Many children spend a large amount of their childhood playing sports. The amount of youths participating in sports continues to grow each year. Although more kids play sports each year, burnout is also becoming a growing issue in youth sports. Competitiveness, intensity, and number of sports a kid plays are all factors in the growing number of youth burnouts. Sports equipment and team fees have also been increasing throughout the years, contributing to an augmented professionalism throughout youth sports. Youths have begun feeling the need to perform intensively because of the pressure put on them by coaches, teammates, and parents which can lead to early burnout. The heightening professionalism of youth sports has become a concerning trend that has impacted many young athletes.

One primary issue with the growing professionalism of youth sports is the level of intensity. The urgency and importance of winning, college recruitment, and being the best can over push young athletes into an early burnout. According to Sportzwire.com, “High school athletes typically practice 4 to 6 days a week for 1.5 to 2 hours at a time, which adds up to about 8-12 hours weekly during their season.” With athletes spending most of their time outside of school on sports, they are limited on time to explore other interests and do things they enjoy. This can cause them to start to loathe their sport because of how restricting it can be on their lives. High performance expectations and intense training schedules can turn a once enjoyable game into a main source of stress for athletes which can dissolve their love for the game.

Youth sports has become a very competitive playing field. Because of this, athletes are spending more money on better equipment, more intense teams, and higher training. This leads to increased pressure and specialization to be put on athletes. With higher costs, athletes are compelled to focus on a single sport and perfect skills and succeed in that sport so families can maximize their investment. This puts intense pressure on athletes to be the best so they do not feel like the large amount of money they are paying for their sport is for nothing. To justify the cost of their sport, athletes search for professional coaches and trainers to help them in perfecting their talents. This also leads to a professionalized environment in youth sports. The cost of youth sports has created high intensity conditions that encourages professionalism as athletes feel the need to focus on outcomes and performance to validate their money investment into their sports.

Overall, the heightened professionalism of youth sports can create problems for young athletes. Although it allows for better skill development and competition, it can also create dislike for the sport in athletes. Many kids start playing sports for the fun of the game but that can quickly turn into playing because of pressure and justification. Kids must learn how to be able to balance out their sport in order to avoid burnout. With balance, athletes will be able to maintain a positive environment within their sport rather than an intense and overly competitive environment that leads to burnouts.