Why kids are key to survival of community sport: Winning back players, volunteers post-COVID

Experts fear a year on the sidelines will have a lasting impact on the next generation of athletes.

Kids are key to the survival of community sport, experts say. Adelaide and Norwood community basketball clubs are working hard to grow their young membership. Picture Michael Marschall

Sport-related physical activity is estimated to have dropped off by as much as two thirds on the back of COVID fuelling new fears of an exodus of young players from organised sport.

Leading sport practitioners and researchers say it’s crucial community sporting clubs are supported to re-engage junior sportspeople.

The Centre for Sport, Health, Activity, Performance and Exercise (SHAPE)’s Sam Elliott said a newly-published junior sport study painted a “confronting picture” about the impact of the pandemic on local sport.

“There is a dangerous assumption about the impact of the pandemic on youth sport which surrounds the idea that youth participants and families will automatically return to sport once the pandemic recedes,” Dr Elliott, the lead researcher and Flinders University senior lecturer, said.

“This study illuminates real stories about the challenge of simply returning to sport for many young people and families … the research also identifies the real challenges many smaller clubs face in re-engaging volunteers back to the sector.

Starting early: Six-year-old friends and aspiring young Norwood Basketball Club players Jack and Isla learn some moves from Georgia Thomson at the ARC Campbelltown. Picture Michael Marschall

“Our industry needs to ask questions about the children and families who have not (returned to sport) – why, and what can be done to reconnect them with sport?

“COVID-19 continues to represent the single biggest challenge to contemporary community sport globally.”

He said the research, published this month in one of the world’s largest public health journals, BMC Public Health, involved interviewing players and collecting data from parents, coaches and administrators.

Dr Elliott said it was time to change the message being sent to potential players and families.

“The social nature of community sport could be branded as improving social, mental, and physical health … clubs, coaches and sporting organisations have an opportunity to re-imagine and re-articulate how fun and competition can coexist as inextricably important features of community sport – they do not need to exist as mutually exclusive,” he said.

Dr Elliott said preliminary results from a separate national study of 5000 sport participants showed weekly sport-related physical activity dropped from 92 minutes to 34 minutes – or 63 per cent – during the pandemic, compared to pre-pandemic behaviour.

However, he said more research was needed to get a more accurate snapshot of the current situation, including how many kids had not returned to sport at all.

Sport SA CEO Leah Cassidy agreed it was vital to keep kids in sport.

“Losing youth to sport, in particular, is a real concern as we know once they drop out there is only a small likelihood that they will return later in life … that means we potentially lose a generation of kids – and then their kids,” she said.

She said a national survey of grassroots sporting clubs, including 287 from this state, showed 23 per cent of South Australian clubs feared insolvency.

“But for a very small investment, of about $10,000 for a small club, we could make sure clubs were sustainable … when you think about the economic, physical, social and mental benefits of people being involved in a sporting club, that doesn’t seem like a lot of money,” she said.