Specialization can be detrimental to young athletes

Sitting in the East Aurora gym prior to a Tomcats basketball practice, Mike McCallister said that he thought track would be the sport that his son, Ryan Boatright, would excel in.

As Boatright hit the court and began lofting jump shots, McCallister noted Boatright's family tree of track stars, including current Arkansas All-American and aunt Tominique Boatright.

Also an accomplished junior high running back, the Tomcats' freshman point guard decided against suiting up for the football team this past fall in order to get ready for varsity basketball. But McCallister said if his son wants to return to the gridiron in the future, he's all for it.

Boatright will continue to compete in track however, high jumping, long jumping and running the 400-meter dash for the Tomcats this spring.

"If you're in track shape, you're in basketball shape," McCallister said.

Being a multi-sport athlete as a youth and continuing that path while developing in high school is more important than many realize. In an age of specialization where athletes drop other sports to concentrate solely on one, important elements for athletic success and overall health are being lost.

Brian Grasso, the Founder and CEO of the International Youth Conditioning Association (IYCA) in Crystal Lake, has trained youth athletes as well as Olympians. Grasso says nearly 10 percent of young athletes suffer acute, non-contact injuries to their knees, shoulders and backs because their bodies have been trained intensely for speed and power when structurally, their body can't handle it.

"Developing a young athlete is a science," Grasso said. "And we misappropriate it grossly."

Tiger Woods, one of the world's greatest examples of strength training, grew up running track and playing basketball along with golf. Now in his 30's, Woods' body can absorb the force he creates in his golf swing because he learned how to run, jump and even dribble.

"All of that body awareness has a great continuity to it," Grasso said. "He was not a specialist. He learned how to move his body in bio-mechanically advantageous ways."

Athletes placed in the spotlight at an early age are often placed in training programs that focus solely on immediate physical gains, putting their bodies at risk not only for injury, but stunted development.

Grasso says what is important for young athletes and their parents to know is that a foundation of proper weight-lifting fundamentals needs to be built, as well as the allowance for the body to grow at its natural rate.

"Now that he's a commodity, he will be pushed and pressured to gain from a performance perspective," Grasso said of Boatright. "It always comes back to that foundation -- you cannot at all be optimally fast or optimally strong if you don't have a solid framework on which to build.

"When it comes to a young athlete, it really is a matter of knowing the science, understanding the physiology, and getting the hell out of the way."