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VANISHING SPORTS AND PARTICIPATION OPPORTUNITIES

Both elite athletes and nonelite sports participants need more choices, because opportunities for both are deteriorating under the current model. For example, opportunities for mass participation in sports have been dwindling at many levels of our education system. Wrestling, men’s gymnastics, and swimming have been hit especially hard as revenue and energy are focused on the more commercially popular sports, which seem to be more valued from the youth level all the way to university campuses. A survey conducted by the Sports and Fitness Industry Association in 2014 found that 26 million children ages 6 to 17 played team sports, a 4 percent drop from 2009. Recognizing the somewhat disturbing trend of sports specialization by many athletes who are focused more and more on one sport year round, the total number of different sports played within the same age group had plunged by nearly 10 percent (Rosenwald 2015).

It is time for a dramatic change in how we do sports in America. Although some European clubs are pointing to issues such as financial problems that could threaten their survival, the American college model has many more acute issues and is drowning in scandals and debt, while the primary and secondary levels of education are being squeezed financially and are dropping opportunities for sports and physical education. It is imperative that all these systems be analyzed more closely to see if there might be a better way to maintain sports as an integral part of the culture without losing the benefits.