The Washington Post, September 1, 2009, Tuesday

The Washington Post

September 1, 2009, Tuesday

The Washington Post

For Building Up Young People, Nothing Beats Athletic Competition

By Lenny Bernstein

Elizabeth Gutermann can barely remember a time when she wasn't competing. She joined a club swim team at 8, and by age 13 she was practicing eight times a week. Some workouts were so arduous that her coach left buckets at the end of each lane for swimmers to vomit in.

She enjoyed considerable success -- she holds three records at the Montgomery County neighborhood pool where I also swim -- but paid a high price: In her early teens she often felt physically sick and mentally exhausted. When she failed to live up to her own expectations, she developed a temper. Even coaches were hesitant to talk to her after a bad race.

At 15, she gave up competitive swimming for coaching, drastically reducing the demands on herself in favor of teaching others. "The year I traded swimming for coaching, I realized it wasn't about me, and I could pass on my love for the sport to other kids," recalled Gutermann, now 18 and a freshman at the University of Texas at Austin. "I could still enjoy the sport even though I wasn't the best anymore."

Had Gutermann simply matured and developed a new perspective on her life's endeavor? To what extent had her involvement in sports and fitness helped her grow up, providing clarity about what really mattered to her?

If you're a parent, you know there's no clear answer to such questions. The important thing, of course, is what Gutermann learned through participation and competition, by trying and failing to live up to the goals she had set for herself, and by finding another path in life.

With schools reopening, the high school sports pages soon will be dominated by the ferocity of athletic competition, by wins and losses and point totals, by the occasional abuse of the rules in pursuit of victory.

The other 99.9 percent of us -- kids and parents alike -- will not see our reality reflected anywhere. Our kids will chase soccer balls and footballs without a prayer of making the local paper or winning a scholarship. Yet as parents have known for ages, the true value of competitive sports and personal fitness regimens is what youngsters take with them when they leave the field. And when they leave home.

In controlled circumstances and measured doses, competition provides so much more than fun and exercise. It teaches kids how far they are willing to push themselves, how to win and lose with class and how to perform under pressure. They encounter, and cope with, disappointment. They meet and bond with other competitors, or kids who share the same interest, in a way that other activities can't match. They learn the importance of teamwork. They develop leadership skills. And they may find that special coach who becomes a role model, a mentor, a lifelong friend.

* * *

"How do you know when the track team has held a wild party in your house?" I asked my wife a couple of years ago.

"How?"

"You come home Sunday morning and the place is littered with Gatorade bottles."

Yeah, I know. Some athletes drink, use drugs and do all the other stupid teenage things that keep us up at night. But I've had two children graduate from high school, one a noncompetitive participant in sports, the other a varsity athlete, and both have fallen in with the same highly motivated, respectful, compassionate crowd of teammates.

Would that have happened if they hadn't been putting in hours of practice and competition together? I'd like to think so. But sports betters the odds.

Research has shown that involvement in competitive sports in high school "is correlated with success, i.e. finishing high school, going to college and higher pay later on," says John Bishop, an associate professor of economics at Cornell University who has studied the role of extracurricular activities in schools. What experts don't know, he said, is whether there is a cause-and-effect relationship between the two or whether the kids who are willing to bust their butts on a ballfield are the same ones who go the extra mile in the classroom.

But with most schools requiring a minimum GPA to stay eligible for sports, it doesn't really matter, Bishop says. To that extent, good grades and athletics go hand in hand.

Would your child develop similar habits and skills in the orchestra, on the debate team, in the school play? Yes, says Bishop, if there is competition for positions and the activity demands the same kind of practice, organization and leadership. But sports are probably more ingrained in the culture of the school, and athletes probably command more respect from students than mathletes, he said. And there is no physical fitness benefit to most other endeavors.

Competition is relative. This summer, I helped chaperone a group of athletes to San Francisco for the Maccabi Games, an Olympics for Jewish Community Center teams from around the world. There were some excellent athletes who could play anywhere, but the level of competition was certainly below what you would find in many high schools.

It didn't matter. For that week, those kids pursued medals as if they were in Beijing last summer. And team dynamics were similar. One soccer coach was proud to see his 16-year-old captain, unprompted, step in and end the "needless ribbing" and isolation of one player. A girl I coached, who shied from relay races on the track for fear she would cause three teammates to lose, wound up with a gold medal when I entered her with three sprinters.

"I was so [angry] when you put me in there," she told me as we stood in line at the closing ceremonies. "But now I appreciate it."

What if your child simply won't go for competitive sports in school? Opportunities abound. Noncompetitive fitness regimens promote good health, relieve stress and raise self-esteem.

One program that has formalized the on-field, off-field link in a special way is Girls on the Run. As they train for a noncompetitive 5K fun run, girls in the third through fifth grades also spend time at each practice learning about the serious issues they will soon confront: nutrition, drugs, bullying. They learn to celebrate themselves the way they are, instead of longing for Madison Avenue's version of who they should be. They learn about the importance of giving back to their community.

Started in 1996 by a North Carolina mom, the program has spread to thousands of sites across the country, including many in Northern Virginia, the District and Montgomery County. Signups are going on now at http://www.girlsontherunofmoco.org, http://www.girlsontherunofnova.org and http://www.gotrdc.org/index.html.

"We don't care if you walk, crawl, do jumping jacks or whatever you need to do to get to the finish line," says Elizabeth McGlynn, executive director of Girls on the Run of Montgomery County. "The basic idea is to teach girls about self-esteem, nutrition, healthy living -- and you sneak the running in."

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