Adapted from: Wrestling Through Adversity

This is the sixth blog that addresses the content of my free e-book, “Unlocking Your Child’s Potential: Six Game-Changing Points for Sports Success.” It aims at promoting mental health and well-being through youth sports, if parents play it right.

Participation in youth sports on any level from physical education gym classes in early education to the world stage can promote healthy lifestyle practices for the future, thus preventing high anxiety, depression, addiction, obesity, and suicide that currently plague children, teens, and young adults in the US in 2025.

Long after athletes compete in sports, they can take the benefits of what they learn in the athletic arena and apply them to other life events from the baseball field to the boardroom, from the classroom to the operating room, and from the wrestling mat to the stage of life, that is, if they are coached in a positive direction to do so during their developmental and informative years as young student-athletes and performance artists.

There is substantive evidence of many biopsychosocial benefits of participation in sports for children and adolescents. It is associated with improving physical and mental health beyond other forms of leisure activities. There are reports that participation in team sports is associated with better health because of its social nature through positive involvement with peers and adults.

The Upside of Sports Participation

As listed in Dan Doyle’s Encyclopedia of Sports Parenting, he points out the “good things” about youth sports that include helping young people to develop a work ethic and mental toughness that can be useful later in life. Sports participation offers repeated opportunities to improve the skills of self-control and self-discipline, to practice leadership skills, to improve listening, focusing, and following direction, as well as enhancing organizational skills.

Evidence suggests that habitual exercise rewires the brain and immune systems to better cope with physical and mental strain. It also mimics some of the chemical effects of antidepressant drugs and can elevate mood as a natural elixir for mental health. Sports can produce utter joy and teach youths to build resilience and about human diversity—a topic important to us all in today’s world.

The promotion of personal development through physical education (PE) activities is receiving increased attention from lawmakers and practitioners globally. One example is a public health initiative, the Welsh Government’s Future Generations and WFG Act of 2015, that created policy guidance and interventions specifically to build resilience and overcome ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences). It uses salutogenic approaches that are focused on well-being and promotion of mental health rather than solely on treating mental disorders and illnesses.

The Downside of Sports Participation

Experts remind us that although there is an upside to sports participation and many benefits it can provide, we should keep in mind that simply participating in physical activity or a sport does not necessarily or automatically lead to positive outcomes. This is because it is the responsibility of adults, such as physical education teachers, sports coaches, and parents, to create the pedological circumstances under which positive outcomes can be obtained for youths particularly during their developmental stages.

This means that it is essential to look at how participating in sports can be detrimental or toxic to children, teens, and young adults. Let’s look at Dan Doyle’s list of the major “bad things” he prepared for us to show the negative impact sports can have on kids. This first one is the adult-created culture of violence that exists in society in professional sports that is transmitted empathically to Little League baseball, hockey, wrestling, soccer, and many other youth sports  teams.

Extreme Violence in Youth Sports

Such violence affects all sports-minded people in the community and runs counter to the purpose of sports participation. This causes toxic stress, a loss of self-confidence, anxiety, and depression, while promoting cheating, aggressiveness, selfishness, and burnout. Negative sports terminology commonly used contributes to sports violence such as the words: beating, trampling, annihilating, and killing opponents.

A notable example of literally “beating and killing” was cited  by Dianna Fiore in an article in the Jeffrey S. Moorad Sports Law Journal at Villanova University after a father of a hockey player, Thomas Junta, got angered and infuriated at another team father who was supervising a hockey practice of 10-year-old boys. Junta disagreed with him, so they squared off, and he beat him to death. During the trial, Junta’s son testified, and his dad received a prison sentence for involuntary manslaughter.

Many adults involved in parental rage live vicariously through the accomplishments of their children. They have not learned how to control the emotionality of anger, frustration, revenge, hostility, and violence within themselves, nor have they worked through their ACEs from the past that could promote such antisocial  behavior. Parents are set up by the 40-billion-dollar youth sports industry to imagine their kids as super sports stars and elite college athletes who earn lucrative scholarships and commercial endorsements. This coaxes parents to cash in on their financial investments of their children. It is backed by the illusory promises of the media, advertising, sports equipment companies, vendors, venues, and large sport conglomerates, which support the profitability and tend to encourage winning-at-all-costs to the detriment of young people.

According to the Aspen Institute and university surveys, about 60 million children play sports, and the average US sports’ family spent over $1,000 on its child’s primary sport in 2024, which intensifies the gap between families of means and those without. This is a far cry from the days of the past when my dad, Director of the Police Athletic League (PAL) at the 101 Precent in Far Rockaway NY helped disadvantaged local kids and worked with Pop Warner, Little League Baseball, and the Catholic Youth Organization.

What Communities Can Do to Promote Well-Being through Sports

As you can see, youth sports can be an elixir or a toxin, that can promote confidence, coordination, mental health, and a “feel good attitude” for a lifetime of enjoyment as an elite athlete or as a spectator, but it takes community action.

Sports activities, along with having relationships with trusted adults and Mindful Toughness skill sets delineated in my book, Wrestling Through Adversity, have been identified as key resilience factors  to promote mental health. They also aid in reducing criminality, mental disorders, drug addiction, and failure to thrive in the future, especially for those with 4 or more ACEs.

To ensure success with sports programs, members of communities can follow in the footsteps of the WFG Act of Wales that require all agencies to demonstrate obligations of sustainability through five ways of working to:

• Establish long-term community goals
• Act to enhance mental health and prevent ACEs from getting worse
• Integrate the public body’s goals
• Collaborate with other citizens that could help the body meet its well-being objectives
• Involve people with an interest in achieving the well-being goals they set, such as guardians, teachers, and coaches

In addition to the above means to improve the mental health of our youth through sports, I suggest, as a peak performance coach, that the community harnesses the energies of sports professionals, such as peak performance coaches, like me, to develop a holistic approach that includes the nurturing of the body, mind, and spirit so youths can bounce back and win in life.

In addition, for all those who have read this blog and have an interest in helping kids grow through sports, I suggest that you review my five previous blogs (in a series of six) in which I further elucidate the pointers in my free e-book, “Unlocking Your Child’s Potential: Six Game-Changer Points for Sports Success,” that is available by clicking HERE.

Learn more

You can learn more about my peak performance coaching practice on my website, https://www.idealperformance.net and about my book: Wrestling Through Adversity: Empowering Children, Teens, & Young Adults To Win In Life, on https://www.drchristinesilverstein.com.

The book is available on Amazon in paperback, Kindle and Audiobook. It contains other case stories of interest from my practice and details on how to use Mindful Toughness® skillsets to improve your performance and meet your goals.

I invite you to follow me on my Facebook page, The Summit Center for Ideal Performance and subscribe to my educational YouTube channel, The Young Navigator, to meet me face-to-face. Please download my free eBook: Unlocking Your Child’s Potential: Six Game-Changing Pointers for Sports Success.