Why Youth Sports Will Rebuild The World
It is upon technology to innovate and restore local communities through sports
In the run-up to the nerve-wracking 2020 US Presidential election, a viral video emerged featuring Barack Obama hitting a silky three-pointer on a Biden campaign event. During his presidency, Obama was known to carve out time and coach daughter Malia’s fourth grade recreational basketball team, the Vipers. The Vipers went on an impressive winning streak, dominating White House dinner conversations for weeks. Obama has repeatedly (and publicly) acknowledged how sports shaped his youth. On a recent podcast, he asserted, “sports was a central part of my life .. it was the great equalizer.” About his own daughters, he continued, “both my daughters were in sports … they didn’t aspire to be Serena, but there was that sense that team sports at its best can give kids a sense of being part of something that’s bigger than themselves, teach them to work hard, and deal with disappointment.”
Sports is this unique human endeavor whose impact on life has unthinkable range. For some, it is a physical activity pursued purely for wellness. For others, it is the basis of identity, the maker of culture, the healer of pain, the means to financial security, or the escape from broken homes. Growing up in 1990s India, my exposure to sports inevitably came from my parents. Mother was a state-level basketball player, and father swam competitively. Cricket and soccer were followed religiously at home. I remember my first grip of the cricket bat, in a casual backyard game. I must’ve been six or seven. As the years went by, I went from street cricket, to local pickup, then junior varsity, camps, varsity, ultimately becoming team captain of the high school team. Throughout these formative years, I had no aspiration to play professionally. I simply enjoyed playing. Being on the field sent me into a deep state inside which I learned facets that makeup the very essence of life — hard work, struggle, competition, loss, and triumph. Life hasn’t been easy by many measures, but sports has undoubtedly given me a sense of being part of something bigger. It has been my teacher. It has served as my anchor.
The lifelong benefits of kids playing sports are indisputable — 1/10th as likely to be obese, 40% higher test scores, lower substance abuse risk, 15% higher college enrollment rates, lower depression levels, higher self-esteem, 8% higher income, higher productivity, lower healthcare costs, reduced risk of chronic diseases or cancer, and 1/3rd prone to late-life disability. Despite widespread awareness, and countless tales of sports told in American homes everyday, kids are dropping out at alarming rates. Today, 70% of kids quit sports by age 13, leading to a long-term societal cost of $1.1 trillion. Why are they dropping out? Because the rise of luxury travel sports, and subsequent decline of in-town sports like Little League, is turning the game from innocent recreational fun to cold competition.
Kids no longer play with friends in social-competitive formats. They no longer stay back and watch their friends play. Even the post-game pizza ritual is evaporating; where once laughter was aplenty, and human bonds were strengthened. Cherishable moments that once created a life’s worth of memories are simply disappearing. Instead, kids are uniformed, trained, and shuttled in the backseats of minivans to remote locations where they participate in high-stakes tournaments. “Manhattan has 1.6 million residents … tell me why a 5th grade rec baseball team needs to jet-set to locations hours away for travel ball”, a coach exclaimed over our recent phone call. To make matters worse, kids from less fortunate homes are increasingly losing access to sports altogether. This trend doesn’t just negatively impact kids — it scales outward, tears into social fabrics, and erodes local communities which are made up of parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, friends, the local shop-owner, and others.
Industry experts argue this is a policy problem. We believe this is a technology problem. It is rampantly clear that Marc Andreessen’s “software is eating the world” hasn’t infiltrated youth sports. And this is the journey we are on. Our goal at Wildkard is to use responsible technology to bring back in-town sports for kids, transform their experiences, help forge deeper friendships and communities, and empower them to become lifelong athletes. Why? Because active kids and their communities do better in life. Sports isn’t simply a physical activity. It is the catalyst we need to rebuild the world we long to live in.
