Why play multiple sports?

Please keep your kids playing more than just basketball. I encourage multi-sport participation for many reasons. An athlete is an athlete because they can play any sport well - with practice - and that starts early on. Playing multiple sports gives children the opportunity to develop a broad range of skills as opposed to the narrow skill set that is cultivated through single sport specialization and they learn to use their bodies in numerous ways.

Sport specialization is the year round participation and dedication to a chosen sport, at the exclusion of all other organized sports. Pretty simple. An athlete (or their parents) picks a sport and dedicates all their athletic development time to training and playing only that sport. Nothing else.

In my opinion there is only one decent argument for specializing at a young age, and, if we’re honest, it’s a darn good one.

"The more you train, the better you get."

Providing you’re working on the right things when you’re training, that’s an absolute fact that no one can argue. There is a clear correlation between time spent practicing and skill attained.

I have also heard people say that not everyone has the talent to play multiple sports regardless of how much they want to.

When I say that I want kids to play multi-sports I don't mean that they need to play every sport at a club or even a travel level. Regardless of base abilities, whatever the child may have had naturally in one sport will improved by doing other sports.

Walk away from coaches who pressure you to have your child specialize in any sport, even basketball, before late high school.

1. An offseason spent playing soccer or lacrosse or golf or dancing or gymnastic, etc., will reduce over use injuries.

2. Playing soccer, lacrosse or field hockey or any running sport will help maintain fitness and potentially enhance speed endurance.

3. Playing different sports creates a wider social group and is a fantastic way to develop social skills. Children that play two or more sports have the benefit of interacting and making friends with more children. This is especially important for basketball players as there are usually only 10 – 12 other players on the team.

The Destroyers are darn lucky to have about 20 core players of various ages.

4. Multi-sport athletes tend to develop a high level of athleticism and once they specialize late in high school or in college, they blossom in their chosen sport.

5. Multi-sport kids develop a far more useful skill: how to learn. They learn how to adapt to different situations, make connections, and to take true ownership over the improvement process.

6. They grow into well-rounded athletes who have an ability to accept different coaching styles. That helps them get a big-picture understanding that teams do things differently — philosophies, styles — and athletes must pull what they can from a coach, a style, an environment to play. The great byproduct of those differences is that it helped them in so many situations — life, sports, the classroom — to communicate differently and assert themselves

7. They understand the dynamics of being on different teams and working together as a group with a wide range of people.

8. Maybe in one sport the kid shines and is a leader. In another sport, they may not even be competent. So they learn to be humble, to be a good teammate and to support the go-to players. That is why Tayja, my talented hard working basketball player, plays lacrosse. She SUCKs at it and has to work hard at it.

Tayja did and still does a lot of different sports. Some she excels at. Others she is terrible at. At all she learns to use her body in different ways. My greatest failure is that I have never convinced her to try any type of dance and hers is that she has been unable to talk me in to letting her play tackle football.

Tayja's list of sports includes:
Fastpitch softball - pitcher, short stop, center field, third base, first base
Baseball - T, coach pitch and minor leauge
Golf
Tennis - singles and doubles
Yoga
Martial Arts - Kempo, Taekwondo, Boxing, ShitoRyu, Fencing
Juggling Rock climbing - indoor and out
Gymnastics
Lacrosse - midfielder and goalie
Soccer And Futsal
Skating - roller, inline, ice
Archery - recurve
Biking
Swimming
Rowing - single and double scull, coxed four and eight,
Boating -single kayak, canoe, rowboat, single jib sailing
Curling
Jump rope - single, group, double Dutch
Track and field - sprints, hurdles, long jump, high jump, javelin, discus
Cross country, road racing

9. Each sport teaches different skills and installs different motor patterns. Lacrosse players understand angles, footwork and how to get low on defense. They also learn to dodge and evade people who are chasing them and whacking at them with sticks. Soccer players can run all day. Those are critical skill sets for basketball players.

Volleyball and basketball each requires lateral movement, hand-eye coordination, ball skills and vertical jumping. There is a transfer between blocking a ball and contesting a shot, between moving laterally for a dig and moving laterally to prevent an offensive player’s penetration.

The lateral movement that basketball players use to stay in front of defenders is the same skill that shortstops develop to field ground balls. Softball players also learn anticipation, focusing on the pitch, reacting to the crack of the bat, and tracking the ball.

When you play multiple sports, you develop whole-body skills like balance, quickness, core strength. You cross-train skills from one sport to another. Things like spacing, vision and defensive footwork carry over from one sport to the other.

10. Kids have more opportunities to learn to manage tough losses. Sports build resilience.

11. Playing multiple sports also keeps sports and competing fresh for kids. My son, Ryan, played one sport - soccer - since age 7. To please me, he also played a little rec basketball in middle school. By junior year of high school, he had burned out on soccer, rejected all his soccer scholarship offers and attended a college which did not even have a soccer team. A player must have a burning passion to compete, to work hard and play at high level. Ryan's passion was used up before college.

Athletic development is a process, and skill development is only one piece. Each sport uses some muscles more than others. When an athlete gets in an awkward position, other sport muscles may kick in. Using general skills, a good athlete can adjust to the situation. Kids used to develop broad athletic skills by playing multiple sports and neighborhood games, like tag or dodge ball, which develop agility, balance, coordination, evading skills, body control and more. That does not happen any more.