I came across an interesting study from the NCAA on the probability of competing in sports beyond high school. The chances of making it to the collegiate level is somewhere between 3-11% depending on the sport. So take your son’s football team, or your daughter’s soccer team of 25-30 kids, and realize at best two or three of them will be playing this sport in college.
Some will take this information, and take the extreme weaknesses of our sports crazed culture, and decide there are plenty of things more beneficial for their son or daughter to do than play a sport. However, I would say—with the right perspective—youth sports are a great opportunity to offer experiences to our kids that develop character and disciplines beneficial for all of life.
Are you viewing the activities you’re getting your child involved with as a ticket to a college—a fat pro contract—or an endorsement deal with Nike? If you are viewing sports as a pathway to one, some, or all of these aforementioned successes then it is my opinion that you are looking at it all wrong.
Consider instead viewing the sports your kids are involved with as a tool you can use to help develop character and discipline that will serve your child for decades (eternity) to come. Sports teach so many worthwhile things such as a hard work ethic, teamwork, sacrifice, goal setting and opportunities to experience both success and failure, just to name just a few.
Using my own sons as an example, they are interested in all kinds of sports. If you can keep score and somehow hit somebody…they are all in! It’s my prayer—as a dad—that I can take these passions, gifts and abilities built into my sons and channel them towards developing a godly character and discipline that will serve them for the rest of their respective lives.
As Paul tells Timothy (1 4:8), “For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.” My prayer is the value of physical training through sports will be a tool used by God, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to bring about godliness in my boys that holds promise for today and for eternity!