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Youth sports seminar at PCHS

Tiger Woods picked up a golf club when he was a toddler and never looked back, becoming one of the best golfers in history. Venus and Serena Williams began their tennis careers at a young age and went on to become superstars.

But stories like those don’t happen every day. It often doesn’t benefit young athletes to specialize in one sport early.

The Park City Sport and Wellness Coalition will host a free seminar for coaches and parents of young athletes on Friday, May 1, to address youth development in sports. Headlining the seminar is Dan Gould, Ph.D. Gould is the director of the Institute for the Study of Youth Sports and a professor in the department of kinesiology at Michigan State University.

Finn Gundersen, the director of sport education at High Performance Sports, said it’s important that parents and coaches have the most recent research on topics regarding youth sports and development. He said there is still a lot of misinformation out there when it comes to early specialization.

"Tiger Woods started swinging a club at age 3," he said. "But those are just the exceptions — they aren’t the reality for most people who are successful at every level. That’s definitely one of the things we’re up against. We all look at the phenoms and the superstars and think, ‘If my kid is going to get that, they’ve got to start as early as possible.’"

But, he added, that simply isn’t the case, and Gould will explain why at the May 1 seminar at 6:30 p.m. in the Park City High School auditorium.

"Still, at the grass-roots level, there are coaches telling kids, ‘You’ve got to specialize. You’ve got to play my sport,’" Gundersen said. "We’re trying to educate everyone. The more and more you look into it — I go to conferences all over the world — what we’re finding is multi-sport athletes are more successful and athletes that specialize later are more successful."

Gundersen said the Park City Sport and Wellness Coalition is thrilled to be able to bring in a speaker like Gould to present the latest data to Summit County coaches and parents.

"It could be quite a show, actually," he said. "There’s some really good research in there that will hopefully show everyone multi-sport is the way to go."

With the athletic culture of Summit County, Gundersen said there’s a chance to do something special in the area.

"We really have an opportunity to create in Summit County, in this Olympic venue with really motivated parents and athletes, the best practices for youth development," he said. "We could create a model that the state of Utah and other areas can use for the right way to develop athletes. We’re really trying to push the idea of sports working together and sharing the athletes instead of fighting over the athletes."

There will be a small presentation for coaches and sport directors at 5 p.m. at Park City High School. The 6:30 p.m. presentation in the PCHS auditorium is open to the public — parents, coaches and anyone else involved in youth sports.


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