More thoughts on sport dropout

Knowing WHY athletes dropout of youth sport is good, but knowing WHEN is better

Photo by Rendy Novantino on Unsplash

The article I wrote about sport dropout in 2022 is still one of this newsletters most popular pieces. It discussed methods used to study dropout as a phenomenon in youth sport, and looked at some of the reasons young athletes leave or change sports. The article addressed the issue in a general way and readers, whether in the role of coaches, parents, or NGB administrators, could interpret it from their own perspectives. Depending on the role one plays, dropout is significant for different reasons. 

Sport dropout can be defined in several ways. The one I find most useful is when athletes abandon their sport participation prematurely:

Sport dropout occurs when athletes terminate their sport participation prematurely. Some attrition is to be expected but how much is normal can only be determined after analyzing several years of data. Additionally, all athletes eventually leave their sports. Whether or not we call this dropout depends on when they do it. For many athletes the transition of leaving high school for college is a natural time to end organized sport participation. Although the popular narrative is that high school athletes are preparing to be college athletes, the numbers don't support this. Only 6% of high school athletes compete on college teams, so for most young athletes the high school/college transition is a normal time to leave organized sport. (Sport dropout: Why do athletes leave sport programs, 21 January 2022)

When researchers first began looking into the phenomenon they focused on why young athletes left sport. Other than a few obvious reasons—not fun, don't like the coach, takes too much time, etc.—there's not much insight to be gained from the athlete's point of view alone; the reasons given have been more or less consistent for as long as this issue has been studied.

Dropout is a structural problem in youth sport

It's easy to see that it affects athletes more directly than coaches, parents, or NGBs, but reducing dropout rates requires actions or changes that may not involve athletes at all. In addition, the big players in the youth sport ecosystem operate with the notion that youth sport participation is a universal good; it's something that all children should have the opportunity to participate in. I believe this too but thinking this way can overshadow operational and organizational aspects affecting athlete participation that are just as important as athletes having fun. These include things like cost, time commitment, and coach licensing.

The Linder & Johns classification model

Identifying athletes as to the type and nature of their participation helps practitioners develop a broader understanding of this issue. Athletes can be classified into one of three types¹: 

• Leavers are athletes who drop out of one particular sport but are involved in at least one other,

• Dropouts are athletes who leave sport completely,

• Transfers are athletes who switch from one sport to another. 

Their participation can also be characterized into three categories: 

• Samplers are athletes that are simply giving the sport a try, 

• Participants are athletes with low to high levels of regular participation,

• Elite participants are athletes who compete at the highest level. 

By combining the dropout type and participant type with the usual kind of information collected in dropout studies (sex, age, reasons for leaving) a deeper understanding of the dropout phenomenon can be developed.

Knowing why athletes dropout is good, but knowing when they dropout is better

Instead of focusing only on why youngsters leave sport it might be more useful to learn when they leave. This is where comprehensive retention metrics are helpful.

How retention is calculated was the subject of the very first article in this newsletter. The athlete's initial registration date in the sport establishes the retention tracking cohort and the "year zero" for tracking that athlete's training age, which is used to gauge experience as the athlete moves through the sport. If you're unfamiliar with these terms or are unsure of how they're used you can read the linked article. 

Dropout data is more meaningful when coupled with retention metrics. In fact, retention metrics are meant to inform clubs and NGBs about the health of the athlete pool, and the training age of various age groups within the athlete population reflects a general experience level in the sport. These numbers can zero in on the effects of dropout on the entire athlete population and when—at what age and/or experience level—it is occurring.

The Location Game and why unique changes usually don’t last

Almost all youth sport activities are modeled after programs offered to older athletes with practice regimentation, competitions, rules (in many cases standardized between youth and professional levels), coaches, awards, and other examples of overall hype. Indeed, traditional sport structure is so familiar to the average person that most people find it hard to imagine anything different. This is one reason why programs modified to address the needs of younger athletes have a hard time establishing themselves. If they ever do become established, maintaining their differentness from traditional programs becomes increasingly difficult over time.

Researchers investigated this phenomenon using a tool created almost 100 years ago called the Location Game (Hotelling, 1929; cited in Chalip and Green, 1998). The game is actually an economic model that demonstrates how market extremes always return to a central tendency. Chalip and Green used this tool to illustrate why modified youth sport programs have such a hard time maintaining their modifications. 

The founder of a youth soccer program in the Baltimore area was unhappy with the way traditional youth soccer programs were run with strict schedules, long practices, authoritarian coaches, pressure on athletes, overdone awards and many of the other paraphernalia of organized sports. He was determined to design a play-centered program with no competitions and cooperative practices where athletes learned by playing instead of doing drills and playing structured games. A traditional club also used the modifications as their club’s developmental program.

During a 3-year evaluation of the modified program the researchers conducted interviews with the founder of the program, with parents of children in the program, and with its coaches. They also examined the program structures and the local environment in which the program functioned, especially the traditional club of which it was part. 

Social forces throughout the 3-year study kept a constant pressure on the founder of the new program to make changes that would have made it more like traditional youth soccer clubs. Other than the founder, those associated with the modified program eventually saw the need for adding more traditional elements to it and the Location Game effect eventually began drawing participants back to the traditional structures. 

The modified program participants had few ways to judge the quality of the new program since there was nothing to compare it to except local traditional youth activities. It is these traditional sport programs that exert constant force to bring the modified program back into the traditional framework. 

This experiment is a good example of why things like this face headwinds. New ideas surrounded by the old way of doing things are eventually overwhelmed by the social and economic forces identified in the Location Game.

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The reasons for athlete dropout are well known. Unfortunately athletes who report not having fun or not being able to be with friends etc. are already in the exit lane of their sport journey. It may be just a matter of time before they leave.

Instead of focusing on athletes alone, overall structural changes like addressing rising costs or time commitments might be more effective in reducing dropout. Dropout from youth sport activities is a family and institutional affair, not one that centers only on the athlete.

1. Linder, K.J. and Johns, D.P. (1991). Factors in withdrawal from youth sport: a proposed model. Journal of Sport Behavior, 14(1)