Questioning the emphasis on competition in youth sport

Photo taken from Unsplash.

I have a question for you. What is the difference between the Rugby World Cup Final and an under-11s rugby game?

A lot is probably what you’re saying, and you’d be right. They’re two different things.

However, for some kids, these lines are blurred. Instead of playing a host of different sports and being encouraged to have fun and participate, many Kiwi kids are being pushed to specialise in one sport from an early age, with the hopes of one day reaching the professional level.

What was once an innocent game of rugby has now turned into what feels like a Rugby World Cup final. Many question why this trend has become so prominent.  

UC’s Bachelor of Sport Senior Lecturer, Glenn Fyall, believes youth sport has become a victim of the professionalisation of sport in New Zealand.

“We’ve followed the rest of the world, albeit a little bit later, in making our children’s sports have professional pathways” says Fyall.

“In 1996, around the time rugby became professional, there was a real debate in New Zealand sport around amateurism vs professionalism. I think it is fair to say professionalism won. Since that time professional sport behaviour has dominated people’s view of sport, filtering down through the children’s sport system.”

The “filtering down” effect Fyall refers to can be found across different sporting codes throughout New Zealand.

The idea of putting kids into elite environments from an early age to help mould and prepare them to become professionals later has been adopted in almost every major sport.

“It raises the question; who’s it for? Parents wanting their kid to be an All-Black? Have they asked their kid if that’s what they want?” Fyall said.

“Parents are pervasively and unwittingly influenced by what they see and hear on the various media platforms. Unfortunately, most of the messaging systems reinforce professionalism as always being a good thing. It’s not. Sometimes, it boils down to the parents wanting their kids to be something they wished they could’ve been themselves. Overall, we end up with many more children ‘falling out’ of these pathways and having tremendous difficulties facing that reality.  You need to let kids just be kids.”

The implications arising from this worrying trend also pose more problems for New Zealand sport, as many kids within the elite sport pipeline get chewed up and spat out.

Chronic injuries and mental health issues are at the forefront of problems young athletes face due to the excessive load pushed onto them from a young age, something Sports Sociologist and UC Bachelor of Sport lecturer Nick Maitland believes needs to be addressed.

“I’ve heard secondary school rugby players saying their rugby career is over because they haven’t made an academy. To me, that sounds frightening. They’ve barely turned 18 and because they’re out of the professional pipeline, they feel all their opportunities are lost. I find it really really concerning,” said Maitland.

“It’s negligent to let a young person pursue elite sport at all costs. Overtraining is directly attached to the aspirations and intentions behind elite-level sport, which brings so much pressure. What happens if they break their leg? Who looks after them? All of a sudden, they’re not needed anymore, they become disposable.”

For many young athletes, experiences within the elite environments ultimately drive them away from sport entirely, directly feeding into the worrying statistics surrounding physical activity among Kiwis.  

In 2024, statistics from the Ministry of Health showed only 46.6% of Kiwi adults met the physical activity guidelines of 2 and a half hours a week. Further data showed 1 in 7 adults did little or no physical activity.

These statistics have driven Sport New Zealand to persist with its Balance is Better campaign, which was introduced in 2016, to keep New Zealanders in sport for longer.

Balance is Better emphasises the importance of participation and fun while playing a variety of sports, with the hope of setting young people up with skills for life.

Sport is meant to be fun and help people grow, but at the moment it’s doing the opposite. Instead of pushing your kid to be the next big thing, how about you let them take control of their own lives? You might be surprised how far they’ll go.