Participation in youth sports serves many needs and teaches
great life lessons. Nobody can argue the benefits of
participation: making new friends, learning to play as a team,
developing coordination and fundamental athletic skills,
exercise, sportsmanship, winning, losing, performing under
pressure and so much more. However, what is the best way to set
up a league that will be best for the kids so that they can all
garner these lessons? This month, I’ll let you know why I feel a
skill based allocation of players will be beneficial to the
largest number of kids rather than the traditional method using
age or grade.
League Philosophy – There are a number of formats for dividing
kids into divisions. The main distinction most try to make has
been between “Recreational” leagues and “Competitive” leagues.
In recreational leagues, kids don’t have to tryout in order to
get a place on the team and kids must all get playing time. In
some leagues, the requirement is equal playing time. On Elite
teams, often called “travel” teams because they travel and play
other top teams from all over in tournaments, the competition,
skill level and pressure can be high. Travel teams practice
several times a week and often spend weekends far from home
competing. Kids may or may not play in any game and the starters
may get far more playing time. In contrast, recreational leagues
are generally local community based leagues with all the kids
from the area. Kids often go to school together and are friends.
They practice less, play fewer games and put the focus squarely
on “fun” instead of simply “competition”. There are certainly
advantages to each format depending on the child. However, it is
my belief that recreational leagues can achieve the best results
for all kids involved and provide a superior experience for
everybody simply by creating skill based divisions of talent
instead of lumping everybody into one group.
Benefits of Skill Based Division – The concept behind providing
players with an appropriate level of competition is to keep
advanced players developing and interested in the game and to
give less advanced players an environment in which to shine and
feel like they’re contributing. In our PC world of today,
everybody has a hard time acknowledging that kids are different
but we need to admit that kids have different skill levels and
they all develop at different paces. We also need to admit that
kids and parents like to compete to win and even to lose. So,
given these facts, here are some ways that all the kids benefit
from a skill based division:
1.More Skilled Players Compete Against Each Other. Having more
skilled competition helps everybody improve. The top kids in
this division will be forced to develop their skills and bring
them to a new level. The lower kids in this group will be forced
to keep up thereby enhancing their development. Coaches also
will have a chance to work on more sophisticated elements of the
game including the “inner game” which will help everybody to
improve. When the skill level of kids is too wide, the top kids
or the bottom kids will suffer because they aren’t being taught
what they need to learn. Games will be faster, more enjoyable
for players, coaches and fans, and be at a higher level. This
simply makes the game and the league more fun for everybody
involved.
2.Less Skilled Players Compete Against kids of similar skills.
This does so much for these kids because it will be a better
learning experience. First, there is simply going to be more
opportunity. Instead of being the bottom half of a better team,
these kids are now in the top half and have a chance to play
more skill positions. This enhances their development as players
and makes the game much more fun and interesting. Since all kids
grow at different speeds, it also gives them a chance to develop
their skills and catch up more quickly since they’ll have more
opportunity to play. Next, coaches can focus on fundamental
skills without ignoring the top end of the spectrum. The games
are better because all the kids are better balanced and the
competition is equal. This makes it more fun for the kids,
parents and coaches.
3.Playoffs are more gratifying and easier to set up. The
competition is divided already into skill levels which should
mean smaller groups. This makes having double elimination
tournaments and other playoff formats easier to accomplish and
also more meaningful.
4.Kids make new friends – broadening the community. Since it is
likely that skill levels can bring multiple age groups together,
kids will be teamed with kids that may not be in their social
circle. This means that they make new friends, parents meet new
people and since so much of our social interaction revolves
around the kids’ activities, the community because a better
place to live.
5.Leagues can use different skill appropriate rules. For
example, in baseball, there can be several levels of kid pitch
baseball with different rules appropriate to the various skill
levels in order to allow for the development of kids. Adjusting
strike zones, ability to steal different bases, leading off,
walks, strikes, using a tee and/or having a coach/machine pitch
in different situations, can make the experience better for
everybody involved.
This is not a New Concept – Lots of leagues all across the
country already allow for skill based division of talent and
blurring of hard age/grade lines. Pop Warner, for example, uses
weight limitations and groupings to help divide kids for
football. When baseball leagues are large enough they can
separate the minors division into A, AA and AAA levels. Some
leagues have been hesitant because they point to potential
issues: 1) dividing kids when skills are often similar; 2)
friends may not be able to play together; 3) some kids may end
up in the wrong division; 4) some kids may feel badly if they
don’t make a certain level; and, 5) dealing with parents who
think their child should be in a different division. However,
while these are valid concerns, other leagues have overcome
these obstacles by: 1) have tryouts and drafting the players –
not a perfect solution but easy to implement and answer
criticism; 2) just accept this and allow kids to make new
friends;
3) no matter what system, it’s possible for kids to be in the
wrong division so try to be flexible and allow for movement
and/or simply understand that while some kids may be in the
wrong division they will still have a positive experience; 4)
explain to parents that this is simply where their child was
drafted – something that takes place already in almost every
league that has more than one division. What I’m arguing for is
to make as many different divisions as appropriate to the number
and skill levels of the kids. Even leagues that currently create
divisions based on skill may want to reevaluate to determine if
they might be even better off making another division. Leagues
that divide kids simply by age and/or grade should completely
redo their program to allow for skill based divisions.
The Deficiencies of Age Division – Any division of kids by age
is purely arbitrary and very unfair to the children. If kids are
classified in a single 12-month period, the oldest kids are
going to be a full year older than the youngest kids. This
situation is exacerbated when the age division is a 24 month
period. AYSO and Little League had an arbitrary cut off date of
July 31 (Little League is moving to April 30) and many other
leagues use calendar years. However the arbitrary cut off date
is determined, it creates significant effects on the kids. In a
recent article published in the Journal of Sports Sciences, June
2005, the impact of age division were studied by Werner F.
Helson, Jan Van Winckel (Department of Kinesiology, Katholieke
Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, Belgium) and A. Mark Williams
(Research Institute for Sport and Exercise Sciences, Liverpool
John Morres University, Liverpool, UK) in their article “The
Relative Age Effect in Youth Soccer Across Europe”. This article
studies over 2,000 boys and girls playing youth soccer across 10
European nations. The results demonstrated a statistically
significant overrepresentation of older children across all
subsections studied.
As pointed out in this article, “as children are separated into
age groups there are invariably cognitive, physical and
emotional differences between the youngest and the oldest ones”.
While a year doesn’t mean much in the life of an adult, for
children there is. “Significant variation in academic and sports
performance may arise because of differences in growth and
development between those born early and late in the selection
year”. The effect is that “A child born at the beginning of the
year will, on average, perform better than a peer born at the
end of the year. This initial performance advantage is likely to
increase intrinsic (observed competence) and extrinsic
(appreciation of teachers and parents) motivation to continue
involvement in a sport. This increased motivation, coupled with
greater perceived competence, will encourage those born early in
the selection year to continue to practice to further improve
and refine their skills compared with those born later in the
year.” Because success breeds success, “Youth players born early
in the selection year, beginning in the 6- to 8-year-old age
group are more likely to be identified as talented by
professional teams, to play for national teams and, eventually,
to become involved in the sport as a professional. In
comparison, players born late in the selection year are more
likely to drop out of the sport as early as 12 years of age”
(Feltz & Petlichkoff, 1983; Helsen, Starkes, & Hodges, 1998).
The obvious reason why this takes place follows: “To explain
these findings, researchers have shown that players with a
relative age advantage over their playing peers possess
significant developmental advantages (i.e. height, weight and
strength) that impact on perceived potential and predicted
success in sport. Given the importance of these early
experiences for the development of sport skills, strong relative
age effects in professional players might be a consequence of
the early onset of these effects in the youth age categories.”
Conclusion – Since it is impossible to simply correct
arbitrarily created age differences without randomly changing
the age cut off from year to year, we have to acknowledge that
an attempt to be “fair” by grouping children by age creates
exactly the opposite effect: a system where the oldest children
have a huge advantage and are far more likely to succeed.
Especially in recreational leagues, where the goal is to have
fun and create enjoyable, long lasting life experiences, the
better you group the kids, the more likely it is that you will
succeed in running a fun and competitive league that allows for
the development of all the participants and promises not only to
positively include the most kids. The result may help them to
continue participating in an activity they love which can best
be achieved by grouping kids into smaller divisions based on
skill rather than age.
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