Why don't some kids play sports? Maybe you should ask them

Where are the kids who aren’t playing?

It’s a question that gets to the heart of the mission of the Aspen Institute’s Project Play, a national initiative driving to get to 63% youth sports participation by 2030.

Right now, we are around 55%.

Last week, when I explored the misleading statistic that 7 out of 10 kids quit sports by 13, I wrote about how parents and coaches can work to fight attrition from youth sports, an issue that persists.

Pushing toward the 63% goal, though, perhaps we can better understand which kids aren’t participating in sports and why.

It’s a question Michele LaBotz, a sports medicine physician who works extensively in pediatrics, has challenged me to explore during our ongoing correspondence about youth sports.

“I have found that the decision to drop out of sport is often not determined by a single ‘decision point,’ but reflects a process,” LaBotz, the medical director of the athletic training program at the University of New England, wrote to me in an email. “In my experience, this is often the emergence of other priorities that markedly increases the opportunity cost for sport participation, and leads athletes to decide that the time and energy spent in sport is no longer worthwhile.”

We can all better understand what our kids are going through with sports. Thinking more about that process, and why they are dropping out (or not playing at all), can give us insight to counsel them. While they may decide to stop at some point, here are five tips to help keep the option of playing sports on the table.

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1. Use the 'Power of the permit': Getting everyone engaged - and pushing against the grain - is essential to a successful youth sports experience

Youth sports participation generally correlates with income. The percentage of kids ages 6-17 who played organized sports in 2024 was 20.2 percentage points lower in homes with incomes under $25,000 compared to those who played from homes earning $100,000 or more.

The Aspen Institute’s State of Play 2025 report also conveys how, according to federal data, children from the lowest-income homes played sports in 2023 at half the rate of those from the highest-income group.

The disparities get to the heart of how Aspen’s Project Play imparts the role of getting more kids involved in cities and counties. According to Aspen, youth sports are largely delivered by community-based organizations, while city and county governments may establish permitting processes and regulations for sports events and activities held on public property.

In other words, they have the “power of the permit,” meaning they own the fields and can dictate the terms of use and who's using it.

“It can be used to tamp down early travel team culture, which often is the core problem, by prioritizing rec and community-based play or prioritizing that, ‘Oh, there are enough girls-only teams who are using our fields or there are enough local teams who are using our fields,’ and it's not just travel teams coming in from the suburbs or whatever to utilize it,” Jon Solomon, Aspen Sports & Society’s research director, told USA TODAY Sports this week. “The municipalities really have a lot more power than they may realize to sort of dictate some of these terms that then can improve access for kids and families.”

As youth coaches, we have more power than we think, too. Resist the temptation to play your strongest kids most of the time in the interest of winning, or to appease the parents of those kids who complain when their sons or daughters have to sit.

Instead, be a rock of strength for your players, and put everyone in situations to compete and learn. Tell them you believe in them when they put in great effort. Confidence from a coach will keep kids coming back.

2. Understand that sports is not 'all or nothing': Going back and forth, and trying something new, can be invigorating

I have spoken extensively with LaBotz, who also has been an associate professor at the Tufts University School of Medicine, about a question that nags youth athletes and their parents: When should they specialize in a sport?

The issue is deeply personal to her, as her daughter Anna, now 26, struggled with her physical and mental health while pursuing gymnastics from an early age. Medical research tells us that taking a month, a season, or even a year off from a sport can bring us back refreshed.

More kids recognizing that sport participation is not "all or nothing" is a key to us achieving the 63% participation rate by 2030, LaBotz says.

“Dropping out should not be a ‘one way ticket,’ and there should be opportunities to re-engage or change trajectory at any point,” she says.

Solomon, Aspen Sports & Society’s research director, says parents can better understand it’s OK to go back and forth between the two main pathways in youth sports: Participation and performance. Participation involves intramurals and has no cuts, while performance has cuts. It is often billed as a way to put kids on “track” to achieving a goal like making a high school team or playing a varsity sport in college.

“We seem to be of this belief that you have to pick one and just stay on one,” Solomon says. “You could be on the performance pathway but the child … it might not be right for them or it's too expensive for the family or it takes too much time. It's OK to take a step back and go more to the participation pathway. Maybe it’s temporary and to find that joy again and then (you) switch back later.”

Is it worth it? 10 questions athletes should consider if they play on a travel team

3. Parents can better control their egos. They often just get in the way of their kids' sports experience.

Aspen Sports & Society has determined, based on its youth surveys, that the average age in which a child quits sports is 12.

Youth sports participation declines after that, in part, because many middle school and high school sports are "cut" sports and not everyone makes the team.

“This is the stage of life when kids begin worrying a lot more about how they are judged by their peers, and getting cut from a team or performing poorly can lead to being made fun of — devastating at that age,” says Brian Gotta, the founder of San Diego-based Help Kids Play, which strives to make youth sports more enjoyable, accessible and safe. “Ironically, many of these kids who go on to college will pick a sport back up again there in intramurals, because everyone knows it's just for fun and isn't to be taken seriously. The answer is to find a way to offer rec sports options that emulate the college intramural experience for kids in middle and high school.”

Parents drive a youth culture that often feels based on far-fetched beliefs that our kids will be future stars, or at least they will be part of the 6 or 7% that plays in college.

However, Gotta pushes back against the idea that scholarship chasing is the primary driver of the travel sports obsession.

“In my experience working in youth sports for 40 years, most overbearing sports parents aren't doing the math on college scholarships,” Gotta says. “They're driven by ego and fear of their child failing. The scholarship narrative lets parents off the hook a little too easily and misdiagnoses the real problem.”

Failing, while not an enjoyable experience, is necessary and instructive in our lives, even as adults. There’s even a Duke University professor who has taught a class called “Learning to Fail.”

4. 'Find balance': Manage your priorities (sports or otherwise) to fit your needs

The 63% participation goal is tied to organized sports, and it doesn’t fit every kid. LaBotz, who has been practicing medicine for three decades and has raised a daughter into adulthood, has come to recognize that social, academic and financial factors pull us away from sports, sometimes no matter how much we still enjoy them.

“As adults, we talk about ‘finding balance’ in our lives,” she says, “many youth(s) leave sport in efforts to find balance in theirs.”

Linda Flanagan, author of “Take Back the Game: How Money and Mania Are Ruining Kids' Sports - and Why It Matters,” raised three kids (now in their late 20s or early 30s) with different sports appetites. She says one of them didn’t want to commit himself to sports, not because he was a bad athlete, but because he just wasn’t into them.

But her other son was a good multisport athlete who didn’t play in college but enjoys staying fit in adulthood. He plans to run the Boston Marathon on Monday, April 20.

In a LinkedIn post this week, Flanagan pushed back at “the conflation of 'playing sports' with 'exercising.'"

“Sports advocates — including me! — extol the virtues of youth sports participation for its physical, social, and emotional advantages,” wrote Flanagan, a former high school track and cross country coach. “OK, but what about the kids who go to the gym after school, or who run alone or in a group, or loop around at the skateboard park? Don’t children who engage in these unstructured activities derive most of the same benefits? And which is healthier, sitting on the bench or the bleachers for three hours while your teammates compete, or running by yourself for 40 minutes?”

She told USA TODAY Sports in an email her marathoner son started focusing on basketball as a junior in high school, played varsity for 3 years and, most recently, has averaged 80 miles a week of running for the last 12 weeks.

“He has never been terribly injured — ACL or broken ankle — which we attribute to his athletic well-roundedness,” Flanagan says. “Though he’s very serious about running —especially now! — he has always played many sports and loves to jump into random games, like pickleball.”

We need to allow our kids to navigate their own interests, especially healthful activities that make them happy, whether they are sports, fitness, theater, music or otherwise.

5. If we love sports, we can go into them with an understanding we can always pick up another one

How do you go from a college walk-on, having never rowed before, to winning a gold medal at the world rowing championships?

It’s a question host Linda Martindale asked Cara Stawicki to begin a recent episode of Martindale’s "Game Changers" podcast.

Cara Stawicki, right, and Margaret Bertasi of the USA won the gold medal in the lightweight women's pair at the 2019 World Rowing Championships in Linz, Austria.

Stawicki had been a competitive swimmer in high school and was ready for a change. She wasn’t so sure about rowing. In fact, she had never done it before.

“It wasn’t like love at first row,” she told Martindale.

It’s the way we can feel about activities we grow to love. Even then, she asked herself, “Is this love?”

As a former collegiate rower − and someone, like Stawicki, who started the sport from scratch in college – I completely understand.

Sometimes with our pursuits that are difficult, our “love” for them is more of a connection, something that makes us more whole. With rowing, which is grueling, just getting through a workout with your teammates – often at the crack of dawn − makes you feel like you got something out of it.

After Stawicki graduated from Lehigh, and continued to train as part of the working world, it became another level of seriousness and dedication.

“I don’t know if I ever thought I’m really good at this,” she told Martindale.

But she made her first national team at 34. She ended her career in the sport after about 25 years, on her own terms. My career lasted three years, as I decided to spend my senior year pursuing career opportunities and socializing with the rest of the world.

“Sometimes it’s like, ‘What’s your why?’ ” Stawicki said. “You know, why are you doing this?”

She and I both had an answer to this question, for her to continue, for me to stop.

It’s a question we can ask our kids, too. If they don’t have an answer, maybe it’s time to try something new.

Borelli, aka Coach Steve, has been an editor and writer with USA TODAY since 1999. He spent 10 years coaching his two sons’ baseball and basketball teams. He and his wife, Colleen, are now sports parents for two high schoolers. His Coach Steve column is posted weekly. For his past columns, click here.

Got a question for Coach Steve you want answered in a column? Email him atsborelli@usatoday.com

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Why do kids play youth sports? The answer might surprise you