Cultivating Passionate Participants

Help players develop a lifelong love for a sport

By John Engh

When I was younger, I couldn’t wait for the next season to start, and it didn’t matter for what sport. Baseball was my first choice, but basketball, football, soccer, and wrestling were all big in my house. My two older brothers were big into wrestling. And while my mom was the real jock in the house, having played two varsity-level sports in high school and college, my dad always loved that there were wrestlers in the house. On any given night there were “wrestle-offs” on the living room shag carpet. Trust me when I say we all had our fair share of carpet burns!

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I liked wrestling, but I didn’t love it like my brothers. I think it has to do with my belief that, for sports to be fun and a fixture in a youngster’s life, they must be enjoyable first. Then, as a youngster progresses and becomes more mature, the real fun comes in improving. My younger brother can attest that constantly getting pinned by two state-champion-level wrestlers and their teammates was not a great introduction to the sport. I guess that’s why I turned to other sports, and my little brother became a world-class guitar player.

I remember the passion my brothers had for wrestling, and felt sorry for them because the season was relatively short, beginning in the fall and ending at the holiday tournaments. After that, they had to wait eight months for their favorite sport to return. 

In a recent interview for a new online Mental Health and Youth Sports Training tool (free to anyone), Christine Pinalto, executive director of Sidelined USA, talks about how tough it is for kids to deal with injuries and miss out for an extended period on a sport they truly love. For some athletes, injuries are even career-ending. Administrators and coaches must understand that, while some kids may not be able to participate in a traditional way while injured, it’s important for their mental and physical health to keep them involved in some capacity so they don’t lose interest. 

My brothers had a great wrestling coach. One year, one of his top wrestlers was injured during the last half of the season and missed all of the important meets and tournaments. I was only a freshman and hadn’t yet lost interest in the 103-degree wrestling room practices, but I remember the injured wrestler with his broken arm being an assistant coach, assigned to help run practices for the junior-varsity team. I know it was emotionally painful for this 16-year-old boy to miss what at the time seemed the most important opportunities of his life, but the coach and the staff made him feel just as important in his new role. He never really recovered from his injury enough to regain his form, but later in life he was an assistant coach to his two sons’ high-school wrestling team and still loved the sport—that’s what it’s all about.

As leaders, we must cultivate a love and passion for sports in many different ways for young athletes. Those life-changing moments can occur on the field. And sometimes from the sidelines, too.

John Engh is executive director of the National Alliance for Youth Sports (NAYS) in West Palm Beach, Fla. He can be reached via email at jengh@nays.org. To join more than 3,000 communities by starting a NAYS Member Organization, visit www.nays.org, email nays@nays.org or call (800) 729-2057.