Best way to nurture kids' pro sports dreams? New study challenges a popular belief

San Francisco Chronicle​

4 days ago

For young athletes looking to go pro — and for parents motivated to help their children get there — is specializing in their sport early on the best path forward? New research out of UCSF suggests that narrative may be false.
Dr. Nirav Pandya, a pediatric orthopedic surgeon and vice chair of orthopedics at UCSF, has found that the incentive behind specializing in sports lies largely in the lack of education on the topic.
'Most parents just want the best for their kids, so they're in this helicopter parenting age. They're like, 'The best way I can get my kid there is, make sure they have the best private coach and they're on the best team, and they're doing soccer 24/7,'' Pandya told the Chronicle. 'Parents want their kids to do well, so they go to club sports and specialize … but without knowing the data.'
But Pandya's UCSF study suggests that professional athletes who played multiple sports in high school are not only achieving higher success in the pros, but are missing fewer games due to injury than their single-sport counterparts.
The study focused on 10 years worth of NBA first-round draft picks. The results showed that NBA players who participated in multiple high school sports appeared in 19% more games, had a higher player efficiency rating and were twice as likely to win awards than their single-sport counterparts.
Pandya said broader research conducted by him and UCSF also extended to other leagues — including NFL, NHL, MLB and many Olympic sports — and the findings were similar. But there's another misconception about intensive training that is often overlooked.
'The kids I've seen go professional, it's not because they specialize or they play multiple sports,' Pandya said. 'They were going to be professional athletes because they're just naturally gifted and have that skill, and they're lucky not to get injured.'
Pandya became curious about the subject when he noticed a rise in young athletes coming into his office with serious sports injuries. He quickly identified a pattern in his patients: Many began to focus on only one sport early in their careers. And the age they were suffering injuries increasingly grew younger.
Sue Phillips has also noticed these trends. Inducted into the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame in 2024, Phillips has led the Mitty girls to multiple state and national high school championships over three decades. She has also coached several USA Basketball youth national teams to gold medals.
'The drawbacks of sport specialization for young athletes include a variety of issues: overuse injuries, emotional burnout, minimizing one's social circle and 'potentially' preventing the development of diversified motor/processing skills,' Phillips wrote in a text message.
Phillips relates specialization at younger ages to a combination of factors. The current landscape of youth sports is intentionally designed for year-round competition — a departure from the days of playing one sport, and switching to another in the offseason.
The youth sports industry has grown into an extremely profitable business, drawing in more than $40 billion annually, according to the Aspen Institute. Club sports play a heavy hand, serving as one of the most focused and intensive avenues for young athletes to train at the highest levels.
'In certain situations, when club sport directors/coaches and trainers rely on these avenues for their livelihood, there can be a narrative presented to their clients that 'more is more,'' Phillips wrote. 'When we all know that 'working smarter not harder' or 'less is more' proves to be in the best interest of the athlete.'
UC Santa Cruz midfielder Alex Freeman considers herself a case of early specialization. Freeman began playing soccer at 4 years old, and while she had brief stints playing other sports recreationally, she knew early on that her goal of playing high-level soccer would require fully dedicating herself to it.
Freeman played at Berkeley High School and with a competitive club that is now called Eastshore Alliance FC. While she had a positive experience, she knows many athletes who didn't share her delight while playing for other elite clubs. And at least, as she says, she was able to play both high school and club.
'I think for a lot of my friends, they felt they shouldn't do high school because they felt like it was a lower level,' Freeman said. 'You only have four years of high school, and to get (a scholarship) offer, most rosters are done by junior year. So there's no time to have three months of break. … So I think a lot of people felt pressure' to only play club soccer.
In high school, Freeman tore her right and left ACLs on separate occasions — both the result of non-contact injuries while playing soccer. Her twin sister, Erin, who plays alongside Freeman at UC Santa Cruz, suffered identical ACL injuries at alarmingly similar times. But that experience wasn't uncommon. Freeman says at least one of her teammates tore an ACL every year.
Her older sister, Leah, who also specialized in soccer early on, is also no stranger to injury. Freeman underwent hip surgery in December 2022 to repair a torn labrum. Leah played for the youth national team and is now a goalkeeper for Bay FC. For the Freeman family and by way of the kids' desire, soccer was year-round.
But that's the case for most young athletes looking to go pro. There is no offseason — it's some combination of specialized training, high school, training camps and competitive clubs. And for many, the experience is exactly what it sounds like: ultra-competitive.
'Club is, again, not my club, but it gets super serious. You're playing in front of scouts like all the time. And it's hard to be friends with your teammates sometimes because there's so much competition between you guys, and like, it's so easy to burn out,' Alex Freeman said. 'For a lot of people who have been playing competitive for their whole lives, they kind of don't know who they are without it, and that's really scary.'
When asked what advice they would give to parents motivated to help their children achieve their sports goals, Pandya, Phillips and Freeman's father all shared that the end goal should center around a child's happiness.
'Any decision that you make for your kid should be in support of what they want to do,' said Freeman's father, Dale. 'I think that a kid that's interested in athletics hopefully can get exposed to a lot of different sports, but whatever decision you make should be in support of your kid's interests, as opposed to some larger goal based on a parent's perception of what their kid is good at.'