When boys hate sports

By the time they’re nearly men, the boys in my town seem to lose interest in sports. This Boston Globe piece, Millis struggles to field teams, describes the near-death of football here, and the demise of varsity soccer and tennis. It also raises the possibility that boys volleyball may disappear. That leaves baseball and basketball as the only ones that draw enough boys to field teams, plus some marginal ( I think) participation in track and field and golf. We’re a sports-mad region in a sports-crazed nation. So what’s going on here?

The article points to practical things, like a pool of a mere 150 boys across the entire high school level. But less than a decade ago the same pool of boys was winning state championships in football and volleyball (volleyball is more impressive, since the tournament pits it against much bigger schools). The article also argues that the other schools around here now have bigger student populations than they did a decade ago, making it harder to compete.Perhaps that’s true. But I’ve wondered whether there’s something else going on. If small towns now have problems fielding teams they’ve fielded for decades, does it suggest something broader? Perhaps boys have tired of the seeming need to play a single sport year-round from a young age simply to hold the line. Maybe there’s a Right Stuff effect, where the boys simply decide they can’t compete and step off the playing field. Perhaps the specter of steroids mean boys no longer want to be athletes. Perhaps the economy means parents simply don’t have the money for the extra fees, or the time to shuttle kids to practices. Perhaps today’s boys would rather play video games.

I’d really like to hear from the boys themselves why they aren’t participating the way they did a few years ago. I’ve seen photos in the high school trophy cases showing 40 to 45 boys (a third of the boys in school, apparently) on the varsity football team. That’s double the number that show up now. What changed?