Knowing the Sport for your Sprout; how to harvest talent

By Dana Malcolm

Staff Writer

#TurksandCaicos, June 25, 2022 – The Caribbean has certain sports that we are attached to cricket, track, and field, football, netball, volleyball, and swimming.  All of those are our traditional sporting activities and many children get streamlined into them as soon as they show a speck of talent but are they always right for your child?

During his lecture on “Choosing the Right Sport”, Dave Farmer explained the physicality of sports and how body makeup can influence what sport you should choose for your child.  The first hurdle he explained was getting them to stay committed when they weren’t winning. He explained how boys can become discouraged because of the way that sports are set by age.

In sports systems that use this model, early developers tend to surpass better long-term athletes because they are more developed for their age.

“The data is incredibly strong that this is a terrible waste of talent. The athletes who could be your best senior athletes are late developers and they drop out early. “The situation was almost the opposite for girls.

“Young girls develop mature female characteristics not always helpful for sport and so they tend to get beaten by younger girls so the early developers go.” He said protecting athletes as they went through this process was key for their confidence. He said this protection was part of what Long Term Athlete Development was about.

“It’s about growth and development and the stage of development of the athlete in real-time, working with those athletes and doing what’s best for them right now.”

Instead of grading them by age, child athletes should be graded in stages of development. For example, he explained that 6-8 years old for girls and 6-9 years old for boys is when they should be learning fundamental movement skills. Letting them go wild with running, jumping, and kicking instead of sports skills.

From 8-9 years old on to the end of adolescence, they should then be sampled or allowed to take part in as many sports as they would like.

“They may have no idea what they are good at or what they will love if they never get a chance to try it they never will know, If you want to develop all the talent you’ve got it is important to give them the opportunity to try many sports.

It might sound difficult but an easy answer to this, he explained, is P.E. in schools.  In implementing a system like this the Turks and Caicos could harvest much more talent in girls and boys leading early developers and late bloomers to the sports in which they can truly excel.