Where to begin when addressing sport violence?
This blog is going to address a general concern about violence in sport and introduce the many resources available for organizations to address this social issue. There are several premises that are shared to give life to the truly diffused issue of violence in sport as a mirror to social ills. Especially in the United States, direct sport violence and sport related violence appears to be an epidemic when looking into what happens in communities across the nation. From the time a child engages in the first sport experience (often in the early pre-school years), incidents of injury, adult pressure, psychological issues, and dropping out of sports altogether begin to occur. It has been reported that there are usually four reasons to be concerned abut childhood involvement in sport. According to the Changing the Game Project, there are four major problems that occur in youth sports as follows:
Parents who won’t let the game belong to kids.
Athletes need to OWN their decisions, good and bad.
Coaches who fail to respect the kids and the sport, and ignore the massive impact they have on kids lives
Youth sports organizations that serve adults, not kids. (O’Sullivan, 2015)
It starts with a 3 year old in a hockey suit that prevents full movement on the ice, and it progresses through child’s sport involvement until we see the manifestations of sport violence in the highly skilled arenas of national and international competition, and high-level amateur and professional sports.
It is difficult to get a handle on the many ways that adult oriented youth sport impacts on the psychological development of a child. Reports of youth dropping out of sport in great numbers around the age of 12 or 13 often note that they are no longer having fun. How do we retain a “fun” factor in sport and allow children to develop their skills throughout their childhood?
While sport violence is experienced round the world, the level and intensity of this issue is clearly stronger in the United States. Wenn (1989) noted that sporting violence occurs less frequently in Australia than other countries, but that it is still of concern. What might be the reason that a country the size of the United States can lessen the impact of sport violence more effectively than this country?
In doing research on sport policy and conduct, I am venturing a few thoughts about the existence of controls that I discovered in researching 13+ countries and their policies regarding sport. First, countries with national policies regarding sport seemed to be more effective in transmitting these policies to the local sectors engaging in sport. Indeed, the Australian Sport Commission has a policy statement regarding the effective organization of sport experiences at the school, club, and government levels. Those who work in these sectors can access financial incentives for training, facility development and programming from provincial and national governmental bodies. By accessing the information, local organizations focus on training volunteers, providing safe and secure sport facilities, and securing consequences for bad behavior.
Why has the United States lagged behind other countries in this regard? The good news is that the Department of Health and Human Services has developed a National Youth Sport effort to secure sound policies with respect to youth sport development. I will present this approach in another blog.