By Abhijat Saodekar, age 10
Access to sports participation has a great effect on children’s lives. Sports exercise the body and mind and teach sportsmanship: how to accept defeat and continue trying. The determination used to play sports is similar to what’s needed in school. When student athletes feel fear, they can practice talking to people about their feelings.
According to Missouri University Health Care, “Team sports help teach adolescents accountability, dedication, leadership and other skills.”
Sports require learning the rules by focusing and improving over time. In sports, like in school, athletes practice things until they get them down. Using teamwork in sports is similar to working with others to get something like a research project done. According to reporting by NPR, athletes gain a can-do life strategy that can help them in other sports, school, jobs, and their relationships with other people.
Sports can also improve kids’ health. Sports make kids strong and less likely to get sick later in life. Playing sports makes kids put away their devices, meaning they spend less time on screens.
Research done by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that in 2020, kids from wealthier backgrounds were more likely to participate in sports than their less wealthy peers. According to Education Week, some kids who want to play sports have parents who are really hard-working but can’t afford to pay for sports participation for their kids. Some parents don’t have the time to take their children to practices or games and have trouble getting the sports equipment that is needed. Many public schools have cut sports teams and gym classes. Kids who can’t play sports when they are younger are disadvantaged later when they don’t have the skills to play the games. Some schools are working to build sports programs by finding money to fund them, encouraging people from their communities to come and help and be coaches, and using cafeterias as gyms.
