What Happened to Multi-sport Athletes? (Part 2)

In part one of this post, I questioned the role of specialization in sports. I mentioned that many American parents encourage specialization over well-rounded development in the classroom and on the field. In other parts of the world, it’s not like this. Cedar Attanasio, who helps edit many of the posts on the Boosterland blog, shared this anecdote from his time studying in Hong Kong with Chinese and Cantonese students. “In Cantonese, there’s this term, quan cai, which means ‘well-rounded … [Read more...]

What Happened to Multi-sport Athletes? (Part 1)

Should students play a single sport, or diversify? In this post I discuss the decline of the multi-sport athlete, and the implications for a 21st century workforce. I use sports as an example--but this post applies to other activities as well: theater, orchestra, debate, etc.  I list a few of the assumptions that fuel the single-sport phenomenon, including some that booster clubs may take for granted. In my next post I’ll talk about multi-sport athletes in the past, and how their 20th century … [Read more...]