Most athletes quit sport prematurely due to dropout and burnout. The result is the same but they occur for different reasons. Dropout happens when an athlete discovers that the sport just isn't for him, or it is not what he thought it would be. These are legitimate reasons for dropout. Not so legitimate ones include intrusive demands of the sport, or the emphasis on winning is too extreme to be any fun.
Burnout occurs when an athlete has just had enough of the sport, and is unable or unwilling to control the demands of training and competition. It usually occurs after years of intense involvement. Athletes that reach this stage are usually successful; otherwise they wouldn't have stuck with it so long. Burnout is bad when it occurs prior to an athlete's prime years for their chosen sport.
Not all sports follow the same developmental timeline. Because of the nature of some activities, true success in some sports, begins at a much younger age than in others. This does not mean that athletes must have success at a young age; it just means that if they start their participation in the sport young then their chance at success is greater later on. But here's the problem: athletes who start sport at an early age are the most likely to either dropout or burnout before they reach their prime competitive years.
Anyone involved with athlete development knows that the term early age is relative. In swimming it might be 7 years old, gymnastics may be earlier, soccer later. No matter when children start though, the big question remains, how do we keep them involved long enough to make a difference?
My perspective is rooted in sport sociology so the changes and solutions I want to see are good for sport, in addition to being good for athletes. In swimming, for example, this would mean stronger national and Olympic teams in future, and better development and long-term experiences for athletes who never reach that level.
Interest in this topic is widespread. Check out these sites: Youth Sport Parents, Integrity in Youth Sports, and the Positive Coaching Alliance blog. Any Google search would turn up dozens more. Most of the sites you find will stress how to design youth programs so that the athletes get the best possible experience. Not only should we do this for the good of the athletes, we should do it for the good of sport itself. The longer we keep athletes in our development programs, the better athletes we will be able to produce. The key is producing developmental programs that are both instructive and fun.
APA reference format
Price, W. (2010 January). A different take on athlete development. The Sportkid Project. Retrieved from http://www.sportkidproject.com/articles/price005.html