Sports is Public Health - School Sports

As school sports gets more and more expensive and funding keep getting slashed, many kids won't have access to youth sports. Also, the moral panic over trans athletes is just that, a moral panic stoked by bigots. 

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SPEAKER_02 0:05

Welcome back to Everything is Public Health. I'm MJ.

SPEAKER_00 0:07

And I'm Cass.

SPEAKER_02 0:08

Did you play sports in school growing up? I think you mentioned soccer on the show before, or as everywhere else calls it, football.

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Oh yes. I played pretty much every sport with a ball as a kid. So softball, basketball, volleyball. I did a little golf at one point. Kind of a ball, I guess. Who else has balls? Like I played flag football, kickball.

SPEAKER_02 0:30

Did you start in high school or middle school?

SPEAKER_00 0:32

I started playing soccer when I was eight or nine, maybe. But had always played sports in the neighborhood of kids. So nine, maybe, was when I started my first really organized sport. But I was always very sport inclined and athletic. And so I played a ton of sports growing up.

SPEAKER_02 0:50

Very inspiring story, considered your asthma. So this is a good inspirational story. Yeah. Played sport despite my lungs telling me not to.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

The funny thing is, my asthma got so much worse when I moved to the East Coast.

SPEAKER_02 1:03

Now that is interesting.

SPEAKER_00 1:04

I did not even have a prescription for a rescue inhaler when I was an adult living in Washington State. Like it had generally resolved. Like that's a thing. Like a lot of kids will have asthma and then they kind of grow out of it.

SPEAKER_01 1:15

I did, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:16

And then I moved to Philly and my lungs were like, what is in this air? Small. I had to go to the emergency department. And they're like, oh, your asthma is really bad. And I was like, but I grew out of that. They're like, welcome to the East Coast. Welcome to the city. It can be challenging. We're just talking about how my asthma's flared up right now. It's a little bit challenging with the weather changing.

SPEAKER_02 1:35

Yeah, she's not doing so hot right now as you coughed. Yes. Okay, sports, fond memories, I'm hoping.

SPEAKER_00 1:41

Oh, yes. I loved sports. I see competition as a way to bring the best out of everyone. Like healthy, friendly competition makes everybody better. And the team building, the collaboration, like I never really played a lot of solo sports. Mine were largely all team sports. Sure. And so you win or lose together, right? Like how do you lift each other up? How do you support each other when you lose? There's a saying, like all the most important things in my life I learned in kindergarten. I would argue that most of my important life lessons and things that I think make me a good researcher and leader now are things I got out of sport.

SPEAKER_02 2:21

Yeah. And we'll reflect on this in a bit, but generally that's the impression that people have when it comes to school sports. It's one of those things that people's impression of it is generally positive because it brings a lot of things.

SPEAKER_00 2:33

So clarification: I did not do a ton of school sports. So, like I ran track in elementary school. I played softball for my middle school team, but I played travel soccer. It was like a separate soccer club. And so I just wanted to clarify. Most of my sports experiences were outside of school, which was cool because I got to know people from neighboring schools that I might not have got to know otherwise or would have only played against, but we got to play together.

SPEAKER_02 3:02

You know, that is actually something that I would love to hear your insights on in a few minutes because I say school sports, but it's really youth sports, is sort of the umbrella term that we're gonna investigate. School sports just tend to be the most prevalent and to some degree accessible. We'll get into this. One of my biggest regrets is not playing sports in college and high school, and even just casually. I don't think I would have done well playing sports, to be honest. I probably would have gotten bullied or harassed somehow, but I never got into the habit of exercising and like getting into a routine. And it's really hard to start from nothing. One of the benefits that people cite school sports or youth sports is that you get into that habit of building routine early, and that sticks with you for to the rest of your life. I'm sure you can attest to that.

SPEAKER_00 3:46

Absolutely. And really good for balancing schedules, building routines, having a an expectation that you're going to have a healthier lifestyle.

SPEAKER_02 3:56

So today's topic is youth sport or school sports. This is to celebrate the International Day of Education, which is the 24th of January. So we love education. Yeah. We think it's an important thing for a healthy society to have. Not mentioning this for any reason, you know, just it's good. Education is good.

SPEAKER_00 4:12

We're just gonna leave it right there. We're just gonna leave it right there.

SPEAKER_02 4:15

So, first, obviously, we got to do the obligatory question. Why is youth sports and school sport, why is that public health?

SPEAKER_00 4:21

Yeah, so from a public health perspective, exercise is good for your health in general, right? I we talked about that a little bit in the open. But school sports or youth sports, generally organized sports have additional benefits on top of exercise. Something for kids to do like before or after school, a place for them to go. Occupied kids tend to get into fewer shenanigans.

SPEAKER_01 4:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:44

And sometimes there's an awkward gap between when school is out and when parents come home. And so having a sport to go to can be helpful. Sports are an opportunity for kids to learn communication, conflict resolution, leadership, discipline, time management. Obviously, it's different for all kids, but like I talked about some of those important things that I developed when I was playing sports when I was younger. And participating in school sports is on average correlated with better academic performance, right? We're talking correlation, not causation. There's some debate there, but certainly there is some association between sports and academic performance. Better mental health and resilience, again, experiences vary. But I know for me, on days I get out and run, I'm in a much better mood than on days that I don't run. And so certainly there's some good mental health benefits there. And then better eating habits. If you're exercising, you're out playing sports, you will tend to eat healthier foods because your body's gonna crave the things that it needs to replace from that exercise.

SPEAKER_02 5:45

Yeah. Any athlete can tell you that eating certain types of food will physically make you perform worse. So they tend to avoid those foods, like either before game day or just in general, right? Eating a chocolate bar before game day, you're probably not gonna perform as well. Like, don't need to get into the nutrition aspect of things. But yeah, there's a lot of benefits to these organized sports, school sports or youth sports, in addition to individual health and mental health benefits. School sports provide community-wide benefits as well. If a school invests in a building, a facility for sports, be it a field or swimming pool or a gym, that facility can now serve as a utility space outside of school hours as well, because school is not 24-7. So we have a field now in this community, A. This mostly applies to public school. We love our public schools, as a football field can be used not just by the school, but also by neighbor community to host other sporting events or just to serve as a public space in general. I'm sure when you played in your youth non-school youth sports, the field was probably a school field, I'm guessing.

SPEAKER_00 6:44

Actually, uh, it depended. So never mind. No, no, no. It depended. For some, yes. Soccer was really big in my community, and so we actually had a park that had about a half a dozen soccer fields, so public park. So it wasn't associated with the school, but it was still public. And there were so many teams in the area that wanted to play, it was in the community's interest to have this half a dozen extra fields in addition to all the schools.

SPEAKER_02 7:10

Yeah, so definitely it has a community-wide benefit as well. Also, the actual games themselves, the school sports or youth sports game, could be a source of community building for all these spectators. It's a good place for parents to get to know other parents and socialize. Or so I believe, have you socialized with other parents as sporting events?

SPEAKER_00 7:28

So I don't know if we've talked about this or not, but my kids actually didn't do school sports.

SPEAKER_02 7:34

All right, never mind.

SPEAKER_00 7:35

So they did school-based music. They did Taekwondo.

SPEAKER_02 7:38

That's kind of a sport.

SPEAKER_00 7:39

It was an afterschool program. Martial arts are a little bit different. It's not like you're sitting there for an hour watching a game, chit-chatting, right? Usually the only times we were there watching is if they were doing exams and then, you know, you're not striking up a conversation.

SPEAKER_02 7:51

All right, never mind. I thought that would lead to a natural conversation, but individual experience will vary.

SPEAKER_00 7:56

So sorry to disappoint you there.

SPEAKER_02 7:58

Yeah, that's all right. Maybe your dad talked to other dads when you were playing school sports.

SPEAKER_00 8:02

Oh, for sure. When I was a kid, absolutely. My dad was talking with all the other parents. Like he developed some great friendships with parents of kids in the neighborhood that I might not have met otherwise. Maybe they were a year older or a year younger, but because of the team we played on, we were all playing together. And so he met some other parents he wouldn't have met otherwise. So yeah, and you know, standing at a kid's soccer game for a while is you kind of have to talk. Definitely are gonna strike up a conversation. And I will say my sisters' boys both play lacrosse, and they have a whole bunch of families that where the parents all know each other, and if there's an issue, like the parents will pick up each other's kids and help out with carpool and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_02 8:41

Yeah, community.

SPEAKER_00 8:43

So yeah, it definitely is a good way to build community.

SPEAKER_02 8:45

Yeah, so not just individual benefits to the kids, but also community-wide benefits to the entire surrounding neighborhood. Now, we've been talking mainly about school sports, but that is of course not the only option. There are youth sports that operate at the community level independently of the schools. However, and please correct me if I'm wrong, those are typically pay to play, which means it has even more access concerns than school sports offered at public school. Would you say that is your experience?

SPEAKER_00 9:13

100%. Again, I played two or three sports that were tied to school, but all of the other sports, primarily travel soccer, was independent, and there were fees for registration and uniforms and travel and all of these things. And so it's definitely cost prohibitive. Some of the teams I played on, parents would come together and chip in to help cover some of the costs for fundraisers, I'm sure. For really good kids. But the problem was the kid had to be good enough that the coach wanted you on the team to then be able to chip in. And so there was definitely some bias in who was able to get in and participate. I will say Snoop Dogg, if you didn't know this. He has been sponsoring Pop Warner football and getting kids in, paying for the cost of things. And a ton of his kids have like ended up playing in big time colleges and and some of them even in the NFL. So increasing access through philanthropy like that is a a really great way. Unfortunately, it just doesn't happen often enough.

SPEAKER_02 10:12

Yeah. And I believe they don't get any public funding. I believe is either philanthropy or self-paid for these things.

SPEAKER_00 10:21

So things may have shifted now, but one of the teams that I played in that was not related to school was our county, King County, had a parks and rec. Oh, okay. And so for a very, very small fee, which was basically like to cover maintenance and to get a t-shirt, you could sign up for like softball or other things. And so a ton of us played in that way. There's like this middle ground, right? You've got school, you've got travel or private teams, and then you've got these sort of county or city parks and rec teams. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:51

That is my oversight. I totally forgot about some parks. Maybe they're well funded by parks and recs, might have these sort of activities. Actually, Patterson Park. Oh, I should have thought about this. Patterson Park have a few kids-related sporting, I don't know if they're teams. I think they're just there to for kids to play. They might not be competitive, but still, it's good. It's an organized place for kids to be. Now, school sports are great and all, but who pays for them? Like many things in America, school sport also reflects the inequity that we have in our society, unfortunately. So let's talk about funding.

SPEAKER_00 11:22

Yeah, so building off of what we were talking about before, but to sort of give us a little bit of an anchor so we don't go too far down any one rabbit hole, we're gonna focus primarily on public schools. Private schools sort of have their own rules in terms of funding, they charge tuition, et cetera. But when kids play in school sports, it's covered by the school, they get their funding from a mix of local and state sources. There may be some federal funding, but it's a very small fraction of the total budget if they get anything at all. Local funding is often, but not always, based on the surrounding homes property tax. So like the value of the homes, then there's tax, and some of that goes to the school. State funding is likely from general revenue, which is typically income tax and sales tax, but it varies from state to state. Some states fund their schools mainly with state funds, some mostly use local funds. Some places are using lottery dollars to help fund schools as well. So there are some other ways, sort of beyond taxes. But what that translates to is that not all schools have the same level of funding for sports, even within the same city, potentially even like very close together, within, you know, a few blocks of each other. But also not all schools have the same sports opportunities available. Some may have one or two sports, some may have more. Again, thinking about the funding they have available.

SPEAKER_02 12:45

Yeah. And I wonder which school gets better funding.

SPEAKER_00 12:49

Well, and separately, like thinking about a common thing and booster clubs. Is that a term you're familiar with?

SPEAKER_02 12:55

What is that? Please tell me more.

SPEAKER_00 12:57

So booster clubs are usually groups of parents, but sometimes it's other community members who want to help raise additional funds to support uh school organizations. So, like I'm most familiar on the parent side with the boosters for the orchestra at the high school that my youngest went to. So we would do some fundraisers, help cover going to competitions and that kind of stuff. Because while the money that the school has often will pay for the students to play, pay for the cost of the teachers who serve as coaches, et cetera, sometimes students still have to pay the cost to go to a tournament or something like that. So the booster clubs will help fundraise. And I remember with some of the sports that I did in the school context, we were expected to fundraise a certain amount of money. So I had to go door to door selling wrapping paper or chocolate or cookies or candy or whatever it was. I remember that. I'm sure people have seen this, but it was, you know, the players, the parents, the community coming together to fundraise and the ability of people to fundraise from the community or the people like the networks that they know is a second piece that can very dramatically impact the funding that's available for a particular sports team.

SPEAKER_02 14:09

Absolutely. So this is actually part of a trend. Perhaps unsurprisingly, funding for these programs are either getting cut or just not increasing. Therefore, in order to keep these programs afloat, a lot of times schools or the parents or the community have to resort to other means of raising the funds. Which of those booster clubs? Which means there is a gap in both school sport participation and school sport availability for various families across the United States, particularly for low-income families. When surveying students who are interested in sports, why they don't participate, the most common answer, unsurprisingly, is that it is too expensive for them to participate, even though they want to. The second most common answer is that sport requires too much time commitment. The time commitment is not just like practice and the actual games, but fundraising is a time commitment. There's monetary requirements, but there's also like temporal requirements for these things. Those are the two top answers. However, when looking at different incomes level, low-income youths cite the cost as the most common reason why they want to but couldn't participate in or don't participate in the sports, and middle and higher income level families cite time commitment as the most common issue. Other barriers low-income families can face is simply just transportation barriers. How did they get to the games? How did they get to practice? That's also a cost associated with it. And there aren't enough schools nearby. Sports may be hard because there's no one to play against. You can't really run a team if there's no one to play against. So many barriers.

SPEAKER_00 15:38

Yeah. So more and more common school sport funding are not increasing from year to year. So despite the fact that everything is getting more expensive, we're practically leading to a budget cut as opposed to flat funding. Cause even though the funding is staying the same, everything costs more.

SPEAKER_01 15:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:54

The out-of-pocket costs for participating in school sports is also increasing. These are the costs the school charges families directly to cover the gaps. So as I mentioned, those could be travel. It could be you need, you know, expendable supplies, those kinds of things. This could be $100 to $500 annually. I would argue it's, you know, that's probably an underestimate. When you think about those might be direct costs, but when you think about all the costs that get covered by other fundraising and boosters and that kind of stuff, it's probably would be even more. Uh school sport can require time commitment from parents as well. You mentioned transportation, not just to practice, but to games. They're having to do fundraising to cover these cost gaps. And parents are reflecting that youth sports are trending to be way too competitive, which I was in a time before participation trophies and also like before the wack-adoo parents. Now I'm sure there probably were wack-adoo parents, but like fewer and further between. Nobody was getting into fist fights. And I feel like there's been this real shift to at least for a time, like everybody gets a trophy. You get a trophy just for showing up. But then in I would say the last 15 years or so, a real hard turn to like parents living vicariously through their kids. Oh, yes. And then making it more competitive so that they can feel like they're living out their glory days, whatever it might be. But it makes me so sad because I see all the time games being canceled. The kids are suffering because the games are being canceled because the parents are heckling the refs or heckling the umpire or getting into fights. And the kids are like, we just want to play. Like, be quiet. We just want to play. And I personally, as much as I loved having my dad at these games, don't let parents go to games. Like I feel like the kids would play much better. They would have a much better time, bar parents from attending. Okay, that's a hot take. And I'm sure you can send nasty grams to everything ispublichealth at gmail.com.

SPEAKER_02 17:47

Which she will not read.

SPEAKER_00 17:48

MJ will deal with them. But yeah, when I think about the immense growth and benefit and development and opportunities that I had from sport, it truly makes me so sad to think about parents ruining it for their kids.

SPEAKER_02 18:02

Yeah. The only thing it's good for is entertaining YouTube videos, but I feel like everyone involved, it's a negative for everyone there.

SPEAKER_00 18:09

Let's be honest. There is no way a four-year-old is going to be super competitive about a soccer game without a parent there, you know, shouting and whatever.

SPEAKER_02 18:20

And so just let kids have fun.

SPEAKER_00 18:21

Yeah, let the kids have fun. I read an inter or maybe it's a podcast. I listened to this interesting podcast about how most girls drop out of sports at an early age because they're body shamed, they're pressured, they're competitive, all of these things. I don't want to go off the rails on this, but there's an amazing podcast. It was related to like women running and that kind of stuff. But how we should have kids play sports without a winner or a loser, not a participation trophy, but like have kids play sports for the joy of playing sport and get parents out of it.

SPEAKER_02 18:50

Yeah, 100%. I think both of us agree, even though I personally never participated in it, but it is a regret. Both of us agree that this is a good thing. School sports, A plus. We love to have it. But there are disparities, access, disparity, and access that we've discussed. So I guess what would be a solution to that disparity? The obvious one's just increasing in funding, right? That's obviously the straight up answer. But any other solutions that you can think of? This is actually something that a lot of people discuss at length.

SPEAKER_00 19:15

So I know when I was a kid, sometimes we would have businesses would sponsor a team. Slap a name on a t-shirt, and you were the sponsor, and the none of the kids had to pay. It was all like the business would pay for everything.

SPEAKER_02 19:28

Yeah. That's one solution someone brought up. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:30

Well, what I learned now as an adult, I realized like a lot of that is it's not what you know, it's who you know, who has access to these sponsorship things. And maybe this would be a discouragement. I would hope not. But if a business is willing to sponsor a team, can they find another business willing to sponsor a different team? Like pair teams up. If there's a middle-income team, find a lower income team and pair them up so that they can both get sponsorship and both be able to be able to participate. And I just think we could do a better job of supporting folks with social networks to get connected to businesses that would be willing to sponsor.

SPEAKER_02 20:07

Yeah, that's one of the solutions I found is getting the community involved. And one of the ways to get a community involved is to have a local business put their names on a jersey. And I love the idea of pairing. So maybe you have competing donut shops. I will sponsor one school, you sponsor the other school, and then whoever wins the game gets free donuts or something, right?

SPEAKER_00 20:24

Exactly. The donut shop gets bragging rights for the year until the next time around, right?

SPEAKER_02 20:29

Obviously, this is about funding. The number one reason that people don't participate is because of cost. So the thing that we need to address is obviously related to cost. Ideally, we would address funding at its root to make sure that these programs are being well funded and that there's equity across schools. We can't talk about school sports programs without talking about what's happening with trans kids. There is a nationwide semi-coordinated effort to effectively ban trans kids from participating in school sports. These people will say, no, we're just keeping them in the sports that they're, quote, supposed to be in. We're not banning them from the sports, but that is disingenuous because you're denying their gender identity, you're effectively barring them from the sports. We are not experts in this field, so we can't get into the wheeze of this, but we will bust some common myths regarding transgender kids in school sports.

SPEAKER_00 21:15

Sure. So I think the biggest and maybe most pervasive myth is related to the number of transgender athletes. And turns out there actually aren't that many in high school, college, or professional levels. Conservatives love to pretend that they are everywhere. And numbers do vary from year to year, but in the entirety of the NCAA, which is the college-level sports, there's around a dozen trans athletes.

SPEAKER_02 21:40

Across all sports.

SPEAKER_00 21:42

Across all sports, all schools, all levels, right? There's multiple levels of multiple divisions of the NCAA. And so it's not a lot. And there's a myth that trans athletes are just winning everything and they became transgender so that they could be more competitive or have this unfair advantage. advantage, but they don't all win and they don't always do well. And this unfair advantage argument is really weak because trans athletes lose the same as other athletes do. And they separately face many challenges unique to them that cis athletes don't have to deal with. The distinction between quote unquote natural and quote unquote unnatural or not natural is weird. If a cis woman has naturally high testosterone levels, which does exist, should she be banned too? Or if a cis man has naturally low testosterone levels, which those also exist, should he compete in women's sports instead? Like there's this perception that folks are promoting that there is a a natural and an unnatural and that there's some clear and objective threshold for that. But that's just simply not the case. I will also say that there's a misperception that there are only two sexes.

SPEAKER_02 22:49

Also not the case.

SPEAKER_00 22:50

And that is not the case. It is not only XX and XY there are sometimes people who have three sex chromosomes and there are lots of different combinations and so that's also sort of a misperception. If people really cared about fairness, then why not address the more serious sources of unfair advantage like differences in funding and resources across different schools that predominantly follow economic lines. We don't have the answers but we definitely wanted to take a moment to highlight these big transphobic talking points because we feel they aren't true and genuine concerns, but really fearmongering or what we've talked about before like a moral panic.

SPEAKER_02 23:27

Yeah. And I encourage people to explore this with people who are actually involved in this space. Again, we're not experts at this. These are just the common debunks that you can pretty much find everywhere. Another evidence to how this trans athlete thing is just fearmongering is that their outrage extends to sports that are not dependent on physique at all. They got mad at a trans person playing darts which I don't know if you've seen darts competition. Just wrist this is it.

SPEAKER_00 23:53

A little elbow. There's a little elbow in there a little elbow.

SPEAKER_02 23:56

Yeah a little elbow action. I don't understand why gender has to do with it. Gender is a construct and if we're really worried about fairness what we should be doing is what some martial arts and certain contact sports are doing, which is weight classes or even height classes. Those are the physical differences that may actually lead to performance differences. This is my hot take for the episode uh maybe people will get really heated everything is publichealth at gmail.com do away with gender and use weight and height classes for everything. So if you're a certain weight in class you participate in this competition you're a certain weight in class like regardless of your gender just do it by height or do it by weight or do it by both. I feel like that's probably a better separation.

SPEAKER_00 24:32

I like that hot take.

SPEAKER_02 24:33

Because a six foot swimmer will swim faster than a four foot swimmer. That's just kind of how limbs work.

SPEAKER_00 24:41

Oh no I think it's great. It's great. I just I don't know where you were going with that with the height difference. But then when you said that's how limbs work like I don't know that just the perfect end to that.

SPEAKER_02 24:51

Anyway so hopefully we illustrated why school sport is so awesome and Cass you have personal testimonies to how that made you a better person. I wish I did it one of my biggest regrets but let's move on to the micro good section of the show before we do our outro my micro good of this episode mute and block the trolls. You don't have to engage with them. They're not going to change their mind. If you see something on your feed that you don't like just tell the algorithm please stop showing me this person.

SPEAKER_00 25:18

I love that so much and I especially love it because no joke maybe an hour ago I got a text from a friend who was saying you know they had gotten an email from a person and they had had a not a great interaction. It was the other person's fault, not my friend. And oh lots of excuses and justification whatever and my friend basically was like I'm just gonna ignore this. So this other person reached out today like totally tone deaf and oblivious to the fact that they had messed up previously asking for my friend's help and said friend was like I'm putting on a spam filter for this person so I never have to see their email ever again. I was like that is amazing and next level I would have just ignored them. Nope gonna put on a spam filter and just yeah I love it so much.

SPEAKER_02 26:03

Don't feed the trolls you know they want your engagement and the best thing you can do is to just not engage them. Do you have any micro goods?

SPEAKER_00 26:10

No, I just plus one yours with my great story.

SPEAKER_02 26:13

All right great thank you for listening to everything is public health new episodes every other week if you like the show please tell everyone you know about the show that helps us immensely commenting subscribing and leaving us a review also helps us out as well.

SPEAKER_00 26:26

If you have any questions or think we missed an important perspective you can reach out to us at everythingispublichealth at gmail.com follow our website everythingispublichealth dot com for all show updates and bonus material and remember everything is public health everything is public health