Have you ever participated in organized sports, in or out of school? If so, have those experiences been positive? Or do you feel that youth sports have become too stressful and too focused on winning?
In “Luka Doncic Wants Young Players to Embrace ‘Mess and Joy’,” Tania Ganguli writes that Doncic, the Dallas Mavericks star, is worried that basketball is no longer fun for many young players. To address the issue, he has created a new foundation:
Luka Doncic was 13 when he moved from his native Slovenia to Spain to play for Real Madrid. He didn’t know English or Spanish, but he could speak basketball fluently, and the expectations of a storied professional organization hung over him.
But it was fun for him, even with that pressure, the same way it is now that he has become one of the N.B.A.’s brightest stars, playing for the Dallas Mavericks.
He has noticed that it’s not like that for many players in youth programs around the world, a number of whom have quit basketball while still in adolescence.
“The kids are, I think, a little bit stressed,” Doncic said in an interview.
So this year, his foundation, which debuts this week with a focus on making sports an enriching part of children’s lives, hired a research organization called Nonfiction to study youth basketball in the Balkans and the United States. Over five months, researchers conducted in-depth interviews with dozens of coaches, players, parents, trainers and other basketball experts. They also surveyed more than 1,200 parents of youth basketball players and immersed themselves in eight basketball camps and training centers. They collected letters from children who wrote about the sport’s importance to them.
The researchers found that youth programs in the Balkans focused on the team more than the individual. They also found that when Yugoslavia dissolved in the early 1990s, much of the government support for basketball in that region disappeared. The corporations that filled the void through sponsorships sometimes put pressure on teams to win, which led some coaches to pay less attention to player development and emphasize winning over everything else.
In the United States, researchers found a basketball culture that was intense and able to produce the biggest stars in the world, but that encouraged viral highlights on social media over true development. A quarter of the American parents surveyed said youth basketball was more about making money than about teaching children.
The article shares some of the principles Doncic’s foundation developed from its research:
With Doncic’s input, the researchers created a list of principles they felt youth basketball programs needed in order to help children develop in healthy ways, physically and emotionally. The principles include “team-first mentality” and “program continuity.” Seager said they added “embracing mess and joy” when Doncic, who is known for his creative playmaking ability, insisted.
Students, read the entire article and then tell us:
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Have you ever participated in organized sports, in or out of school? If so, were those experiences positive and healthy? What do you feel you gained from them? If you have never participated, tell us why.
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The N.B.A. star Luka Doncic says that basketball is no longer fun for many young players. Does that resonate with your own experiences in sports? Are sports programs for young people too stressful today?
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Doncic’s foundation wants to make sports a fun part of children’s lives. What are your thoughts on its ideas of how to help people develop physically and emotionally in healthy ways, like adopting a “team-first mentality” and “embracing mess and joy”?
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Doncic says he has learned so much from basketball, like “courage, experience, passion.” What have you learned from playing sports, whether organized or not?
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How important are sports to you and your friends and peers? Do you think all young people would benefit from participating in an organized sport?
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Lara Beth Seager, the executive director of Doncic’s foundation, said, “I don’t know very many 25-year-olds who invest in research projects, but that’s how important it was to him.” What kind of research project would you invest in if you had the resources?
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If Doncic asked you for advice on how to improve youth sports, what would you recommend? What do you think should be changed or could be improved?
Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public and may appear in print.
Find more Student Opinion questions here. Teachers, check out this guide to learn how you can incorporate these prompts into your classroom.