Basketball and Football Discussion Reply

Sports like basketball and football require a lot of strength and most likely a certain advantage in terms of height and weight to increase the chances of performing at the same level as those who excel in these disciplines. However, in terms of physical maturation in children, there is no one size fits all because not everyone reaches their maturation at the same age. They differ “considerably in the rate at which they grow and mature (Williams & Krane, 2020). The variation in maturation shows that some children can reach their full maturation even 5 years later than their counterparts who had an early maturation. If coaches had to form their expectations based solely on their physical attributes of their young athletes, they would not do them justice, particularly if we are talking about coaches who adopt self-fulfilling prophecies to judge athletes. The self-fulfilling theory seems to limit the athlete’s potential to grow and to make progress. The athlete’s physical appearance, his behavior and even his reasoning or understanding of the competition can change and consequently have a huge impact on his performance.

Using ability tracking system like the previous coaches did with the children from different age level has its advantages because it helps makes objective decision about performance and injury risk (Torres et al., 2022) However, since there is always room for growth when we are working with youth, there is no guaranty that a child even that was placed in a moderate level or a low level based on his ability will remain the same athlete for the whole year. Based on the same logic about the diversity of maturation rates one child might suddenly reach their full maturation and perform better than the group they were assigned to. One of the best strategies is to reevaluate the player’s maturation status more often, like every three or four months a year while focusing on their time of peak and high velocity (Towlson et al., 2021). And that exactly How I would proceed for each group, to make sure every athlete has a chance to show new skills or abilities that could develop across the year season.

WC: 359

References

Towlson, C., Salter, J., Ade, J. D., Enright, K., Harper, L. D., Page, R. M., & Malone, J. J. (2021). Maturity-associated considerations for training load, injury risk, and physical performance in youth soccer: One size does not fit all. Journal of sport and health science, 10(4), 403–412. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jshs.2020.09.003

Torres-Ronda, L., Beanland, E., Whitehead, S., Sweeting, A., & Clubb, J. (2022). Tracking Systems in Team Sports: A Narrative Review of Applications of the Data and Sport Specific Analysis. Sports medicine – open, 8(1), 15. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40798-022-00408-z

Williams, J.M. & Krane, V. (2020). Applied sport psychology: Personal growth to peak performance (8th ed.). McGraw-Hill.