Athletics are one of the main cornerstones to young children's lives. Participation in organized sports teaches :

• Respect For Authority
• Cooperation With Others
• Sportsmanship
• Motor Skill Development

Athletics also provide excellent exercise opportunities and the beginning of a healthy competitive framework that can lead to future success. Finally, success on the playing field can be a powerful determinant to children's feeling about themselves. A child who is successful at play generally has high levels of personal confidence and self-worth. Due to the importance of athletics, parents, teachers and coaches must take a more active role in insuring a child's success and happiness in sports.

First, you need to erase in your minds the most pervasive, destructive myth that exists concerning childhood sports. That is:

"THE MYTH OF THE NATURAL ATHLETE"

Take a minute and recall your childhood. Wasn't there always a couple of children in each grade that were clearly better than everyone else when playing sports? Maybe, you were even one of them. They were always the team captains or were always the most sought after players. Probably, they seemed to be equally good at all sports; excelling in hitting balls, throwing balls, catching balls and so on. Logically, everyone considered them great natural athletes.

Let's think about this. The myth contains three main assumptions. First, a child through his genetics, is born either highly athletic or not. Second, athletic talent reflects a group of highly related physical abilities. Third, the abilities are relatively unchanging; that is, once a natural, always a natural.

As sports scientists, we can guarantee you that the entire body of scientific, physiological and biomechanical research contradicts these assumptions. Hundreds of studies have proven that one small athletic skill is a result of many different unrelated abilities. Take throwing a baseball for example. It is a combination of many different abilities including multi-limb coordination, speed of limb movement, lower body strength, finger dexterity, tricep mass, arm/hand sturdiness, aiming, agility, balance, vision, etc. No one child is born with a genetic package that insures success relative to others when considering these abilities.

Chances are the "natural athletes" of childhood could throw a ball better because they were slightly more physically mature than their teammates. Or due to effective parental encouragement and a transfer of specialized knowledge from parents, coaches or older siblings.

Believing that any child can become a successful athlete requires you to explode the natural athlete myth. We'll even provide you with the weapon:

M

You will need to replace the myth with a specific goal and a direction to move to attain that goal. It has already been established that success and happiness in organized sports will lead to a number of highly positive physical, personal and social results so the following goal is a good one:

To help my child to achieve as much success and happiness from athletics as is possible.

With this goal firmly in mind, there are two critical areas we must address.

Area One: Sport Election. Look at the name Sport Election carefully. It implies that children should make informed choices about the specific sports that they will be competing in. These choices should have the guidance and support of parents. For this to happen parents need to know the game(s) that their child is best suited for and most interested in.

Area Two: Ability Development. Ability Development is different from Skill Development. Athletic Abilities form the basis for Athletic Skills. As in our previous example, throwing a baseball to strike out a batter is a skill. The Abilities that underlie that skill are many, including limb coordination, limb speed, lower body strength, finger dexterity, aiming, agility, balance, among others. Concentrating on specific Ability Development greatly increases a child's chance of being successful in a chosen sport.

It follows that:

Concentrating on athletic Ability Development in the sport(s) that the child elects virtually assures success.

Before beginning the step by step approach this book offers, we want you to think carefully about the fact that athletic talent shouldn't be treated as just a game. It should be as highly valued by you and your child as are academic or artistic talents. Think about both sides of the performance coin. On the negative side, one half to three quarters of adult men polled say that their first, most enduring failure was in sports. On the positive side, almost all men polled relate a specific sport moment as the best moment of their youth. I remember a story told to me by the President and Chief Executive Officer of a multi-billion dollar international conglomerate who came to me for help back in 1980 at Penn State. He was an accomplished amateur runner and biker, however he described himself as a scrawny kid with glasses and lots of fears on the ball fields. He was a man who had risen to the virtual top of the corporate ladder, had a beautiful wife, a pack of bright, healthy kids and a history of tremendous personal accomplishment. One day he told me that the most prized moment in his life came when he was 11 years old and found himself on first base after being walked by the opposing pitcher in the last inning of a Little League game. Simply getting on base was both thrilling and terribly scary for him because he normally sat the bench or struck out. His story was that with two outs and the score tied, the batter behind him hit a double to left field. As he ran around the bases, his third base coach waved him in to score. The catcher received the ball from left field about 10 feet before he reached homeplate. All the catcher needed to do was tag him out and to hold on to the ball. He said the catcher was the biggest kid in the school and a bully. According to his account, instead of sliding, he ran full blast into this big guy and knocked the ball out of his hand while scoring the winning run. He told me that at that moment he knew that he could accomplish anything in life. He continued on to say that before important deals or decisions all he needs to remember is that incident and he is fine. This is only one story of the millions of stories that could be told. Athletic performance is more than a game, it can be a basis for a productive and happy life. As a parent you should value your child's continued interest and success in Sports for a few additional reasons as well. First, if your children are focused on athletics, they are less likely to have a large amount of free time on their hands to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Just as you are not able to whisper and shout simultaneously, you child can't be practicing on the Little League field and be climbing over a junkyard fence while his friends steal car radios at the same moment. Secondly, you should be aware we live in a nation of sports consumers. Mega millions of dollars are transferred yearly into scholarship budgets for athletic participation ranging from football to field hockey. With the average yearly cost of a college education climbing beyond $20,000 in today's market, and an expectation of it doubling over the next five to eight years, athletic scholarships are becoming a desirable method of receiving higher education. Related to this is the fact that athletics generate hundreds of thousands of job ranging from administrative to physical rehabilitation. Not forgetting of course the athletes themselves who routinely command multi-million dollar salaries for average performance. Finally, a number of the Abilities learned throughout this book will be useful in many other areas of life. The Concentration Abilities learned in Mental Training section will be useful in academics as well as in the workplace in later life. The Relaxation Abilities taught in that module will eliminate the debilitating effects of test anxiety and interview apprehension. The Reaction Time Abilities outlined in a later section will someday help your child to react to and avoid another car as it runs a red light. The list is near endless.

We hope that you enjoy this unique book and that it becomes a tool to help you to develop a stronger relationship between you and your child. Just remember, approach all Abilities with a positive frame of mind and make sure to teach your child that it is not necessary to win all the time. Children need to value good preparation, correct training, the enjoyment of competition and consistent personal improvement rather than simply winning.

Good luck. Practice does not make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect.