Are We Losing Our Young Athletes? Or Are We Losing Sight of Why They Play?

I’ve been thinking a great deal about the future of youth sport.

Recently, an article about declining participation in swimming in the United States caught my attention. It raised some uncomfortable questions, not simply about swimming, but about the environments we are creating for young people across sport.

The more I explored the research, the more concerned I became.

While participation trends differ between sports, countries and age groups, there are some worrying patterns emerging. We are seeing challenges with adolescent retention, increasing financial barriers, pressure to perform, and young athletes describing experiences that leave them feeling inadequate, unsupported or disconnected from the sports they once enjoyed.

And I find myself asking a question that I believe deserves far more attention:

Are we losing young athletes because they no longer want to participate, or are we creating sporting experiences they no longer want to be part of?

I don’t believe there is one simple answer. But I do believe we have a responsibility to ask.

Sport Is One of the Few Places Where Young People Still Have to Do Hard Things

We live in a world where so much has become immediate.

Information is available at the touch of a button. Technology can simplify difficult tasks, provide instant answers and, increasingly, remove the need to struggle through the process of finding solutions.

But sport is different.

You cannot download fitness. You cannot shortcut the hours required to develop a skill. You cannot ask technology to experience the discomfort of a difficult training session, manage your nerves on the starting line or recover emotionally from a disappointing performance.

You have to show up.

You have to practise, make mistakes, experience setbacks, learn, adapt and try again.

And I think that is one of the most valuable things sport still offers our young people.

It provides an environment where they can develop resilience, discipline, patience, self-awareness and the ability to navigate challenges that cannot simply be avoided.

But here is where I think we need to be careful.

There is a significant difference between helping an athlete learn to do difficult things and making their sporting experience unnecessarily difficult.

Challenge is essential for growth. Fear, humiliation, constant comparison and feeling that you are never good enough are not.

Our responsibility is not to remove the challenge from sport. It is to create environments where athletes feel supported and capable of engaging with that challenge.

Have We Narrowed Our Definition of Success Too Much?

Somewhere along the way, I wonder whether we have allowed our definition of sporting success to become far too narrow.

Times. Rankings. Medals. Selection. Scholarships. Results.

I am a competitive coach. I understand ambition, performance and the enormous satisfaction that comes from pursuing excellence.

I would never suggest that we should lower our standards or stop encouraging athletes to strive for extraordinary things.

But when these outcomes become the only meaningful measures of success, what happens to the athlete who is improving but not winning?

What happens to the young person who is working incredibly hard but developing at a different rate?

What happens when a child begins to believe that their value, or the approval of the adults around them, depends on their performance?

I have seen how easily an athlete’s relationship with their sport can become dominated by what they haven’t achieved rather than what they are learning, experiencing and becoming.

And I think we need to ask ourselves whether we are sometimes contributing to that.

High standards and positive experiences are not opposites.

An athlete can be challenged, held accountable, expected to work hard and encouraged to pursue excellence while still feeling valued, supported and excited about the process.

In fact, I believe those things should strengthen one another.

Swimming is the environment I know intimately.

It is where I have spent years working with athletes, parents and coaches. It is where I have witnessed extraordinary personal growth, remarkable performances, deep friendships and the confidence that comes from achieving something once thought impossible.

It is also where I have seen young people become disillusioned, lose confidence or gradually disconnect from something they once loved.

But the more I look at what is happening across youth sport, the more convinced I become that this conversation cannot remain confined to swimming pools.

Research from different sporting environments points to concerns about retention, affordability, negative coaching experiences, pressure and a loss of enjoyment.

Not every sport is declining. Some are growing, and that is important to acknowledge. But growth in participation numbers does not automatically mean that every athlete is having a positive experience.

Nor does it tell us how many young people are leaving, why they are leaving, or whether they will continue to participate in sport as they grow older.

I think we need to become far more interested in those questions.

Because losing an athlete from a competitive programme is not necessarily the same as losing them from sport altogether.

And surely our responsibility extends beyond producing the next champion.

Shouldn’t we also be trying to develop young people who want sport, movement, challenge and personal growth to remain part of their lives long after their competitive careers have ended?

When the Noise Around Sport Becomes Louder Than the Sport Itself

Across many sporting environments, we are witnessing increasingly public conversations about leadership, governance, accountability and transparency.

I want to be very clear about something.

I firmly believe that those entrusted with leading our sporting organisations must be held accountable.

Difficult questions need to be asked. Concerns need to be addressed. Transparency, fairness and integrity should never be negotiable.

We should never shy away from necessary action simply because it creates discomfort or challenges those in positions of authority.

Our athletes deserve sporting structures that are responsible, trustworthy and committed to serving the people they represent.

But alongside these necessary conversations, I am becoming increasingly concerned about something else.

The sheer volume of negativity, conflict, frustration and uncertainty surrounding sport can become overwhelming.

And I wonder whether we fully appreciate how far that emotional burden travels.

It travels with coaches onto pool decks, fields, tracks and courts.

Coaches who may already be stretched thin, trying to maintain their enthusiasm and commitment while navigating circumstances far beyond the athletes standing in front of them.

It travels into our homes, around dinner tables and into cars on the way home from training and competition.

It becomes part of the conversations our children hear about their coaches, clubs, sporting organisations and the future of their sport.

And I think we need to ask ourselves:

What are our young athletes taking away from these conversations?

Are we unintentionally teaching them that sport is a place of constant conflict, disappointment and distrust?

Are our own frustrations changing the way we show up for them?

Are we allowing circumstances beyond their control to influence experiences that should belong to them?

I am certainly not suggesting that we remain silent, overlook wrongdoing or stop demanding better.

Quite the opposite.

I believe we must be able to do both: stand firmly for accountability and integrity while remaining equally intentional about protecting the experiences of our athletes.

And protecting those experiences does not mean hiding legitimate concerns from young people. It means discussing them honestly, appropriately and constructively, without asking children to carry the emotional weight of every adult disagreement.

As coaches and parents, we cannot always control what happens in our sporting structures.

But we can take responsibility for the conversations we have, the attitudes we bring into training and the emotional environments we create.

Perhaps this is another part of the participation conversation we have been overlooking.

It is not only about whether young people have access to sport.

It is also about whether the adults around them are helping to preserve their desire to remain part of it.

Through my work with Complete Athlete and Aqua Athlete, I have become increasingly passionate about the quality of the experiences we create for athletes.

Not simply whether they perform well, but how they experience themselves, their challenges, their progress and the people around them.

I want athletes to experience the satisfaction of working hard towards something meaningful.

I want them to discover that they are capable of more than they initially believed.

I want them to feel the excitement of learning something new, the confidence that comes from progress and the sense of belonging that develops when they feel genuinely supported.

And I want them to understand that a disappointing result does not diminish their value or erase the work they have done.

Much of my work is influenced by the science of flow and the conditions that help people become deeply engaged in what they are doing.

Curiosity. Novelty. Passion. Purpose. Clear goals. Immediate feedback. An appropriate balance between challenge and skill.

These are not simply concepts that belong in performance psychology textbooks.

They are practical opportunities available to us as coaches.

When did we last introduce something genuinely new into a training session?

When did we last encourage athletes to become curious about their own development rather than simply follow instructions?

When did we last help them connect what they were doing today with something personally meaningful?

When did we last provide feedback that helped an athlete recognise progress rather than only identify what was wrong?

And when did we last ask an athlete how they were actually experiencing their sport?

I don’t believe every training session needs to be entertaining or enjoyable in the conventional sense.

There will always be difficult sessions, repetition, frustration and days when things simply don’t go well.

But those experiences can still be meaningful.

An athlete can finish an exhausting session feeling challenged, accomplished and proud.

Or they can finish that same session feeling inadequate, defeated and disconnected.

The physical work might be identical.

The experience can be completely different.

We Cannot Ignore the Cost of Participation

There is another uncomfortable reality that we cannot overlook.

Sport is becoming increasingly expensive for many families.

Coaching fees, equipment, travel, accommodation, competition entries and the demands of specialised programmes can place enormous pressure on households.

In South Africa, we also have to recognise that many children face barriers long before questions of competitive retention arise.

Access to facilities, safe environments, transport, quality coaching and opportunities to participate are not equally available.

This is particularly evident in swimming, where learning to swim is itself inaccessible to many children.

We cannot talk seriously about long-term athlete participation without acknowledging that some young people never receive a fair opportunity to begin.

And we need to be careful not to create environments where financial resources become confused with potential, commitment or talent.

I don’t pretend there are easy solutions to the cost of sport.

But I do believe we should continually question how we can make meaningful sporting opportunities more accessible and sustainable.

Because a child’s opportunity to discover what they are capable of should not depend entirely on what their family can afford.

Parents, We Have an Enormous Influence

I often think about the conversations that take place in the car after training or competition.

They may seem insignificant, but I suspect they can have a lasting influence on how young athletes interpret their experiences.

What is the first thing we ask?

Did you win?

What time did you swim?

Why didn’t you make the team?

What happened in that race?

There is nothing inherently wrong with discussing results. Performance is part of sport.

But what if we became more curious about the experience?

What did you enjoy today?

What was difficult?

What are you proud of?

What did you learn?

What would you like to work on next?

What was the best part of being there?

Those conversations can help young people develop ownership of their sporting journeys rather than feeling that every performance is an evaluation of their worth.

And perhaps we also need to be more conscious of how we speak about coaches, officials, other athletes and sporting organisations in front of our children.

We can disagree. We can raise concerns. We can insist on fairness.

But we can also demonstrate how to navigate disagreement constructively and respectfully.

Our children are learning from far more than the advice we deliberately give them.

They are learning from how we respond when things don’t go our way.

Coaches, We Need to Look After Ourselves Too

This is something I feel strongly about, and it is something I have had to reflect on in my own coaching journey.

Coaching can be enormously rewarding, and simultaneously emotionally exhausting.

We carry expectations, responsibilities, difficult conversations, administrative pressures, financial realities and sometimes the frustrations of sporting environments that feel increasingly complicated.

And when we are tired, overwhelmed or disillusioned, it can become harder to show up as the coaches we want to be.

Our patience can become shorter.

Our creativity can disappear and our enthusiasm can fade.

Without necessarily intending to, we can begin passing our frustrations on to the athletes in front of us.

I certainly don’t say this from a position of having everything figured out.

I say it because I recognise how important it is to remain aware of my own emotional state and the influence it can have on the people I coach.

If I want to create positive, meaningful performance experiences for athletes, I need to take responsibility for how I show up.

That includes recognising when I need rest, support, perspective or an opportunity to reconnect with why I coach in the first place.

We cannot expect coaches to carry every challenge in sport without support.

But equally, we cannot ignore the influence our emotional wellbeing has on the environments we create.

The coach’s experience matters because it inevitably influences the athlete’s experience.

And perhaps looking after ourselves is not separate from our responsibility to our athletes.

Perhaps it is part of it.

What Are We Actually Trying to Develop?

I keep returning to this question.

What is the purpose of youth sport?

Of course we want to develop skilled, capable and competitive athletes.

We want to celebrate achievement and encourage young people to pursue excellence.

But surely our ambitions should extend beyond the scoreboard.

We are also developing people.

Young people who are learning how to manage disappointment, work with others, take responsibility, solve problems, navigate uncertainty and develop confidence in their own abilities.

Sport provides an extraordinary environment in which to learn these things.

But simply participating in sport does not guarantee that those lessons will be positive.

The environment, relationships, conversations, and the standards we uphold are all important factors.

And the way athletes feel about themselves within those environments matters.

I believe we need to become more intentional about measuring success not only through medals, rankings and results, but also through the experiences we create and the relationships young people develop with sport.

Are our athletes growing in confidence?

Are they developing independence?

Are they learning to manage challenge?

Do they feel supported and valued?

Are they curious about improving?

And perhaps one of the most important questions of all:

Do they still want to come back tomorrow?

The Responsibility Belongs to All of Us

I don’t believe the challenges facing youth sport can be solved by coaches alone.

Parents, clubs, schools, administrators, sporting organisations and communities all have a role to play.

We need sporting structures that are transparent and accountable.

We need opportunities that are accessible.

We need coaches who are supported, educated and encouraged to keep developing.

We need parents who understand the influence they have on their children’s sporting experiences.

And we need to listen more carefully to the athletes themselves.

Not simply when they are winning.

Not only when something has gone wrong.

But throughout their journeys.

We need to remain curious about what makes sport meaningful to them, what challenges them, what motivates them and what might be pushing them away.

Because if we only begin asking questions once an athlete has decided to leave, we may already have missed opportunities to make a difference.

A Challenge to Ourselves

I love sport.

I love what it can teach us, the relationships it can create and the extraordinary moments that emerge when people discover what they are capable of.

I have experienced those moments as a coach, and they continue to remind me why this work matters so much.

But loving sport also means being willing to question the things we have come to accept as normal.

It means acknowledging where we can do better.

It means recognising that our own experiences, frustrations and expectations can influence the young people we work with.

And it means taking responsibility for the environments we create, even when there are bigger challenges beyond our control.

I don’t believe we need to make sport easier.

I believe we need to make the experience of doing hard things more meaningful, supportive and accessible.

We need to create environments where young people can pursue excellence without losing their sense of worth.

Where they can experience disappointment without feeling defeated as people.

Where accountability and high standards coexist with compassion, curiosity and respect.

And where the adults responsible for sport remember that their influence extends far beyond a result.

Because when a young person walks away from sport, I think we should care about more than the loss of a potential champion.

We should care about the experiences that led them to that decision.

We should care about what they may be leaving behind.

And we should ask whether there was something we could have done differently.

Perhaps the most important measure of our success is not only how many athletes we help reach the podium, but how many leave our care with a stronger belief in themselves, a positive relationship with challenge and a desire to remain connected to sport.

That is the kind of impact I want to have.

And it is the kind of conversation I believe we need to be having across every sporting code.

 

Tracey Hemphill

Complete Athlete | Aqua Athlete

Creating positive, meaningful performance experiences for athletes and the people who support them.