In individual sports, the focus is clearly on the one, who made it to the top. The ones who tend to be hidden in the background, are the ones who supported this athlete on their road to this success.
While athletes are the main drivers of their success, the support they receive along the way provides the type of environment that is contributing to the chance to make it to that top.
Support can be given in different forms and different levels, but it clearly starts at home. According to an article in the 2019 Journal of Athletic Training on sports specialization, “…up to 70% of children will drop out of sport by the time they are 13 years of age and girls drop out of sports at a rate twice that of boys.”
We are losing all these potential competitors, which make sports diverse, interesting, and exciting way too early. And by the age of 17, half of the girls, who started with sports might have dropped out.
This can have lots of reasons and some of them are totally understandable. I just would hate for those girls, that they would need to drop out because of missing motivation, aspiration, or support at home.
I would have been out of sport at the age of 13 if my parents would not have supported my dream. The biggest thing they did, allowed me to go to the sports boarding school. It was not in their intention, to let her eldest daughter (my sister) leave home to attend this specialized boarding school, at the age of 12, and also agreed to let me follow her a couple of years later at the age of 13. They still supported our passion by driving every weekend, providing me the resources I needed to do my sport, along with other things happened that happen in the background. But I had to deliver too, ironically not with athletic success, but best grades in school.
Every athlete has a unique situation. I maybe didn´t need to be motivated as a support, but I had to be supported to live in the environment to actually be able to continue and take my sport to the next level.
The environment is a big factor, which is not only created at home, also at school, at the sports club, in the training group and everywhere around. An inspirational environment creates motivation for the athlete. Circumstances of all kinds are the reason, why girls stay in sports or leave at an early age. They have to be working for the kid, which doesn´t mean they need to be perfect in the eyes of anyone around. A new pair of running shoes is maybe not what the kid needs, maybe it´s just the fun field run in an old pair of shoes. (No, they are not going to destroy their feet)
It was more than once, that I heard or heard about a cross-comparison from former athletes, who were part of the dropout group. Those are pulling up competition results from the early days, competing against those, who are still active athletes and winning at big events later in life. This sounds like: “When we were kids, I was beating this girl.”
Now the question is, why she is not where the winner of the big event she is watching on TV at that moment.
Again, this can have a couple of reasons that can cause to drop out, and as long there is no bad feeling about not being in this sport anymore, that's totally fine. But if there is the feeling of regretting a dropout too early, it´s a little sad.
If you are thinking of ending an athletic career early, please make sure that that's really what you want. There is nothing wrong with it. Not everyone needs to be an aspiring professional athlete, but give it some good thoughts before deciding.
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