In 2026, you can head to any sports field on a Saturday morning full of enthusiasm (“We got a park AND we’re on time for warm-up! No one forgot their mouthguard! Thank goodness – the good coffee van is here this week!) and a couple of hours later, you may (like us) walk away and wonder what on earth is happening in the world of kids sport. And if you did, you wouldn’t be alone.
Libby Trickett, my cohost on Sportish (and sister-in-law) come at sport from two very different perspectives. Libby is a three-time Olympian, four-time Olympic gold medallist, winner of World Championships and Commonwealth Games medals.
Somewhere at the other end of that spectrum, I’m more of a ‘classic all-rounder’, who nearly made a state team at 15 for softball and coaches an Under-10 Div 4 netball team on the weekend. And yet we both see a very big problem.
It’s not a lack of fields or facilities, and it’s not the lack of opportunities for girls (although these are all important issues that should be further discussed). In Australia, we’ve developed a very toxic relationship with sport. And the symptoms are everywhere.
We see it in the statistics.
Kids in Australia are playing huge amounts of sport up until the age of 12 – a massive 70 per cent. But by the time those kids turn 20, we’ve lost 50 per cent of them from sport.
The drop-out rate happens around the ages of 13 and 14, with girls overrepresented.
Many hide behind statements like ‘but life gets busy’ and ‘she’s got a part-time job’ and while that is true, it’s not the only factor at play.
From Libby’s perspective, it’s easy to see why this drop-out occurs.
At a swimming club night in January, the organiser was asking Libby whether she knew the PB (personal best) times of her eldest girl, Poppy (aged 10) so she could be entered into another competition.
“Absolutely wouldn’t have a clue,” was Libby’s response.
The organiser was not at all surprised, “Actually, you’re like a lot of elite athletes who just have no idea about their kids’ personal best times. They just don’t pay attention to that sort of thing.”
We’ve heard similar stories from former rugby players, netball greats, and athletics champs. They’re typically the parents just turning up, giving a quiet cheer, marvelling at the sport being played, and rolling home. They know, from having won national championships, World Cups and Olympic glory, that the stakes are low for 12-year-olds.
As Libby says on repeat, “there is no such thing as an elite 8-year-old”.
That low stakes approach, informed by experience, is backed up by the research.
Australia’s coalition of sporting and medical bodies, the Australian Sports Medicine Collaboration, put out a position statement on sports specialisation back in 2022.
“There has been a growing trend towards young athletes specialising at an early age in a single sport. It appears that the major societal driver of this is a perception that early specialisation leads to increased sporting success. There is evidence to the contrary, suggesting that athletes who maintain a broader sporting base until after the age of 12, then specialise, are more likely to be ‘successful’ in their chosen sport.”
In fact, there is mounting evidence to suggest that early specialisation is causing physical harm to young athletes.
It’s certainly consistent from what we hear from parents attending physio appointments.
“It was just a steady stream of kids with overuse injuries and stress fractures” said one parent after a recent appointment.”
I’ve seen it too. Having coached community netball for a number of years, there’s really nothing that surprises me now when it comes to parent behaviour.
The biggest red flag? Those parents moving up and down the sidelines in line with the play of the ball.
If you’re that invested that you’re physically running up and down your child’s sideline, then you need to stop.
And it’s not just the kids playing that I have concerns for.
My eldest recently started umpiring school AFL matches and in her second ever match, the number of parents yelling about her calls left me stunned.
It’s because of this parent behaviour that sports like AFL often require parents to be behind a fence and/or provide marshals for each game to act as guardians for youth umpires.
As a society, we’ve well and truly lost the plot.
It’s why the new season of our podcast Sportish features interviews with some of Australia’s best athletes such as 4 time grand slam winner Ash Barty, Paralympic swimmer Ellie Cole, and AFL star Adam Goodes.
We’ve also chatted with some of the nation’s most respected thinkers on sport and life; mindset coach Ben Crowe, Hugh van Cuylenburg of The Resilience Project, women’s sport presenter Rana Hussain and parenting expert Gen Muir.
We asked them about their relationship with sport, what it means to them and why it matters. How we can get more kids in the game, and keep them there.
Their answers and stories had nothing to do with gold medals or how they performed at club sport on a Saturday aged 11.
They’re about the little, less Olympic parts of sport that make you remember what it’s like to play, to try to be part of something.
When Ash Barty talks about hitting golf balls in her street growing up, you can almost see her with a cheeky smile of her face as she narrowly misses the windows.
When we asked her whether she, a Grand Slam winner, tries to sideline coach her nieces at tennis, her answer was swift and emphatic: “absolutely not”.
When Hugh van Cuylenburg explains his relationship with sport today, it has everything to do with mental health.
“I experienced shocking burnout. I wouldn’t have got through it all without track. There’s no way. I just feel like, it’s almost petrol… When my tank is empty, I go the track and fill up… And I can go, ‘Oh, I’m good now’”.
It’s enough to make you want to head to the athletics track yourself.
When Kieren Perkins, CEO of the Australian Sports Commission, challenges Australians on whether we want to be a nation that watches sport, or participates in sport, you know it’s time for a reckoning.
And when Gen Muir says that all you need to do as a parent is look over and give your kid a big smile and thumbs up while they’re on the field or court, you hope parents really hear that message.
Sure, it’s important to play hard, to have elite pathways for the less than 1 per cent who make it to that level. But if we want our kids to have a lifelong relationship with sport, we all need to play well.
