The Association of Single Sport Specialization and Overuse Injury in Youth Athletics

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  • February 26, 2019
Creator
  • Taylor, Daniel
    • Affiliation: School of Medicine, Department of Allied Health Sciences, Physician Assistant Program
Abstract
  • BACKGROUND: Youth sports in today’s society has come to represent a microcosm of the highly visible and overtly publicized professional world of sports. Children and adolescents are inundated by an unprecedented and ubiquitous sociocultural saturation not experienced by previous generations; from the most recent current global news events trending on our Twitter feeds to the latest player to sign a $200 million professional sports contract. While the former is newsworthy, the latter is what often catches the eyes of not only kids, but their parents, coaches, and other individuals that are involved with different athletic programs at the youth level. There is an evolving perception that if kids are put into the right situations at an early age, identifying a niche and “specializing” in a sport, they can advance and develop a skill set that will allow them to obtain higher social status, possibly receive college athletic scholarships, and even become professional athletes with high earning potential. This perception is not a geographically isolated concept. In China, there are over 3000 government-affiliated sportsbased schools, of which there are approximately 100 boarding schools dedicated to allowing children ages 5-16 years old to work and develop sport-specific athletic skills in hopes of being selected to train at Olympic training facilities. The amount of pressure being placed on young athletes is certainly high, and has a large impact physically and mentally.
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  • In Copyright
Reviewer
  • Beal, Meg
  • D'Alessandro, Donald
Degree
  • Master of Health Science
Degree granting institution
  • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Graduation year
  • 2017
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  • 03017bbf-d2c5-4c32-b5ff-fb580cd5f16e

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