Why are young athletes in Australia being ‘encouraged’ to specialise?

Sports participation in Australia has increased markedly over recent years. You only need to look at the increase from 2015 to 2016 in AFL (12.6%) and cricket (8.5%), with the rise in youth and women participation being the major factors. A side-effect of this is increased competition between different sporting codes.

Something I became aware of recently is that some officials are adopting (what I believe to be) unethical practices in order to discourage young athletes from competing in other sports. Here’s two examples of this behaviour – (I won’t mention which sports were involved in order to not appear biased):

1. An all-girls competition was being run over 2 days in country Victoria. A team of girls had registered to attend, but pulled out a week before because of a clash with a pre-season training session for another sport. The reason why this clash mattered so much? Because the coach told the girls if they did not come to the pre-season session it would jeapordise their future chances of being selected in a newly established elite National women’s competition. Now we’re talking about 15 year old girls here….would missing one pre-season session seriously ruin their future elite prospects? I doubt it.
2. A 12 year old girl was selected in the State squad for a particular sport. The national competition they will be playing in is 6 months away and the team has already been training for 2 months. The girl in question had a grand final to play for another sport which clashed with a training session for the State squad. She was told by the State team coaches that if she played in her grand final instead of attending the training session her place in the team could no longer be guaranteed.

Not only are these practices unethical, but they may also be detrimental to the athletes’ development. Numerous studies have shown that participating in multiple sports (otherwise known as ‘sampling’), is beneficial to younger athletes. It gives the children an opportunity to experience a range of sports settings, have fun in sport rather than just focus on training all the time, and playing one sport can actually be beneficial to other sports through skill transfer.

Whilst some may argue that specialisation at an early age gives athletes a better chance of reaching elite status, the more likely scenario is that it can lead to a range of negative outcomes such as burnout, overuse injuries, or the child leaving sport altogether.

So why is this happening? Why are some officials ‘encouraging’ (forcing) young athletes to play their sport, and their sport only? Maybe it’s because they see talent in these children and want to assist them to reach their full potential? But maybe that child is just as talented (or even more so) in another sport, so that doesn’t make sense. Or maybe it’s just an ego thing? What are your thoughts?