“I realized that volleyball was over for me. And that’s not what I would have chosen.” –Hayley Hodson, 2018. Hodson, the No.1 volleyball recruit in the country with Olympic goals, suffered a life changing injury that forced her to quit volleyball for good. After suffering concussion injuries, 19 year old Hayley Hodson retired from her hopeful volleyball career as a sophomore due to extreme post concussion syndrome. Countless kids and young adults center their lives around sports, seeking achievements and experiencing “growing pains”. The growing pains that come with sports consume the youth, often being undermined by the control their own worldly desires have over them.
There are two distinct pains that come with being an athlete: the physical, and the internal. The physical pain often comes with random chance or overworking oneself in order to fight the mental pain. Unavoidable, this mental pain takes full control of young brains that haven’t been given the chance to fully develop, leading to an identity completely centered in the sport. Of the 3.5 million injuries that occur from sports each year, Step & Spine Physical Therapy says that 1.75 million come from overworking and exertion. Of this, 65% of said injuries come from the child returning to their activity before fully healed. An inexplicable feeling to any person who does not competitively play a sport, the impending feeling of anxiety and panic takes full control of the athlete’s life. Today, sports are a way for kids to be accepted to college and even make money; when it’s all taken away in a single moment, fear of falling behind outweighs any physical pain.
Putting the weight of the world on people who aren’t old enough to vote, much less know what they want to do with their lives, has become increasingly normalized. According to The National Library of Medicine, the human brain is not fully developed until its early 30’s. Jackson Cantwell, an 18 year old from Missouri, is being paid $2.5 million dollars to play football at UMiami, compared to the average American salary of $70k a year. Adults cannot expect an 18 year old to know what to do with that amount of money, not even taking into account the pressure and mental battles he has to fight in order to maintain this position. Sports is an extracurricular that 60% of kids 6-17 year olds partake in, yet it is something that can completely consume their lives. When kids are encouraged to play sports, it can become more than just an extracurricular activity, with the chance of a career in the future. This raises a question: Where do we draw the line? The definition of a sport according to the Cambridge Dictionary is an organized, competitive, and physical activity governed by set rules and played for enjoyment.
Sports shape athletes. But more importantly, sports shape people. Growing up, kids constantly face what we call “growing pains”, whether it be from a growth spurt or from new surroundings such as middle school to high school transition. Yet the greatest growing pain society fails to address is athletics. A constant fluctuation of growth and stress comes with sports, growing with young people throughout different seasons of life, bringing new challenges and new possibilities. These growing pains are sometimes too much to handle, but many don’t realize where they actually come from, leading to burnout and exhaustion. So whether it be the bad knee that “runs in the family” or constant anxiety, growing pains often lie among the most powerful parts of life.
https://gostanford.com/sports/womens-volleyball/roster/player/hayley-hodson-1