At the Aspen Institute’s 2019 Project Play Summit, former NBA and University of Michigan star Chris Webber implored parents of youth basketball players to focus less on future stardom – and more on human development – so their child enjoys a positive experience. Webber said youth coaches today often gain their status simply because they are associated with an emerging talent, not because they helped them grow as an athlete or person.
“Growing up in my time was easier because the culture allowed it to be different,” said Webber, the nation’s highest-rated recruit in high school. “I can’t imagine the pressure of being 12 years old and being told you can make it to the NBA and believing it, when you don’t have the skills but a coach told you that to keep you around. That’s scary.”
Still, many children, especially African-Americans, are encouraged to chase the long odds.
This article shares new insights on the sports experience for youth across racial subgroups, based on a national survey of sports parents by the Aspen Institute’s Project Play initiative and Utah State University’s Families in Sport Lab. The analysis is the latest in a series of reports that began in 2019 and explores the data behind the high attrition rate in youth sports – the theme of #DontRETIREKid, a public awareness campaign inspired by Project Play 2020.
“I can’t imagine the pressure of being 12 years old and being told you can make it to the NBA and believing it, when you don’t have the skills but a coach told you that to keep you around. That’s scary.”
Survey results show that the average African-American child who participates in sports plays less than three years in any sport, a slightly shorter duration than White children. But African-Americans start in organized sports nearly a year later, after age 8. And once they do, their parents’ motivation to keep them in the game is significantly more driven by the possibility of playing beyond high school. Parents of African-American youth rated the pursuit of a college scholarship as 23% more important and a pro sports opportunity as 26% more important than White parents, according to the survey.
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The findings sharpen our understanding of the psychological landscape of youth sports for many African-American children, and the challenges of keeping – and getting – more of them participating. Previous research by the Women’s Sports Foundation shows that fewer African-American children play sports than White children, who in turn have greater access to the benefits of sports. That includes physical activity, which plays a role in obesity and disease prevention.
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The Aspen/Utah State survey was directed exclusively at parents whose kids, ages 6 to 18, currently play sports. Thus, it did not examine the causes of attrition among children who left sports, or who never have played. Instead, the data paint a vivid picture of the experience of those who remain active and the hopes of the adults who surround them.
African-American youth are nearly three times more likely than White youth to play tackle football. That gap reflects a trend also seen in high school football. According to the New York Times, in 2006, 70% of high school football players were White and 20% were African-American; by 2018, those figures were 30% White and 40% African-American.
Tackle football carries potential long-term health risks from brain and orthopedic injuries. However, football carries the most college athletic scholarships (7% of high school players play at some level in college vs. 3% of basketball players). It’s an enticing carrot for many low-income families, even though the odds are long of ever playing college or pro sports. According to data from the NCAA, only about 1% to 5% of high school athletes receive some form of a Division I athletic scholarship, and fewer than 2% of all NCAA athletes will ever play pro sports.
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Also, football is one of the least expensive sports for youth to play, the Aspen/Utah State survey found. It’s one reason parents of African-American youth spent significantly less money ($537) per child and sport each season than the survey average ($693). African-American parents paid less than White parents for registration, equipment and uniforms, travel and lodging, and sport lessons, but they paid slightly more on camps and athlete schools.
The survey showed that the three most expensive sports to play for all youth are ice hockey, field hockey and skiing/snowboarding. Fewer than 2% of African-American children participate in those sports.
“Despite many communities’ and organizations’ efforts at subsidizing minority participation in traditionally White sports, it seems there is still a large gap in the access – and perhaps desire – minority children have with regard to certain sports,” said Dr. Travis Dorsch, founding director of the Utah State University Families in Sport Lab and lead investigator on the Aspen study.
Transportation is one of the biggest barriers preventing more kids from participating in sports. According to the survey, African-American youth are far more likely than White youth to access sports and recreational sites by carpool, program-provided transportation, city bus, subway or train, walking, and riding a bike.
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Family constraints on the ability to transport kids to sites beyond their community, however, may offer some benefits for kids. One of the more promising findings of the Aspen/Utah State survey is that, among children participating in sports, African Americans played more hours per week than White children or those from other racial sub-groups. That’s in part due to more time engaged in free or unstructured play, at local parks or otherwise. Sport scientists and sociologists recognize the role of free play in developing athleticism and creatively, respectively.
In sum, the data pose a key question to address gaps and build more healthy children through sports: How do we reimagine community sport systems to serve the needs of all children – not just scholarship-chasing athletes – by shifting the value proposition for playing, broadening the set of sport offerings, and the formats under which they are delivered?
At the Project Play Summit, Webber stressed that the top-ranked 8-year-old child is not going to the NBA, “so let’s quit putting that out there.” He added: “How can you choose a major in sports before 14? How can you choose what you’re going to be great at? Your body hasn’t even developed. You haven’t even grown. I would just encourage community leaders and parents not to be intimidated by sport. You know enough. You know how to discipline your child. You know how to encourage them.”
Other key findings by racial subgroup are below.
White youth
Parents of White youth who play sports are more likely (69%) to drive their child to practices and games than any other racial subgroup. Also, White children get to organized sports via ride-sharing services – such as taxis, Lyft or Uber – almost three times more often than African-Americans and four times more often than Hispanics.
White parents reported that their children spend about 11 hours per week on sports during an season, less than Hispanics (12.9) and African-Americans (12.8). White youth have especially high participation rates in soccer, basketball and baseball. Only 10% of White children play tackle football and 7% play flag football. African-Americans are higher in both tackle (27%) and flag (8%).
Hispanic youth
Hispanic youth are also are under great pressure to perform. Hispanic kids are as or more committed to sports as all other kids and feeling the highest levels of stress. They also have few resources to participate in travel team sports: Only 55% of Hispanic youth get to games and practices by their parent or guardian, the lowest rate among the racial subgroups.
Hispanic youth spend the most hours per week in sports, which includes unstructured play, with their strongest participation coming in soccer, basketball and baseball. Similar to African-Americans, Hispanic parents eye college scholarships and pro sports opportunities at a higher rate than White parents. But the chase may be futile. According to NCAA research, the only college sports with 10% or more of its players being Hispanic are men’s soccer and men’s volleyball.
Asian youth
Asian/Pacific Islander kids quit sports at the youngest age, on average about six months before their 10th birthday. They spend almost five hours less per week on sports activities than African-Americans. Asian parents reported spending the most amount of money on youth sports ($833 for one child in one sport annually).
Methodology
Our nationally representative survey, distributed by Qualtrics International, collected insights from 1,032 adults in all 50 states whose children played sports. The median household income of respondents was $70,000, slightly higher than the U.S. average of $61,937.
Our survey was relatively representative of the broader U.S. population. The percentage of survey respondents who identified themselves as White (70.8%), Black or African-American (10.6%), Hispanic or Latino (9.3%), and Asian/Pacific Islander (6%) align roughly with national distributions: 77% of Americans identify themselves as White, 18% as Hispanic or Latino, 13% as Black or African-American and 6% as Asian. Our survey also had responses from Native American/American Indian, more than one race, and other self-identifying races, but they were too small of a sample size to use in the analysis.
Over the next year, Project Play will share and explore more findings from our national parent survey. Read all of the survey analyses. Find free tools that can be used to get and keep kids involved in sports are our new Parent Resources page. Sign up for our newsletter via the Parent Resources page.
Follow us on Twitter and Facebook as new analyses and resources are released. Do you have a question about youth sports? Send it to jon.solomon@aspeninstitute.org for consideration to publish in our monthly Project Play Parents Mailbag.