a pilot study of 12 youth recreation coaches who were trained to share these methods in ways that don't call attention to youngsters who are shy or anxious. Instead of pulling kids away from the team and coaching them individually, for example, she encourages coaches to share anxiety-busting techniques with the team as a whole and to say they use these skills themselves.

"The idea is to make these interventions part of the culture of the team so it's not this weird, strange thing that's being given to one person because they are struggling," Hatch explains.

Support and respect

Another researcher aiming to improve the psychosocial atmosphere of youth sports is Mary D. Fry, PhD, who directs the Sport and Exercise Psychology Lab at the University of Kansas. She and her colleagues have developed a model called "the caring climate," which they define as a culture that is interpersonally inviting, safe and supportive, and provides an experience where young athletes are valued and respected. The researchers have also developed a measure of such climates, and have conducted studies on the caring climate intervention, in press at the International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching.

The team has found that young athletes in high-caring climates are more likely than those in climates focused mainly on winning to say they're committed to their sport. They also report being less embarrassed about their athletic efforts and more interested in continuing to play on the same team and in the same sport. In addition, young athletes in such environments report greater empathy for others, more engagement in prosocial behaviors, better emotional regulation, more hope and happiness, and less depression and sadness than those in less caring climates.

Caring climates even carry physiological benefits, Fry and colleagues have found. In a 2013 study in the Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, University of Kansas doctoral student Candace M. Hogue, Fry and colleagues found that college students trained in juggling by caring climate coaches had much lower stress-related cortisol levels and showed more effort, self-confidence and excitement about their sport at the end of training than peers randomized to ego-involving coaches.

Mapping out fun

Taking a detailed look at what constitutes "fun" in sports for today's young people—and how to maximize it—is Amanda J. Visek, PhD, associate professor at The George Washington University.

Using a technique called concept mapping, she asked 142 youth soccer players and their coaches and parents to brainstorm all of the things they thought made playing youth sports fun. They came up with 81 "fun determinants" in all, then sorted the determinants into 11 categories.

The study results—described in a 2015 paper in the Journal of Physical Activity and Health and rendered in a format called FUN MAPS that is easy for coaches to use—yielded some surprises, Visek notes. Players rated the most important category as "trying hard," and they rated it higher than adults. Least important to kids were the glitzier perks of youth sports, such as having nice gear, earning medals or trophies, and traveling to new places to play.

The findings offer a concrete way to help youngsters get the most out of their sports experiences and stay involved.

"It's one thing to say that parents or coaches should do this or that, or talk about the outcomes they want to achieve through youth sport participation," Visek says. "But the FUN MAPS break the process down and give people a step-by-step guide on how to promote the most fun sport experiences for kids in ways that can help improve their sport performance, enhance their development, and sustain their participation."

• Further reading "Sport Psychology for Youth Coaches: Developing Champions in Sports and Life," by Ron Smith, PhD, and Frank Smoll, PhD. "Applied Sport Psychology: Personal Growth to Peak Performance," by Jean Marie Williams and Vikki Krane.