Competitive youth sports culture leads to burnout and quitting for many in U.S.
- ycastmediagroup
- 2 days ago
- 6 min read
Updated: 7 minutes ago
By Rossy Soto, Grace Wang and Amaya Manzano
June 10, 2025
Youthcast Media Group®
Ever since she started taking lessons at four years old, Marian Jimenez knew that swimming was her sport. Each kick and stroke rolled stress off of her with the water, her mind focused and free.
She joined the swim team her freshman year at Back of the Yards College Preparatory High School in Chicago. But, as time passed she struggled to balance school, family responsibilities and early morning practices. Without reliable transportation or extra money for bus fare, she often missed practice – and felt her coaches didn’t care why.
“They don't really take me seriously,” Marian said. “I try to talk to them and they just tell me to walk it off or swim it off. And that upset me so much.
It seems like they don't understand that these students have their own individual lives.”
Her beloved sport became a source of stress, and eventually, despite the 17-year-old’s immense love of swimming, the pressure to do well and prioritize the sport over her well-being caused her to feel burnt out and consider quitting.
Marian’s experience is not uncommon. Nearly 1 in 10 youth athletes report burnout, and 70% quit organized sports by age 13, according to a 2024 report by the American Academy of Pediatrics.
In a Youthcast Media Group survey of 85 students in high schools across the country, more than half said they joined a sport to “have fun or reduce stress,” and of the 49 students who had quit a sport, 45% said it was because the sport became too competitive and was no longer fun.
Youth in the survey called for less expensive, less competitive, lower-stakes options for sports participation, decrying the pressure and elitism that excludes too many young people.
The Price of Play
“I think one of the biggest issues with youth sports is that it's very competitive,” said Jeffry Pabon, national program manager for Volo Kids Foundation, a non-profit focused on providing free, accessible, play-based sports for kids ages 5-13. “If you're not winning first place, you're nothing. If you're not making the NBA, then why are you playing sports?”
Pabon said that competitive pressure, especially from adults, drives many kids away, especially those with less experience. In fact, a 2015 Aspen Institute survey found that the biggest reason sports stopped being fun was “winning” being over-emphasized.
Sonia Rojas-Pederzini, a junior at Brooklyn Technical High School in New York, started soccer at age four. In elementary school her parents considered putting her on a “more serious” soccer team than the recreational league she started in.
“But those traveling teams are very expensive and require a lot of parental commitment,” she said. “And both my parents were working full-time jobs, so that really kind of hindered them from putting me or my brother into a more active team that could help us in the future.”
If you don’t join those elite teams by the time you hit high school, she said, a lot of teens are too intimidated to join a team.
“You're not on the same level as your peers,” she said. “You feel like you're not good enough.”
It’s not just pressure to win that keeps kids out of sports – cost is another major barrier. In 2024, the average family spent over $1,000 per child on their main sport, a 46% increase over five years, according to the Aspen Institute.
Alisson Ochoa-Lopez, 16, a sophomore at Julia R. Masterman Laboratory and Demonstration School in Philadelphia, wanted to join a club volleyball team this year but her parents initially hesitated to let her play due to the price, she said. She joined the team after receiving about $750 in financial support from her club.
“If it weren't for that, I wouldn't have played,” she said.
Some fees for club and travel teams can be even higher than Allisson’s volleyball team. “We're talking about an average registration fee for a rec team being about $125 and a club or elite program starting around $2,000,” said Eleana Fanaika, the executive director of Every Kids Sports, a non-profit that pays sports registration fees for low-income families.
“It's creating a bigger and bigger deficit for those who can and those who can't afford [to play],” Fanaika said.
Access varies widely by income. CDC data from 2020 showed only 31% of children living under the federal poverty level played sports, compared to over 70% of those in high-income families.
Elitism creates geographic barriers as well. Pabon, who is based in Boston, says organized youth sports are often set up in areas that are seen as better neighborhoods, forcing lower-income families to travel farther–sometimes an hour or more on public transportation–and spend more time and money for their kids to participate.
What keeps kids coming back
For youth and their families who have managed to overcome financial or geographical barriers, hitting a cultural barrier of playing to win, rather than for fun or love of the game, can be the final straw.
“When people are dropping out at such high levels…that suggests that we have some problems in terms of ‘play for all’ and ‘playing for life,’” said Chris Knoester, a sociology professor at Ohio State University whose research focuses on sport.
Kids who quit sports, or are too intimidated to even try out, miss out on a lot, experts say, including social connection, confidence building, and stress relief.
“You're not getting the fun out of it, the joy out of it, you're not learning the team skills that come with it,” said Pabon “You're really just focused on this one concept, which is winning, and it really hurts your mental health all around.”
Of course there are physical benefits to sports participation, too. Things like building muscle, bone strength and endurance and reducing risk of chronic illnesses like type 2 diabetes.
Being active can also improve academic outcomes, collaboration and socio-emotional skills including resilience, perseverance, goal-setting, taking responsibility and empathy, according to the President's Council on Sports, Fitness & Nutrition.
David Robinson, lead instructor at Lost Boyz Inc., a South Shore Chicago nonprofit that uses baseball to build community, says the emotional bonds built through sport are just as important. Both between peers, and with adult mentors and coaches. “You become family, you're committed to a goal. And you support each other,” he said.
Marilyn Dixon, a Lost Boyz program participant who is now the resident director, agreed. “If the coach is a mentor, helping them out, it persuades the kids to come back. When I was a kid in the program, I used to love to come here. That was the best part of my week: just to come here and be with them.”
Pabon says it’s all these benefits that coaches and other adults can really lean on to help kids get the most out of playing, setting them up for longer term success in multiple ways. “It helps build a healthy, fun and safe community…those kids are going to grow up, and the hope is they're going to help build their communities up.”
Redefining sports culture
The culture of sports can change from one focused on winning to low-cost access for all, camaraderie and fun, but it won’t be easy, says Knoester.
“It's hard in a largely increasingly privatized, high stakes and expensive setting where people want to win, stand out, be successful, pursue professional dreams or college scholarship dreams, to encourage that culture,” Knoester said.
Ava Russchenberg, an 18-year-old cheerleader at Palatine High School in a suburb outside Chicago, has seen that cultural contrast at home, where her American mom emphasized performance, and her Dutch dad focused on encouragement.
Her mother pressures her to be competitive and says things like “you need to try hard and you need to do good,” Russchenberg said. Her father takes a gentler approach.
“My father is the one that is like, ‘You are amazing. You can do everything. I believe in you,’” Russchenberg said. “If I didn't have that support from my dad, I don't think I could have taken that pressure.” It’s the balance between the two, Russchenberg said, that allows her to participate in sport for the joy of it, but also excel and be proud of her achievements.
For Marian Jimenez, it was her parents' willingness to support her — even if it meant quitting swimming — that made her decide not to abandon the sport she loved. In the end, despite the difficulties with coaches or transport or schedule, what makes it all worth it for her is the sport itself.
“Whenever I'm swimming, I just don't think,” she said. “It really relieves everything that I held in my body… so I could finally be happy.”
Rossy Soto is a junior at Annandale High School in Annandale, Va., Grace Wang is a senior at Palatine High School in Palatine, Illinois and Amaya Manzano is a junior at Back of the Yards College Preparatory High School in Chicago. They were participants in a feature writing workshop with Youthcast Media Group and worked with mentor Hannah Gaber on this story. Lauren Wong contributed to this story.