Benefits of Sports for Children – 3-Part Article Series (Part. 1)

By MrExcellent.com Sports Staff


It’s been long known that sports provide children many benefits. At Mr. Excellent, we’re proud to have the opportunity to provide kids all the great things sports have to offer. Over the next few weeks, in this 3-part series, we will talk about some of these benefits.

Let’s start with the Physical Benefits:

Fitness. Kids who play sports develop general physical fitness in a fun way and they build lifelong healthy habits.

Stress relief. Basketball for example allows Kids to clear their minds of academic and social pressures. Joining a fun league or summer basketball camp can provide plenty of fun!

Mastery. Sports give kids a satisfying, enjoyable way to develop their own talents. Doing something well makes them feel good about themselves, but equally important, an excellent sports camp teaches them about the process of how to improve and work more effectively. The process of repetition teaches your young athlete how to master a move and also how to experiment with different approaches to improve a skill. The feedback in sports is usually immediate and visible-does the ball go into the basket?-so that the athlete can change or repeat what she's doing and figure out how to get better. Not only that, the whole process of seeing practice lead to improvement gives kids a feeling of control, a feeling all too rare in their lives.

Healthy habits. Because sports increase an awareness of one's body and how it responds to different stimuli and circumstances, sports help prevent drug and alcohol abuse. Most athletes value what their bodies can do and want to maintain those abilities. Being an athlete also gives kids an acceptable reason for telling their friends no to drugs, booze, and other high-risk, unhealthy behaviors. (Of course, not all athletes avoid drugs and alcohol.)

In the next part of this series, we’ll touch on the Personal Benefits such as leadership that sports offers children.