By Cohen Dalzell, Ashley Massey, D.J. Nettles, Eli Hudspeth, Marshall Downing, and Mims Jones
Staff Reporters
AUBURN, Ala. — Approximately six million children ages 6-12 participated regularly in youth sports in 2024, all looking for a chance to get out, get exercise, and have fun.
They participate in all different types of sports with recreational leagues, as well as travel and club teams. These present different goals and expectations from coaches, players, and parents. These differing expectations should lead to different ideas of what methods are needed when it comes to coaching, right?
Dr. Amanda Visek, lead researcher behind one of the space’s most influential articles, FUN Maps and the FUN Integration Theory, said both parents and coaches tend to misunderstand this element. Across the boundaries of recreational and travel sports, there are not many changes in what a youth athlete needs for development and fun.
“What we found through the research is skill level or competitive level, the determinants of fun, and what ranks most important as, as opposed to least, is the same,” said Visek.
Coaches are one of the main influences that shape a recreational or travel club experience.
“If sports are something you like, something you care about, then the person who’s leading you, guiding you, caring for you in that moment, becomes an important mentor to you. And I think that relationship is extremely important for overall well-being,” said Dr. Rachel Williams, an assistant professor in the School of Kinesiology at Auburn University.
Dr. Mario Fontana has poured much of his career into researching coaching styles and what he calls “motivational climates.” The two of which include ego, task, or caring climates. Ego and caring climates come from a study by John Nicholls in 1984.
“In ego climates… you really need to please the coach. And so, the perception of the climate becomes really important, and in ego climates, we think that the coach really just cares about the outcomes,” says Fontana. “We feel like the coach will give most attention to the best players on the team only. In those places, coaches encourage rivalry.”
This type of rivalry can breed disdain among teammates and drive gaps between them instead of bonding them together.
Ego climates and the coaching styles that surround them often prioritize winning over all else. Ego coaches are usually hard on their players and quick to shame them for mistakes and failures.
“There’s just no evidence that suggests that punishing mistakes is helpful. In fact, it’s actually… it hinders people, because then it makes kids kind of fearful of making the mistake again, and psychologically, our brains have only so much elasticity, we can only process so many things in a given second, and if so, if one of the things in your brain is, ‘Oh man, I really got to make sure I don’t make a mistake here because coach is going to be mad,’ then by definition, I cannot devote all my effort to playing the best I possibly can,” said Fontana.
Visek’s research places team relationships and positive coaching near the top of factors that improve experiences in youth sports.
“I like winning, but I also like having fun with, like, my friends and other people that like, I know, and I just like, that feels fun to me,” said Mark Sawyer, a 9-year-old who has played recreational and travel baseball, basketball, and football.
The approach that Fontana tends to think about the most is the caring climate, one that centers around a coach that not only cares for the players as athletes, but as human beings as well.
“If I am in a caring climate, it’s very conducive to feeling valued and respected as a person,” said Fontana. “And so, when I’m in a caring climate, I just feel like no matter what I do on the field, whatever my output is, people kind of respect me and why I’m here and the fact that I’m putting in the work.”
Fontana notes that some think this is “too soft” on the athletes and will not help develop them. He insists that there is no data to support the claim that other, “harder” styles of coaching get the most out of youth athletes, and there is more data to suggest that it is bad for them.
Will Sawyer, a former high-school lacrosse, rec baseball, and flag football coach, as well as a current parent of Mark and two other kids, ages 6-12, in Opelika, Ala, spoke about this problem in youth sports.
“Screaming at a kid to set his feet, or his feet are crooked, or his elbow is not up. Just coaching that should be done in practice and not in a game situation… not yell that in a game, due to the fact that it’s in front of everybody,” said Will Sawyer. “It’s not appropriate. It’s not needed. And it’s a win-at-all-cost mentality as well. That affects the fun for the kids.”
A 2019 study in Japan found that yelling at youth athletes contributes to higher attrition rates in the sport they are playing. The study used a self-reported questionnaire to examine the connection between verbal abuse and loss of motivation to play sports.
“These are kids, and they are trying their best, and they’re going to make mistakes, and sometimes it’s good enough to just say, ‘Hey buddy, we got them next time. Keep your head up. This is what you did wrong. Keep working hard. You’re good.’ And not letting your emotions take over because it can just beat them into submission,” said Andrew McCay, a 16-year coach of rec and travel baseball, basketball, and soccer at the 6-12 level.
With burnout being a premier issue concerning youth athletics today, coaches have a greater responsibility than ever to use expert research to help kids continue to have fun on the field, court, or in the gym.
Despite the misunderstandings, experts say that the research is clear. Kids don’t need perfection, but a supportive, learning, team and task-oriented environment goes a long way toward keeping kids on the field and in the game both mentally and physically.
