Children Need To Play Not Compete, By Jessica Statsky

In the essay “Children Need to Play, not Compete”, Jessica Statsky writes about the importance of children being able to have fun playing a sport without the pressure of winning or losing (152-157). Playing sports can be a huge part of a child’s life, but parents and coaches need to remember that sports are here to keep a child busy and active. Children use sports to make friends not compete with each other to see who is better. When sport oriented parents and over controlling coaches try to have kids play at a professional level this causes children to lose interest (152, par. 1). With this being said the parents and coaches need to realize how they are taking the game to an unsafe and unsportsmanlike level. Up until a child is about ten years old parents should be worried about a child’s development. The child should be working on social skills and how to function as a team. The score …show more content…
The fear of getting hurt can overpower the satisfaction of the game. One mother states, “The kids get so scared. They get hit once and they don’t want anything to do with football anymore. They’ll sit on the bench and pretend their leg hurts…” (Statsky 153, par 4). Some children and even teenagers worry about getting hurt so much that it starts to ruin their skill level. For example when I played softball we had a really strong batting line up. There was one girl that would completely fall apart when she had to face a pitcher that was known to hit batters. When she would hit off the machine or off our own team pitcher she was the best on the team, but when against any pitcher known to hit people she would struggle. The fear of getting hurt and being the person there when the pitcher messed up would affect her so much she couldn’t even make contact with the ball. Mentally she tore herself down so much that it became impossible for her to have a consistent swing against anyone who has been known to miss the strike