Put Me In! Supported by Science: Youth Sports Involvement Predicts Improved Life Outcomes
My name is Lilia Kasdon and I am a Research Intern for Put Me In! I will be sharing some of my findings in this series of blog posts, Put Me In! Supported by Science.
If you missed last week’s post about youth sports as an opportunity for life-skill development, check it out here.
In my final week of research, I studied the potential for sports to improve life outcomes, focusing primarily on academic performance and achievement. The literature supports that young athletes perform better in school than their peers who are not involved in sports. Burns et al. (2020) found that adolescents who play sports are 14% more likely to report receiving A’s and B’s than their peers. Sports participation is also associated with “higher levels of classroom engagement” (Harbec et al., 2021, p. 1), and adolescents who play sports in high school are more likely to attend college (Project Play, n.d.).
Youth sports involvement also predicts better life outcomes. A meta-analysis of 24 studies found that sports participation decreases involvement in criminal activity (Jugl et al., 2021). Additionally, with a starting salary that is $4,257 higher, former college athletes earn more in the first ten years of their careers than those who did not participate in sports in college (Sauer et al., 2013). The bottom line is that sports have the potential to drastically improve life trajectories. This is evident in the stories of the young people currently enrolled in our program. Rodney’s story stands out.
Rodney was one of the first kids enrolled in our program in 2021. Rodney’s caregiver used funding from Put Me In! to put him on a travel soccer team, and many of his teammates attended a private middle school. This inspired Rodney to work hard to excel in the classroom and on the field. Last year, he was accepted into a national program for academically gifted children from disadvantaged backgrounds. With the help of this program, Rodney was granted a full scholarship at an elite private school in San Francisco, where he plans to continue his involvement in sports. Rodney shows that with hard work both on and off the field, sports open doors, leading to opportunities for success that would otherwise remain unavailable. Put Me In! continues to help open these doors for CIPs, allowing them to access these opportunities.
Thank you for following along with my research journey and for your support of Put Me In! I encourage you to continue to support our mission of changing the lives of kids like Rodney through sports.
Works cited:
Harbec, M. J., Goldfield, G., & Pagani, L. S. (2021). Healthy body, healthy mind: Long-term mutual benefits between classroom and sport engagement in children from ages 6 to 12 years. Preventive medicine reports, 24, 101581. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pmedr.2021.101581
Sauer, S., Desmond, S., & Heintzelman, M. (2013). Beyond the playing field: The role of athletic participation in early career success. Personnel Review, 42(6), 644-661. doi:https://doi.org/10.1108/PR-08-2012-0149
Youth sports facts: Benefits. Project Play. (n.d.). https://projectplay.org/youth-sports/facts/benefits