Competitive Sports Competition

“Race you!” comes a high pitched squeal of a young child heading towards their parent’s car at a shopping mall parking lot. The joys of playing a game and competing with everyone around comes naturally to children. In “Children Need to Play, Not Compete,” author Jessica Statsky argues that participation in competitive team sports is damaging to a developing child. In contrast, the paper “Children’s Development Through Sports Competition: Derivate, Adjustive, Generative, and Maladaptive Approaches” by Hong Suk Choi, Britton Johnson, and Young K. Kim brings to light many of the aspects that show the developmental benefit of sports competition. Contrary to what Statsky purports, sports team participation gives all children an unique opportunity to develop many positive aspects of living in adult society, because the essential lessons of team building and developing a sense of fairness are efficiently conveyed through competition. For team building experiences, competitive sports allow children to acquire and polish the necessary skills in order to learn how to interact positively and meaningfully with other members of …show more content…
Statsky emphasizes the most negative reasons whereas Choi shows that “the sport no longer satisfies the participants… Some may return to the sport later, but at a more recreational level” (Choi 197). When looking at all the reasons for drop outs we must conclude that the negative effects sports can bear on a child are mitigated such that many benign justifications of quitting can be seen as the normal part of development. Sports participation contends for the child’s time where their social structure increases in complexity as they develop to young adults. It is no surprise that many children will find other interests to be more worthy of their