Girls (and boys) just wanna have fun

We noted last week IMG’s plans to further professionalize youth sports with a series of “national championships” staged in Bradenton, Florida, with the intent of marketing IMG’s $60,000-a-year sports academies.  While this may appeal to some young athletes, Mark Hyman writes in the January 31, 2010 New York Times that most kids want to play sports to have fun.  Hyman, author of "Until It Hurts: America's Obsession with Youth Sports and How It Harms Our Kids," reports on a recent survey that found having fun “was the top response from football and basketball players, from boys and from girls, and from players in each grade from fourth to eighth. In the basketball survey, 95 percent of boys and 98 percent of girls cited fun as a reason for playing, nearly twice the number who mentioned winning.”  Hyman notes that the survey wasn’t scientifically rigorous, but argues that it mirrors findings of a 1989 national survey conducted by Michigan State’s Institute for the Study of Youth Sports.