The Hidden Cost of Chasing ‘Elite’ in Youth Sport

Is the Pursuit of Professional/Elite Status Ruining the Development of Junior Athletes and Our Approach to Coaching?

Walk into almost any sports venue on a Saturday morning and you’ll hear the language of “elite.” Parents talk about trials, academies and pathways. Coaches remind players they’re part of a “high-performance environment.” Even at ages as young as 8 or 9, the conversation has shifted from play and exploration to selection and specialisation.

The rise of professional sport and the dream of making it to the very top has created an undeniable ripple effect. The question is: at what cost? Is our obsession with professional or elite status creating an environment that stifles long-term development and damages the way we coach?

The Professionalisation of Junior Sport

Over the past two decades, youth sport has transformed. Professional clubs have built more and more academies that recruit earlier and earlier. Governing bodies have designed talent pathways with multiple levels of identification. Social media highlights the next “phenom” before they’ve even finished puberty.

For many parents and coaches, the lure of the professional dream is powerful. A scholarship, a contract, a spot on the national pathway, all have become benchmarks of success. The label “elite” is stamped onto children before their foundational development is complete.

But professionalisation has a shadow side. When the primary measure of success is whether a child is seen as “on track” for elite sport, the focus of training and coaching begins to change.

Coaching for Now vs. Coaching for the Future

At the junior level, coaching should be about building robust, adaptable athletes with a deep love for their sport. However when professional status becomes the target, the emphasis often shifts to the following-

• Winning over learning. Coaches feel pressure to win games to keep their status or retain players, even if it means sacrificing development.

• Selecting early developers. Bigger, faster, stronger players dominate selection, while late-developing athletes who may ultimately surpass them get overlooked as they aren't at the top in the moment.

• Narrow focus. Training often revolves around rehearsed plays, structured drills and systems designed to succeed immediately rather than build versatility.

In this system, the coach becomes a short-term strategist rather than a long-term educator. The “success” of their coaching is judged on league tables, selections and how many kids progress to the next level of the pathway not on the quality of the learning environment or the athletes they help develop over time.

The Hidden Risks of Early Professionalisation

Overuse Injuries and Burnout

Specialising early in one sport and training at intensities that mirror professional demands exposes young athletes to repetitive stress. Growth plates are still open, movement patterns are still developing and yet volume is often cranked up to adult levels. The result as expected in most cases: overuse injuries, chronic pain and athletes who burn out before they reach their potential.

Drop-out Rates

The “elite” label is both a blessing and a burden. For some, it creates motivation. For many, it creates pressure and fear of failure. Once an individual is removed from a pathway or academy, said young athlete may feel their identity is lost. This leads to alarming drop-out rates, particularly around mid-teen years when bodies and interests naturally change.

Psychological Toll

The child’s sense of self becomes wrapped up in achievement. If success equals making a team, starting a game, or progressing through a pathway, the natural joy of play is replaced with anxiety and self-doubt. Instead of learning resilience through healthy challenge, they internalise messages similar to -“If I’m not elite, I’m nothing.”

Stunted Long-Term Development

The irony is that early professionalisation often produces less capable athletes in the long run. By prioritising immediate performance, many miss out on the broader athletic foundations, such as balance, agility, creativity, adaptability. All of which underpin high performance at senior level. Athletes who diversify through multiple sports often develop superior motor skills, tactical awareness and resilience.

---

The Coaching Trap

This culture doesn’t just affect athletes, it can truly change coaches too.

• Results as validation. Coaches working with juniors often feel judged on their win-loss record, their team’s league position, or how many of their athletes “make it.” Development-focused coaches can feel undervalued.

• Cherry-picking talent. Instead of nurturing and developing raw ability, some coaches recruit the strongest kids to make their own teams look better. The harder work of building athletes gets neglected.

• Authoritarian environments. To create “discipline” and performance, some coaches slip into rigid, controlling behaviours. Athletes are told what to do, rather than encouraged to problem-solve, explore, and take ownership.

This creates a cycle where coaching is no longer about cultivating growth and enjoyment for young athletes, but about managing outcomes. The artistry of coaching the ability to meet each athlete where they are, and shape them for the future is getting further and further away.

Evidence from Research and Real Life

Studies consistently show that early talent identification is unreliable. Many so-called prodigies disappear by late adolescence, while late developers flourish once physical and psychological maturity kicks in.

• Relative Age Effect (RAE): Athletes born earlier in the selection year are overrepresented in academies and pathways. Not because they’re more talented, but because they’re more physically mature at the time of selection. By adulthood, this advantage disappears leaving behind a trail of discarded talent.

• Multi-sport backgrounds: Research on Olympians and professional athletes shows a common pattern. Many Olympians were late specialisers, engaging in multiple sports before committing to the one that earnt them that coveted title. This diversified foundation built adaptable, resilient and creative athletes who most likely covered more key development areas than those who specialised earlier.

• Drop-out and burnout: Data across football, gymnastics, swimming and other high-intensity junior sports show high attrition rates. Many leave sport altogether, disillusioned and exhausted before their potential peak.

  
  

If you look at the New Zealand rugby or Scandinavian sports systems, they encourage late specialisation, broad participation and place enjoyment at the heart of youth sport. Their track record at producing world-class athletes more than suggests that this model works.

---

Rethinking Success: Towards a Better Model

So if the current pursuit of elite status is damaging, what’s the alternative?

Long-Term Athlete Development (LTAD)

A framework every coach has seen and heard about emphasises age-appropriate progressions, ensuring that physical, technical, tactical and psychological skills are developed in balance. Winning at age 12 doesn’t matter, what matters is creating 18-year-olds ready for senior sport.

Multi-Sport Participation

Encouraging juniors to play multiple sports builds motor skill diversity, reduces injury risk and keeps them mentally fresh. Specialisation can wait. The best athletes are often those who grew up playing everything from football to basketball to athletics.

Redefining “Success” in Coaching

In my opinion one thing we need to flip is the definition of coaching success in youth sport. Instead of being judged on pathway selections or trophies, success should be measured by:

• How many players stay in sport.

• The quality of foundational skills developed.

• The enjoyment and resilience athletes display.

• How athletes are equipped for life-long sport, not just short-term performance.

Athlete-Centred Coaching

Coaching is not about controlling, but guiding. By giving juniors autonomy, problem-solving opportunities and the space to explore. We equip them with adaptability, the ultimate skill for future high performance.

Education for Parents and Stakeholders

Parents often drive the early push for professionalisation. But the education is key: helping them understand that late bloomers can thrive, that variety in their upbringing builds resilience and that long-term well-being matters more than early selection.

The Expanding World of Sport and the Role of Specialist Coaching

As sport continues to evolve, the demands on athletes and by extension their coaches are greater than ever. Strength and conditioning, psychology, nutrition, data analysis and recovery are now all key pillars of performance, being pushed more and more at the junior level. This creates a challenge for junior coaches, often volunteers or part-time who simply don’t have the time or resources to cover everything within the limited hours they get with their athletes.

At and approaching the senior level, this is where seeking advice from specialists and investing in more in-depth coaching becomes not only acceptable, but essential. Elite athletes require tailored support in multiple areas to maximise their performance and protect their bodies.

But here’s the key: this level of specialisation belongs later in an athlete’s journey, not when they are 12 years old. At younger ages the priority should still be broad development, fostering enjoyment and building strong foundations. Specialist intervention too early often narrows focus, increases pressure and removes the joy of simply playing and learning.

Coaches as Gardeners, Not Engineers

Here is a powerful metaphor for you to consider how we should think about coaching juniors and up and coming athletes. Too often, we behave like engineers trying to construct the perfect athlete with precision, structure and force. But athletes aren’t machines. They’re living, growing organisms.

A better metaphor is that of a gardener. The gardener doesn’t force a plant to grow, they create the right conditions, nurture them patiently and understand that each plant grows in its own way and at its own pace. The gardener celebrates growth, not just the end product.

Coaches must reclaim this mindset. Our role is not to manufacture “elites” but to cultivate resilient, adaptable, passionate athletes who may or may not reach the top, but who will always carry the joy and skills of sport with them.

Aspiration Is Not the Enemy

We are not saying that having the goal of becoming professional or elite is a bad thing. In fact, having that as an end goal is amazing, and we want as many athletes as possible to reach those heights. The challenge however is ensuring that the journey towards that goal doesn’t damage the very athletes we hope to see succeed.

---

So How Do We Look at Reframing the Pursuit

Is the pursuit of professional and elite status ruining junior athlete development and coaching? Not entirely but it’s skewing priorities in dangerous ways.

The dream of elite sport is not wrong! Pathways and academies have value. But when they dominate the narrative of youth sport, we risk producing broken bodies, fragile minds and frustrated coaches.

The solution isn’t to abandon the pursuit of excellence it’s to redefine it. Excellence at junior level is not about winning or being selected early. It’s about building robust, adaptable and passionate athletes who are prepared for the long journey ahead.

The best coaches and systems are those that balance aspiration with patience, structure with play, ambition with well-being. They see the child before the athlete, the journey before the destination.

If we want to truly serve the future of sport, we must stop obsessing over who is “elite” at 12, and start focusing on who will still be thriving at 22.

A Note for Parents

As parents, it’s natural to dream big for your child and to want to give them every possible opportunity. But the best gift you can give them however, is not pressure to succeed early, but the space to grow, explore and enjoy their sport. Encourage variety, celebrate effort and support their long-term journey on the path to their dream, rather than chasing short-term results. In the end, the athletes who thrive are usually the ones who fell in love with the process first and the results followed later.