The other night I was flipping through the channels on TV when I came across the show "Friday Night Tykes". It follows a few 8-9 year old youth football teams located near San Antonio, Texas. After watching for just a few minutes, I had a hard time believing some of the things that I saw. Specifically, a coach made an obviously out of shape kid run up and down the field the entire practice because he had missed a previous practice. Another coach encouraged one of his defensive players to hit the center as hard as he could before he snapped the ball. In general, the coaches of all the teams were acting like they were college of NFL football coaches. The entire emphasis seemed to be on winning, and not on having fun and enjoying the game of football. One of the coaches on the show was recently suspended for encouraging his team to hit the other team in the head.
The biggest issue I have with the show, and they are portraying is happening, is the complete disregard for player safety. The National Athletic Trainers Association released a statement last week voicing their concerns over player safety. I saw examples of players nearing or becoming dehydrated and players likely suffering head trauma that were allowed to continue playing. Youth sports are a wonderful thing that can teach kids many valuable lessons, but player safety must be the number one concern. Hopefully this show will bring to light many of these issues, and they will be addressed in youth sports programs around the country in order to increase player safety.
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