In November of 2018, the Nationwide Childrens Hospital released a study that showed that only 5% of youth were getting the daily recommended amount of physical activity. This study, conducted over a three year period and with almost 8,000 youth, showed that youth are simply not getting the amount of exercise needed and those that are; are exercising for shorter periods and less often. This proves problematic for a variety of reasons, even beyond the overall health of our youth. Some important findings from the study are:

Let’s first get something out of the way. Our current youth sports system in the United States is not working. I don’t want to say it’s broken, but it isn’t working for the majority of our youth. The pay to play model that permeates basketball, soccer, volleyball, football and other sports doesn’t allow for most youth to access it. We’ve turned out youth sports into a business, one that we could argue focuses more on the money than on the personal and athletic development of the athletes themselves. I just finished attending the United Soccer Coaches Conference and a couple of things jumped out to me.