In Defense of Team Sports

Our two oldest kids are elementary school age, and so we have entered the world of team sports.  We're just dipping our toe in so far with an 8 week recreational soccer league.  I played 4 sports over the course of high school, including the off season travel teams and summer camps, so I know how very much team sports ramp up in intensity as the kids get older.

We all want our kids to be happy and have fun memories, but there is the question of whether the enormous amount of time and money that can go into team sports is the right way to make this happen.  Everybody's circumstances are different, and I'm not saying every kid has to do all the sports all the time, but I think team sports can add tremendous value and teach important lessons in childhood.  (I'm writing this blog as a reminder to myself, too, because being a sports parent, while it has it's fun and cute and thrilling moments, is a very different experience from being the athlete.)

Here are just some of the things I think kids can learn from participating in sports:

• Cooperation - How many times in life do you work together with others on projects, whether it's a team assignment at work or raising a family or being on a church committee?  Team sports are a fun way to start to learn that delicate balance of working well with others: sometimes taking the lead and sometimes being the follower, sometimes doing more than your share and other times relying on others to make the big plays.  Watching teammates do things that sometimes amaze you with their brilliance and other times flabbergast you with their foolishness, and learning to handle it either way.  
• Discipline  / Hard Work - I have SO many memories of doing wind sprints, stair drills, and other torturous exercises designed to get you in peak physical shape.  There's nothing fun about doing these things that make you feel like your legs or lungs are going to collapse, except this -- that moment when you're playing the championship game and you're able to go hard through the whole game because of the work you've put in when no one was watching.  This practice of working hard day by day so that you'll be ready when the big moments come along has benefits in education, work, spiritual life, and so many other things.  
• Resilience / perserverance - Many athletes will get to experience the thrill of victory; all at some point will experience the agony of defeat.  Learning how to deal with the various disappointments that come with sports - injuries, getting cut from a team, losing the big game - is great starter training for the bigger disappointments that will come along in life.
• Time management / responsibility / organization - In the high school and college years, athletic practice takes up at least a couple hours per day.  You have to learn how to fit this in with other things (homework, job, other extra-curriculars), and how to eat and sleep at least well enough to make it through practice.  (Sometimes these lessons are learned the hard way, like the time when Surge was doing a promotion and giving away free sugary sodas right before basketball practice.)
• Friendship - There's something special about relationships that are formed when you're embarking on a shared mission.  When you go through some of these things listed above together - conditioning until you puke, winning the championship or losing every game the whole season - it forges a special bond.  Add that to the enormous amount of time you spend together, and chances are good that some of these teammates will be your friends for life.
• Healthy Living / Exercise as a Habit - This one is a little more obvious, but it's great to incorporate exercise early on to set kids on a trajectory for a healthy life.  Participating in team sports gives you some knowledge about how to do things like stretches, weight lifting, aerobic conditioning, and agility drills.  It gives you muscle memory for pushing past pain.  And it sets a high standard in your mind for what physical fitness should look like.  (I'll be honest, I rarely meet this standard since becoming a parent, but I still think it's a good thing to have in mind and strive towards.)
• Strategy - By learning plays, or learning that there are better and worse ways to do things, or learning that you need to set several consecutive things in motion to have a successful outcome - these are all valuable starts to learning that it pays to have a strategy in your various endeavors in life.  
• For girls especially, body image and self confidence - There is enormous pressure on women to look good, as defined by the fashion magazine standard, and girls base much of their self confidence on their physical attractiveness.  Sports can't take this whole problem away, but I think it can make girls feel more body positivity by seeing the amazing physical feats that their bodies are capable of, and confidence based on athletic accomplishment rather than just how they look.  

Ordering equipment from the Internet = you might end up with shin guards sized for a newborn.

That's my case for why team sports are worth it.  Of course  every team sports experience is not going to provide all of this; and not every kid is going to be into team sports. 

But some of my very best friends, some of my best preparation for the rigors of college and law school, for how to conduct yourself in a job, for how to get through the harder times in life - it came from lessons learned in sports.  Anything you would add to this list?