Race to collect medals sucks the life out of sport’s true goal to keep us healthy, happy and sane

I was standing overlooking the track with my sons as they prepared for an evening’s racing at a meeting outside Stranorlar in Co Donegal when the coach addressed his young charges nearby. “What’s the most important thing about this evening?” he asked.

“To win medals,” one child offered. “To come first,” said another. Their coach responded that actually the most important thing they could do was to go out there and enjoy themselves. His remarks were greeted with loud whoops of excitement before the kids tore off for the track.

As a parent who spends much of her time on the sidelines of football fields and race tracks, it struck me just how little I’ve heard something like this uttered so earnestly and accepted with such enthusiasm.

It can often feel like the fun is being sucked out of our kids’ sports in a race to field the best teams and win medals.

This phenomenon is not new but it certainly seems to be gathering momentum. In the US, it’s reached epidemic proportions where elite academies for under 10-year-olds in some sports are the norm. But what is the goal of sports for children?

If it’s to hone the skills of elite athletes, how many kids does that affect?

If it’s to foster a life-long love of exercise, then focusing on results and the most talented will be off putting for the vast majority.

Of course competition has its place. Giving every kid who shows up a medal is not the answer either. Some children are goal oriented but many others are not – they’re just there to meet friends and have a good time.

What message are we giving them if they feel left out, side lined or benched in favour of results?

When I ask Niall Moyna, Professor of Health and Human Performance at DCU how we strike a healthy balance, he says the issues are complex but warns against pushing kids too early too hard.

He points to initiatives like the GAA Go Games, where every child gets to play in every game, for the full game, as meaningful ways to get every child taking part.

He believes if you can get every child involved and keep them involved rather than selecting the best at a young age, the outcomes for improved health and better social skills are massive.

He also thinks children should have the opportunity to sample as many sports as possible and that parents should try hard not to impose what he calls adult norms on kids’ sports.

When I’ve questioned elite athletes and Olympians like Paula Radcliffe and Nadia Power about their sporting success, they said their parents were the opposite of pushy.

But parents do worry that if their child doesn’t make a training session they might be cast off the team.

If the goal is to have as many children involved in sports for as long as possible, the summer camp model all year round – where it’s just about having fun – is one that has serious merits, according to child and adolescent psychotherapist Dr Colman Noctor.

He has often noted that when you ask a child what the number one reason for dropping out of sport is, the answer is that it all got too serious.

Research shows that as children reach adolescence their participation in sports falls off a cliff but maybe if parents and coaches worked together to create more inclusive fun environments, it would keep kids coming back for more. With rising obesity levels globally, surely we need to think outside the box to make sure there’s a place for every child.

And if there’s one thing we as parents can do to stem that fall off, it might be to change our own attitude to exercise. Kids are smart.

If they see us dragging ourselves half-heartedly to the gym or greeting going for a run with as much enthusiasm as stepping in dog dirt, then what’s the message?

Maybe the answer is simply as the coach told his young charges: to have more fun. It might also be redefining what constitutes exercise too. Perhaps if we broaden our focus and try to inject the fun into things we do as a family, we might create new pathways into exercise.

Prof Niall Moyna suggests mixing it up a little, trying things like dancing or walking to the river to try your hand at fishing.

It could even be just going to the beach to throw a ball.

The ultimate goal is to engender a life-long love of being physically active because exercise is the best medicine we have.

It will improve our health and increase our longevity.

Kids may not remember everything we say but they remember how we made them feel. If we do something together that makes us all feel good, our children will be happier and we may all be healthier too.