The idea of athletes playing two sports is a hot topic as more and more athletes are dropping their second sport to devote more time to their primary one. How beneficial is playing just one sport, though?
Paul Cifra is a senior at SCH and the captain of the baseball team who thinks playing only one sport helps him get better at baseball: “For me specifically, I can spend up to five hours every day on just one sport, getting better every day, getting that 1% better.”
However, when an athlete spends so much time on only one sport they can be affected by something called “burnout.” Burnout is when someone is mentally and physically exhausted by something. Mr. Ramer, who teaches the Cultivating Leadership class at SCH spoke on the growing burnout rate in sports: “I think sometimes when you only focus on one sport, and you’ve done it for so long, at some point it just becomes not fun anymore, right?”
Ramer, who played three sports in high school, (football, basketball, and baseball) and two in college (football and baseball) continued by saying, “Your body gets overused. Same muscles get overused. So it’s great to have these alternative activities, even if you’re not great at that sport, to allow your body to do other things and mentally put yourself in other positions.”
Mr. Ramer remembered a conversation that he had with the University of Memphis Head Baseball Coach Matt Riser about his concerns with recruiting high school athletes who only play baseball. “His concern of just recruiting baseball-only kids is they get to him, and they’re already burnt out, so he’d rather go out and get a kid that plays baseball and something else.
Cifra is not worried about the burnout rate. If you love the game, it won’t burn out,” he said.
SCH junior Joey Markey is one of the few SCH athletes who plays three varsity sports. Markey said he works equally hard at all of them but believes baseball will take him the furthest.
When asked if he thinks playing multiple sports takes away from baseball, Markey said, “to an extent, it does. I don’t play it for a longer amount of time, but playing other sports helps me, because the same muscles aren’t being worked over and over again, and it helps with rest and coming back fresh for a new season.”
Markey continued to talk about how playing multiple sports helps him with baseball: “I think it helps physically and mentally because each sport works your brain and body differently. For example, baseball is a very mental sport, so that is very mentally exhausting, and football is a very physical sport, so it’s very physically exhausting, and it helps you, over time, get better at each one, to become a more well-rounded athlete.”
Markey also thinks that playing multiple sports helps him avoid the burnout that some athletes feel when they only play one sport all the time. “When it’s the new season, my favorite sport is always the season that I’m in. So after that season, it’s on to the next, so the excitement rises again and the hype, the hype, all comes back right at the start of the season for every single sport.”
Mr. Ramer shared, “I also think another byproduct of [playing multiple sports] is to be coached by other people, to get different opinions. The power of not being amazing in one sport, but being decent, I think, it makes you better in that main sport.”
With all this information, athletes are still torn. Should they pick just one sport, or play multiple?