For a lot of kids, playing a sport is fun. But what happens when the fun stops?
Only 6% of high school athletes will play in college and out of that 6%, only 1-2% will receive any form of athletic scholarship. Even fewer than 1-2% will receive a full ride. Just these stats alone can cause student athletes to realize that they may not have what it takes to compete at the next level and will end up quitting because of it.
When kids get older they figure out that playing a sport is not about having fun like it once was when they first started playing. Sports eventually becomes only about winning. When adults make a game all about winning, it creates a high-stress environment. Kids also start to figure out that when the sport becomes all about winning, even if they really like that sport, it is no longer something fun that they want to do and end up quitting.
Parental pressure is also a huge factor into why kids quit sports. Too much pressure from parents can cause a kid to become overwhelmed, not play their best and lead to them not wanting to play at all. Kids can also face pressure to play a sport from their parents, even if the kid doesn’t want to play it in an attempt for the parent to try and reclaim their youth. This is especially a problem if the parents were athletes and they want their kid to carry their legacy. This has happened with many athletes including Ken Griffey and Scottie Pippen. However, there are other cases where a athletes kid would go on to not play sports, like Magic Johnson’s son who decided he did not want to play professionally and even decided to not play sports at all.
Kids stop playing a sport because they don’t have the skills to go pro or realize they are not as good as their friends. Every kid that watches sports usually dreams of getting into the big league. But once they enter high school, they start to realize that a lot of kids are better than them, faster than them, or stronger than them. Kids must make a difficult decision to either try and get better or quit because they can’t match the skill of the others around them. They also might look to quit because friends who used to play along side them no longer want to play or switch to doing something different such as technology or a hobby making the sport no longer fun.
