Text-Only Version
Robert Cobb, Dean of the college of Education and Human Development:
"This is an attempt on the part of a lot of interested people across Maine, in trying to identify what's good about sports for youth, how does it contribute to their well being, are there things that need to be improved upon, are their things that need to be reaffirmed about their experience.
"Many adults are believing it's their child that is going to make that trip from youth sports to the professional level. The realities are that 99 point something percent aren't going to do that and yet we make decisions and choices along the way that result in overspecialization--early overspecialization--which is not a good thing.
"Student-athletes are expressing to us that they want to play for fun--that they're just high school or middle school kids, and that the pressure that they're feeling today to win, to play and to specialize, is something they're very uncomfortable with. Our next steps in the implemention of this report involved inviting all the schools in Maine to apply to be pilot sites for those who are ready to move on this. So, we have gone through that process and identified 12 pilot sites.
"We are now beginning to meet with those school systems, preparing them to work with their communities, their coaches and their student-athletes, parents and others to adopt and, if necessary, adapt these principles and create a compact. We're hearing people--they come up to us and say, 'Boy, this report is overdue. We're so pleased that someone has taken the initiative to bring this information all together because we've been asking for years what the experts think about how sports ought to be conducted.' No one has taken the time and made the effort to show what sports--when they're really done properly--what they look like."
