This is a seven part series.
- Part 1: Really understanding the odds
- Part 2: The injury factor
- Part 3: When you’re getting good at sports, you’re not getting good at something else
- Part 4: The habits you’re not thinking about
- Part 5: The teamwork argument
- Part 6: Social circle consequences
- Part 7: An approach that’s probably ok
Social circle consequences
For those who’ve gone to college, a common thing once being done with school is realizing you have to manufacture your social life. That while in school, it was basically given to you. This can be a hard transition for many. If you stay in the same city you went to school in, then maybe not. But if you move, it could be at 30 years old and you get a new job, you might end up going, “Damn, I don’t know anyone, and not only that, I don’t know how to meet anyone either.” It can be an alienating time.
-> If you make it to playing at the division I level, even if you stay in the same area you went to college in, you’ll likely lose a lot of friends. At the division I level, teammates -most your friends- are going to be from all over. Once done playing, many will go back home, many states away.
For those who grew up playing tons of sports, then eventually stopped, you may realize you have no idea how to make friends outside of playing sports. Screw college or school. You don’t know how people made friends without sports period! That everyone you hang out with is a product of something you played together. If you didn’t play something in college or high school, you might not realize it, but at some point you figured out other ways to find people with similar interests. If you played a sport, that was a given. You spent a lot of time with certain people, of course had similar interests. Your teammates essentially have to become your friends. Perhaps the only ones.
This happened to me when I stopped playing football and went to a different school. I realized my entire life I never had to make friends, or try to meet people. They were always put right in front of me. For close to a year, this was tough. How did the rest of society function socially? How do you meet new people? What did you talk about when half the conversation wasn’t about the sport you played?
-> One theme continues, the better the athlete, the more time devoted to a sport, the more true this all is. Never mind do a club, I barely knew they existed, because it would have taken away from the sport I was playing. If you make it to higher level college play, you don’t have time to make friends outside of your teammates. Plus, nobody but your teammates understands what you’re going through. So you latch on to that.
The same can occur with those who suffer a major injury. You are suddenly not on the field, not around your teammates as much, and your whole social circle is gone. Not only that, even if you’re still around them, you’re an outsider because you’re not on the field. You’re not part of the group, going through the same things anymore.
For some, once they’re done playing, a rec league fills this void. For others, what do you do if you can’t do the rec league? If your body can’t handle sports anymore? If you just don’t want to play anymore? You have to adapt, or be lonely as hell. And chances are, even if you do adapt, you’ll be lonely while you figure it out.
When I moved to California right after college, my immediate default for meeting people was to sign up for a rec league. If I moved again, I don’t know if I could / would want to go this route. Per above, I’m now cautious about exposing my body to this type of activity. I was 22 when I moved. I’m almost 30 now. I run a business now when I didn’t then. I’m in a relationship now when I wasn’t then. Life happened. Age matters. If I moved again, I don’t know what I would do socially.
Also, many of the best former athletes I know either don’t do or stop rec leagues very quickly. Whether you feel too much like a has-been, the competition is too low, everyone else is trying to have fun meanwhile you’re thinking WINNING IS WHAT’S FUN PEOPLE, it doesn’t work for one reason or another.
-> Another reason I stopped the last rec league I was in is because I was taking it way, way too seriously. It started as for fun, but next thing I know I’m talking strategy with people at the bar, I’m practicing on my own time. I knew the whole time it was ridiculous, but eventually it hit me hard enough, “This is over the top.” But I know if I do another one, there is a strong chance the same will happen. Like many former athletes, that’s the only way I know to do sports. All or nothing. (And the more on the “all” side you are, the more likely you’re getting injured.)
It’s like Monica and Ross.
Rachel “Ross! Want to play football?
Ross “Um, Monica and I aren’t supposed to play football.”
…
Monica “You know what, I think we should play a game. I mean come on, it’s been 12 years.”
The inevitable:
My girlfriend recently moved from Orange County to San Diego. She’s currently experiencing this. The people she hung out with in Orange County are either from high school sports or college. Sports and college are gone now. She doesn’t do rec leagues for the above reasons as well. The way she, and I, made most our friends is gone. It’s an effort to not only maintain and or find a social circle, but find new means of making them.
-> This seems progressively applicable over time, due to technology. It seems easier / more likely a person will move for a job; more are working remotely. If you’re a remote worker, you’re not exactly going to happy hour with coworkers.
As well, over time you are less likely to continue doing sports.
In other words, sports and work become are becoming lesser ways to have a social circle. Off to Facebook / Twitter / Instagram / Television we go?
A scarier version of this is when a significant injury happens in high school, or younger. A client of mine, her son tore his ACL around his sophomore year of high school. That basically means you’re out of sports for a year, and have a questionable chance of ever returning to what you were.
When you’re of high school age, or younger, a year is an eternity. Not being able to play, to be around your friends in the same capacity, can be catastrophic at that age.
Her son ended up finding other avenues to fill this void. Other avenues to get an adrenaline rush. There was no other real direction or interest, and there is a known group of the teenage age one can find in this case. It took years until things got better. They still aren’t great. She always points to that one moment, when he got injured, that things turned.
I was having a conversation with a parent, about his 12 year old daughter, who got hurt playing soccer. Another big injury, where you’re out of commission for a while. Possibly never the same.
The parent mentioned how hard his daughter had been working to get back. How much pain she was in. How lonely she felt being on the sidelines. Being part of her group of teammates, but not really.
The parent wanted to know what advice I had for getting back faster. I told them at 12 years old, getting back faster isn’t the goal. Having a healthy body for the next 70 years is. That if this 12 year old girl was in that much pain, she was already trying to come back too fast.
I never talked to the parent again. I figured the advice wasn’t that well received. If this girl had other areas to entertain her, other groups of friends, there’s a greater chance the mentality would have been different. “Let’s focus on this for now, instead of soccer.”
These examples, these kids, had one major interest at the time. The thing with sports, when they’re your main, or only interest, they can be taken from you in a way other things can’t. If you love cars, or being mechanical with them, you’re unlikely to out of nowhere lose the ability to fulfill that interest. Yes, you could randomly get your hand cut off. But you don’t randomly suffer an injury, which significantly impairs your ability to entertain your interest of say, marketing, like you do playing a sport. Stephen Hawking lost the ability to move everything but his eyes and an index finger, yet still became a world famous physicist and author. Sports don’t have this luxury.
There are transitions in life where many will experience a turnover in their social circle. High school and college graduation, moving, a new job. Some handle this turnover better than others. Some can talk to most about most topics. Many former athletes can talk to former athletes, about athletics. If sports are all you know, if they’re all you ever took the time to get good at, if they’re thing your parents obsessed over due to some unreasonable hope you’d make it pro, it can be a painful transition not only learning to talk to other people about other things, but learning to find them.
Jon
January 21, 2016
Hi Brian,
I have found this series of posts about youth fitness to be very thought-provoking. Thanks so much for writing them! I’ve been reading your site for several years now, and it is this kind of in-depth discussion of a topic that I have enjoyed so much here and continue to look forward to. I don’t really know of any other writers covering quite the same territory that you cover.
My comment is that I am very sympathetic to pretty much all of the issues and difficulties you have laid out here for what I have sometimes thought of as the shadow side to not only youth sport, but many highly competitive youth activities. In my own young life, I had the good fortune of playing both competitive sports and studying a musical instrument. I was side-lined by an injuy on the sports side, which although it was not major, kept me out for a season and I was never able to catch back up with my peers. At the same time, I continued my music studies, with the thought that I might study in college. What I learned in short order out of high-school was that I was an average player and did not have the abilities to succeed at a collegiate level. It was a hard reality to accept at the time. Many of my talented friends continued to pursue their dreams of music performance and they faced nearly all of the difficulties you have outlined: injury, social isolation, physical and emotional habits that made playing easier but made off-the-stage activities difficult, and steep odds to an actual job at the end of their studies. It seemed to me that those challenges cut across the performing arts from instrumentalists to dancers. The people I knew who were successful really were quite outstanding in the very specific demands of their discipline, and even with their natural talent, had to maintain a laser-like focus to stand out at a national level and professional level.
It has always seemed paradoxical to me that, as a culture, we demand the highest levels of performance from entertainers (on the field and on the stage), and yet we also participate in those same activities at a young age with little concern for how “entertaining” our activity might be. When we pay money to watch, it seems to me that our expectations as an audience/fan change dramatically. I’m curious to know what your thoughts are on that change in expectations?
Looking forward to final installment!
reddyb
January 22, 2016
Hey Jon,
Thank you for the nice words.
That’s a very good point about musicians. I’ve thought many of the same things could apply, but don’t have any personal experience. Hearing your story, it makes a lot of sense. This is one reason I’ve heard “Whiplash” resonated with some musicians. While many thought it was over the top, I’ve heard others go, “No, that’s how it was for me.” I’ve tended to believe the latter. That many don’t know what obsession really looks like. It’s rare enough many haven’t been exposed to it. I wonder if you or those talented people you know, have seen it?
Another potential parallel between the two is essentially an exploitation of participants financially. This seems to be happening more and more at the youth level, at least with sports. For example, I’m seeing more and more high school sports on television. In certain states, these are games which draw 30,000 people in the stadium, so who knows how many TV viewers.
*A lot* of people are making money off this. The athletes make zero. If the athletes ever do make money as an adult, they are basically the last people paid. I’ve heard this is how the music industry is. You pretty much get zero money until you make it very big, and even then the percentage you’re making is a pittance to what you bring in. Basically, the older people all get paid first. (Macklemore has a good song, “Jimmy Iovine,” about this. The movie “Straight Outta Compton” showed some dark sides of the industry as well.)
Your point about expectation is spot on. I’m not sure we even have to pay to watch for this to happen. It we follow the endeavor, we seem to be this way. Based on the way the media responds to things, and rules of the system, the standards we hold e.g. NCAA athletes to are pretty crazy. Good grades, good citizens, no underage drinking, never take money for working (playing), never take anything which can be construed as a gift for working, never have a verbal argument with a significant other which others hear about, don’t do anything too fun once you turn 21, be polite every week when multiple cameras are thrown in your face with journalists trying to get their quote for the week. Oh, and be an amazing athlete this whole time.
The best dissections I’ve seen of this type of stuff, essentially celebrity culture, have been by Dr. Drew. The thing which most resonated with me, from one of his books “The Mirror Effect,” was perhaps this mindset is like the short story “The Lottery.” Everyone is nervous when the lottery is going on, talking about it, distracted by it. When the person wins, their is jubilation. Everyone is celebrating. Someone has been brought to a very high, manufactured, status bar. But other than this one thing, they’re just a regular person.
In the short story, the winner of “The Lottery” you later find out ends up being stoned to death. Each year one person was chosen through the system to be sacrificed for the greater good of society. Some type of cleansing if you will.
Dr. Drew made a great point in how we cyclically make and destroy celebrities. As we’re seeing whether they win the lottery, whether they “make it,” it’s all excitement and adulation. After they’ve won, we can’t outright stone people anymore, but any imperfection can’t be tolerated. Once these imperfections inevitably arise, we start throwing modern stones. Magazines, cameras, journalists, social media.
It’s a very interesting read, and more eloquently put in the book, as it ties back to the increase of narcissism in America.
jonbreaux
February 10, 2016
Hey Brian,
Great points about the money in youth sports these days (I too have high school sports regularly broadcast on cable where I live) and the connection to celebrity culture. I had not considered the topic from that angle. I’ll look up the Mirror Effect.
I have not seen Whiplash, but I did know musicians who struggled to strike a balance between the demands of conservatory and career and living out their personal life. On the one hand, I felt then that their struggles were very similar to other students in pre-med or high-level engineering tracts, but then again, there was something different for them in terms of their personal connection to the instrument and the discipline – maybe this is the possibility of celebrity and fame that you mention? I’ll have to think on it more.
Anyway, just saw this article today related to the discussion
Women who play sports are more successful. That’s another perspective as well.
reddyb
February 12, 2016
The possibility of celebrity and fame is certainly a factor. I think with music or sports, the intensity of the obsession can be narrowed as well. Someone may love and have a calling for medicine, or for mechanical things, but those are broad disciplines. Compared to saxophone, or one sport.
Age is a big factor too. For many, by the time their music or sports career is over, other careers are just getting started. Surgeons don’t really start practicing ’til like 35. While their no doubt passionate, at that point life has a lot of other things going on. Tough to be as connected to the endeavor as a 21 year old.
Thanks for sending that link over. I have something coming about some benefits from playing, as there are certainly some. That article answered some of its own questions though. Its title should be more like “Women who were very good at sports are more successful.” Which of course, if you’re a good athlete, even you don’t make it pro, you’re probably taller, have more confidence, healthier, have more muscle, in shape, have been more physically active. Of course that’s going to help. But that doesn’t mean the sport was necessary. Or solely responsible. You can have all those things without playing anything.
It referenced a study on how many drop out of sports by 13. By 13, sports are getting serious. It’s not alarming so many drop out by that point as that’s when you need to start being good enough to participate. Healthy enough to put up with higher training loads. You also need to be good enough to enjoy it. Getting beat by other people over and over again, sitting on the bench, is not fun.
This is what I was trying to show to start off the series. Culturally, we seem to assume youth activity must equal playing sports. It doesn’t have to be that way. If anything, I’d say there needs to be less focus on getting kids, including girls, to play sports. And more concern on why we can’t seem to figure out other ways to get the benefits of sports without obsessing about playing them. Because you can’t get the benefits of sports without the detriments of them. You can’t get the benefits without injury risk, without it getting serious, without recruiting getting involved, without money getting involved.
Because when you’re physically going toe to toe with somebody, by the teenage years, that’s going to be serious. The only way we change that is to change evolution.