Everybody’s talking about injuries. Coaches, doctors, league administrators, and parents are worried about the increase in injuries from SO much soccer! Kids are stuffed with teams and tryouts, tournaments and competitions. What used to be a tasty part of a balanced diet, now sits on their plate like a dagwood sandwich, daring them to eat it all.

Is this what is on you child’s plate?

I believe competitive sports, including soccer, are good for kids but currently they’re killing ours. When I mention this to teams, families, coaches and kids I work with, most agree but everyone points the accusing finger of blame at someone else. (For more on this, read Warrior Girls: Protecting Our Daughters Against the Injury Epidemic in Women’s Sports, an excellent book by Michael Sokolove, which paints the issue in living color.)

A friend who coaches at a nearby college told me, “All 5 incoming freshman we recruited for the fall season are injured. Knees, concussions, overtraining injuries. (Too much) soccer is killing them.”

Too much of anything, even a good thing, is a bad thing. So, whose fault is it? Who is to blame? I’d say all of us to some extent, and we need to have some hard conversations.

We have a problem with layering. We want to give kids what’s good for them without taking anything from them. We add without subtracting. This is bad accounting, bad budgeting, bad nutrition, and bad for our bodies. The key to equalizing this equation is substitution rather than addition.

To Parents I want to say:

To Coaches I want to say:

To Kids I want to say:

Parents and coaches, if we want our kids to keep achieving in sports we need an accounting of how much they’re playing. How much are we piling on their Dagwoods?  Then, instead of blame, finger-pointing and sad shaking of heads, we need a strategy for unpiling that keeps what’s on their plate healthy and tasting good.

Recently, some researchers at Loyola University Medical Center waded into this issue. They looked at more than 1200 young athletes who had been injured in sports and the hours they devoted to a single sport vs. other activity. Their finding: kids who played a single sport more hours per week than their age were 70% more likely to experience an overuse injury. They proposed, “Children shouldn’t spend more hours per week than years of their age playing one sport.”

People like quantification so this report, picked up by the newswires, was touted as a great recommendation. Did anyone really do the math here?

Let’s look at that. In the name of reducing injury, it says my 12 year old can participate in:

Really? Does that sound healthy to you? And these researchers focused on the single-sport-whammy, so why not add basketball and swimming right on top? That’s a towering sandwich and my kid thinks he’s supposed to clean his plate.

This is (can I just say it?) insane. The researchers have identified the culprit as too much of one sport, but have no idea the intensity at which our 12 year olds are playing. These are scientists after all. (Disclaimer: I am a scientist) Let’s not even get into the issue of multiple highly competitive sports which come into play with our most athletic kids.

We need to dismantle the Dagwood sandwich. Yes, the meal we’re serving is not working. But what’s the recipe for a healthy meal?

I propose an accounting system for how much of our kids (how many hours and at what intensity/level) we are spending. Here’s a possible formula:

_____   Hours of any sport practice x 2.5               = ______

_____   Hours of any sport competition x 3.5        = ______

*Total   = ______

This is simply a model, a place to start. Models are there for us to try out, argue about and make better.

Rather than silence and grumbling, we can have a conversation.

Parents, if the kid asks for more, show him options and offer a choice.

Kids, if the coach begs you to play, make him an offer: “I can give you  ____ minutes this week.”

Coach, if a parent insists that their kid get more playing time even though they’re coming from a weekend long basketball tournament, show her the statistics, and the rule you follow.

Let’s chew on this together. Maybe over a sandwich. I’ll take turkey and swiss on whole wheat; hold the mayo.

Special thanks to: Gerardo Ramirez, ODP Coach, and full time coach at Vienna Youth Soccer, whose heart for his players inspired this article, and Dirk Vandeveer, Assistant Coach with GMU women’s soccer team, who suggested the multipliers for the healthy sandwich equation.