The Youth-Sports Conundrum: How Intense Is Too Intense?

Jack Woods has been playing basketball since he was a little kid. But three years ago, he got serious, joining a highly competitive travel program led by Eric Polli. Now, Polli said, Woods is a player to be reckoned with.

"You want someone to score? He can score," Polli said of the 14-year-old shooting guard. "He can shoot. He can attack the basket. He is the definition of a scorer."

Woods practices with his Mass Elite squad at least once a week after school and spends many of his Saturdays playing in tournaments around the state. Ask him if the commitment has been worth it, and his answer is unequivocal.

"It’s improved my game a lot,” Woods said. "My shooting improved tremendously, because of one of the coaches that helped me with my shot and stuff. I went from probably one of the worst shooters to one of the best."

For Woods, who said he models his game after Miami Heat star Dwayne Wade, early dedication to one sport seems to be working out. But some skeptics contend that for society at large, it’s a troubling trend.

"When I first started doing this in 1992, in basketball, it was fairly rare around here to see a sixth-grade travel basketball team," said former NBA player Bob Bigelow, who’s made a second career arguing against over-intense youth sports. "Now, a lot of these communities have fourth-grade travel teams."

Bigelow, who grew up in Winchester and played collegiately at the University of Pennsylvania for legendary coach Chuck Daly, argues that too many kids are pushed to take sports too seriously at too young an age.

"Why are we organizing teams?" he said. "Why do we have adults coaching kids when they’re 7?"

"The pure, simple fact of the matter is something I’ve been saying for 25 years," Bigelow added. "Your athletic ability prior to puberty is meaningless as an indicator of your athletic ability post puberty."

As Bigelow notes, there’s also a clinical argument to be made against going too hard too young. According to the American Medical Society for Sports Medicine, excessive early training and competition can cause a variety of injuries, as well as psychological burnout. But Bigelow believes there’s a deeper problem.

"Adults want to win; kids want to play," he said. "That’s the difference.The more adult needs you add to these sports, the more adult vision, the more adult needs have to be met."

Still, despite warnings from Bigelow and other critics, the professionalization of youth sports marches on. Case in point: the Boston-based startup CoachUp, which connects aspiring athletes with professional coaches for sessions that cost an average of $50 per hour.

"Thirty to 40 million kids across this country play youth sports," said Jordan Fliegel, CoachUp’s founder and CEO. "And they’re passionate about it."

Fliegel got private coaching for basketball after his freshman year in high school, at Cambridge Rindge and Latin. He recalls it as a life-changing experience, one that helped determine both his athletic and his professional future.

"I couldn’t shoot at all, could barely dribble," Fliegel said. "I got a private coach that summer, and sophomore year, I was the starting center on the varsity team."

Later, Fliegel attended Bowdoin College in Maine, where he went from being a benchwarmer as a freshman to the team captain and MVP as a senior. (That year, he proudly notes, the Polar Bears enjoyed their best men’s basketball season in school history.) After college, he played professionally in Israel with Hapoel Jerusalem.

If Fliegel’s story is inspirational, it also makes it tempting to see CoachUp as part of the broader youth-sports arms race. But Fliegel has a different, more reassuring take.

"We believe anyone who has dream should be supported, and that some athletes and some people bloom late," he said. "Sometimes it takes a long time. And if you’re passionate about something, you should be able to pursue it."

Which, of course, is exactly what Jack Woods is doing with basketball. Ask Woods about his goals, and his answer is refreshingly modest.

"I hope to take it to the highest level I can: hopefully go to college and play for a good college, stuff like that," he said.

Asked if he imagines going to a major college program, or to a smaller school like Bowdoin, Woods splits the difference.

"Something in between," Woods said. "I don’t need anything major. I just want to be good."

And that’s an ambition that’s difficult to fault. 

Boston Children's Hospital Sports Medicine Director Dr. Lyle Micheli and Northeastern University Sport in Society Director Dan Leibowitz discussed the costs of pushing kids to specialize in sports at such a young age: