Advantages and Disadvantages of Team Sports: A Comprehensive Review
Getting regularly daily exercise is a fantastic thing. The problem with many exercises is that you have to do them alone. You can of course go to the gym with your friend, but it is not very socialising. Team sport is one of the best ways of getting your exercise. Being active helps both your physical and mental health. Being a part of a team helps you make new friends, it gives you your daily portion of active minutes and it can change how you see yourself. Nevertheless team sport can be dangerous, especially for children. Team sports can leave a physical injury that will be with the child throughout his life. Therefore, it is crucial to consider the possible advantages and disadvantages of team sports in this essay to ensure that the benefits outweigh the risks.
The first benefit of team sport is the social life it creates. It is not fun always being alone or not having any friends. A team consists out of many players and therefore many opportunities to make friends. The team have to travel a lot. You go to tournaments and you play matches in other cities. By being on a team and making new friends, you are going to develop good sportsmanship. Nobody likes the person who rubs it in your face when they win or gets really angry when they lose. After all, it is just a game. By being on a team you also develop cooperation. You do not always get to work with the people you want to. That is just how life is. The team sports show you this at an early age. Referees don’t always seem to make the right call. The players have to learn how to deal with disappointment, and therefore making young players stronger as they grow older.
Another valuable thing team sport provides is exercise. Today more than 2,2 billion children and adults are overweight. Many of them might eat a lot and move restricted. When being a part of a team there are organized training, and this forces one to move. Regular exercise burns calories, makes the body stronger, increases the immunity system and helps establish healthy habits for life. For example, when one goes to school and homework, practise in the afternoon, maybe a job on top of that, it will make you good at time management. To make the day go around you have to plan it well. This will make one structured, which will give rewards in the future. This last argument is one of the most important ones. We live in a society where it is easy to share pictures, follow what everyone is doing and comparing oneself to others.
With social media development the mental health problems have grown with it. Kids sit inside on their phone or computer instead of being outside and active. Team sport will make kids feel better about themselves. Research has shown that being active is a good “medicine” against mental health problems. When one is active it is not time to think so much, and one does not have time to feel pity for oneself. In team sport there will almost always be people around, giving advice and listening. We all know the feeling when the coach says, “good job”, or when the teammates are cheering for one. The team will build up one’s confidence and make one stronger both mentally and physically. In today’s society, it is important that we support each other. We need to have a network we can fall back to if something does not go as planned.
Nevertheless, playing team sports can be damaging to children psychologically if they have not yet developed a sufficient skill set. Being excluded from a team or not getting as much playing time can contribute to the lowering of a child’s self confidence. In response to a letter coming from a parent who expressed their deep concern for their child by saying, “I don’t know how to manage my own anger, frustration and utter gut-wrenching hurt for him when he sobs that he is not good enough,” ‘Irish Times’ parenting expert, John Sharry explained the importance of including as many people in the team as possible for as long into the development of the team as possible. He goes on to call over-competition problematic for a young person’s mental health. It’s often difficult for coaches to keep their teams in a healthy balance and to ensure that children are not feeling over-pressured to not let their teams down. Further damage can come from a similar excess of pressure being laid on them from their parents or guardians. The different approaches parents take in supposedly supporting their young athletes can make or break the child’s mental health. Having parents on the sidelines seems to place their parents’ happiness on the top of their list of priorities while playing, so as soon as they stop enjoying their sport or their team, they begin to internalize their angst and, instead, push their parents away. As shown in sports satisfaction surveys, children, as a majority, mainly participate in sports as a way to have fun, but the same surveys showed that parents perceived their children’s main motivation to participate in sports as winning. As likely as sports are to leave children with lifetime skills, they are just as likely to leave behind life-time resentments.
The damage can further if team sport activity begins before a certain age. According to physical, psychological and cognitive development studies, a child should be at least six years old before participating in an organized team sport. An article from the Journal of Sports Medicine stated that, even after reaching that age, an assessment of sports-readiness should be performed before a child can participate in team sports. So, by waiting to make organized team sports available to children until they are at least six years of age, their well- being can be preserved in more ways than one.
In conclusion, team sport provides a community where one gets to exercise, socialise, and get better confidence. One gets friends whom one has fought battles with and has experienced victories and losses. There is a lot of benefits with team sport, this was just a few of them. “Alone we can do so little. Together we can do so much”– Hellen Keller. On the other hand, team sports, however, can damage children psychologically if they are entered into too early or before they have developed skills, team sports open up athletes to more health risks, and they do not have as much of an emphasis on self-efficacy. Because of these reasons, organized team sports should not be offered or available for children under the age of six or those who have not been determined to be ready.
