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Children Should Not Play Competitive Sports

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For many years parents and children have been negotiating if competitive sports should be played by children. Studies show that competitive sports should not be for children. This is because competitive sports are shown to cause stress, overuse of the body, and serious injuries which could affect them later in life.

To begin with, competitive sports are shown to cause stress to children who are under the age of 15. This is shown, “In a series of studies conducted at UCLA... about 20 percent of kids reported high levels of stress before the game, and many of them reported high anxiety after games that their teams had lost.” (Frank.L, 2014) This leads to over 20 percent of children dropping out of sports at a young age. This sadly leads to obesity and even worse. This could easily be prevented if the child plays recreational sports at a young age. Also, children face the stresses of having to win because their parents pay tons of money and pressure them to play sports. “Seventy percent of children drop out of sports by age 13, and a big reason is that their parents are putting too much pressure on them...” (Braff.D, 2014) Children feel if they do not win they would …show more content…

Mark Hyman says, “Every year more than 3.5 million children under the age of 15 require medical treatment for sports injuries, nearly half of which are the result of simple overuse.” (Jane.E, 2010) Children just want to play non stop. This is good but to a point this could be abrasive. Many children would feel a pain but just walk it off without telling anyone, this leads to injuries. Making the switch to recreational sports is not bad at all. You don't get the risk of overuse because practice is once or twice a week with one game on weekends. Comparing this to competitive sports, practice is three to four times a week with tournaments and games on weekends. This will almost always lead to a form of

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