Early Specialization in Youth Sports

A few decades ago, the three-sport athlete in high school and college was a common occurrence. Playing a different sport during the fall, winter, spring and summer seasons was often the norm. Today, not only is the multisport high school and collegiate athlete a thing of the past, even the middle school and elementary school athlete is likely to be a single-sport specialist aspiring for success in a sport selected long before the young athlete has reached maturity. At younger and younger ages, athletes are now specializing in a single sport, often playing at a single position year round, sometimes on multiple teams in the same season, driven by adult coaches and parents at the expense of casual “pick up” games and the loss of backyard, neighborhood-oriented free play.