I came across an interesting NCAA study on the probability of competing in sports beyond high school.
Depending on the sport, the chances of advancing to the collegiate level range from about 3% to 11%.
Consider your son’s football team or your daughter’s soccer team of 25 to 30 kids. At best, only two or three of them will play that sport in college.
Some people will look at those numbers, along with the extreme weaknesses of our sports-crazed culture, and conclude that children could spend their time on more beneficial activities.
However, I would argue that youth sports offer valuable experiences when families approach them with the right perspective.
Why Youth Sports Matter Without a Scholarship
Do you view the activities your child participates in as a ticket to college, a professional contract or an endorsement deal with Nike?
If you see sports primarily as a pathway to one or all of those outcomes, then, in my opinion, you are looking at them all wrong.
Most children will never receive an athletic scholarship. Fewer still will play professionally or sign an endorsement deal.
That does not make the years they spend practicing, competing and learning alongside teammates a waste.
Instead, consider viewing youth sports as tools that can help develop character and discipline. Those qualities can serve children for decades, even when the uniforms eventually go back into storage.
Lessons That Last Beyond the Game
Sports can teach a strong work ethic, teamwork, sacrifice and goal-setting.
They also give children opportunities to experience both success and failure.
Winning can teach gratitude, humility and the value of preparation. Losing can expose selfishness, impatience and the temptation to blame everyone except ourselves.
Neither lesson requires a college recruiter to be sitting in the stands.
The value is found in learning to practice when no one is watching, to accept coaching and to contribute even when someone else receives the attention.
Those habits can shape how a child approaches school, work, family, church and nearly every other responsibility that follows.
Developing More Than an Athlete
My sons are interested in all kinds of sports.
If you can keep score and somehow hit somebody, they are all in.
My prayer as a father is that I can take the passions, gifts and abilities built into my sons and channel them toward godly character.
I want sports to help develop discipline that will serve them for the rest of their lives, not merely produce statistics that disappear when a season ends.
As Paul tells Timothy in 1 Timothy 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.”
Physical training has value.
Scripture does not require us to pretend otherwise. It simply places that value in perspective.
My prayer is that God will use the discipline developed through sports, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to produce godliness in my boys.
College athletics may never happen.
That does not mean youth sports failed.
About the contributor: Ryan Sather is president of Hegenes Properties, where he oversees the management and development of multifamily and commercial real estate. Before joining the company in 2019, he spent 15 years in leadership with Cru Inner City, including serving as chief operating officer. He holds a bachelor’s degree in communications from Augustana University and a master’s degree in leadership from Mars Hill.