Until It Hurts - Mark Hyman

This "hair-raising look at everything that is wrong with youth sports today"-its perils, its history, its key drivers-is a powerful call for positive change (Buzz Bissinger, author ofFriday Night Lights)

Over the last seventy-five years, adults have staged a hostile takeover of kids' sports. In 2003 alone, more than 3.5 million children under age fifteen required medical treatment for sports injuries-nearly half of which were the result of simple overuse. The quest to turn children into tomorrow's superstar athletes has often led adults to push them beyond physical and emotional limits.

InUntil It Hurts, journalist, coach, and sports dad Mark Hyman explores how youth sports reached this problematic state. His investigation takes him from the Little League World Series in Pennsylvania to a prestigious Chicago soccer club, from adolescent golf and tennis superstars in Atlanta to California volleyball players. He interviews dozens of children, parents, coaches, psychologists, surgeons, sports medicine specialists, and former professional athletes. He speaks at length with Whitney Phelps, Michael's older sister; retraces the story ofA Very Young Gymnast, and its subject, Torrance York; and tells the saga of the Castle High School girls' basketball team of Evansville, Indiana, which lost three-fifths of its lineup to ACL injuries in 2005. Along the way, Hyman hears numerous stories: about a mother who left her fifteen-year-old daughter at an interstate exit after a heated exchange over her performance during a soccer game, about a coach who ordered preteens to swim laps in three-hour shifts for twenty-four hours.

Hyman's exploration leads him to examine the history of youth sports in our country and how it has evolved, particularly with the increasing involvement of girls and much more proactive participation of parents. With its unique multiple perspective-of history, of reporting, and of personal experience-Until It Hurts delves into the complicated issue of sports for children, opening up a much-needed discussion about the perils of youth sports culture and offering insight into how positive change can be made.

Mark Hyman is a journalist, frequently contributing to publications, such asThe New York TimesandSports Illustrated, and he was a former writer forBusinessWeekandSports Business Journal. In 1998, he assisted Baseball Hall of Fame broadcaster Jon Miller in the writing of his memoir,Confessions of a Baseball Purist. He has appeared on panels and led workshops for the Sports Lawyers Association, the American Press Institute and the Associated Press Sports Editors. In 2010 he was honored as one of 18 Sports Ethics Fellows by the Institute for International Sport at the University of Rhode Island and the Positive Coaching Alliance at Stanford University. He currently teaches in the sports management program at George Washington University.

Part confession, part cautionary tale, Mark Hyman's little book carries a big message about the 'hostile takeover' of youth sports by adults. . . .What lends Hyman's admonitions such chilling credibility is his willingness to lay bare his own foibles. . . . Such candor is compelling and engaging.-Brion O'Connor, Boston Globe

"A hair-raising look at everything that is wrong with youth sports today . . . Every parent and every coach who has ever been involved in youth sports and cares about kids has an obligation to read it."-Buzz Bissinger, author of Friday Night Lights

"As his teenaged son undergoes major surgery so he can pitch again, a sports dad examines the physical and emotional minefield of youth sports and comes up with ideas to make it family-friendlier. If you've got a young jock in the house, this book is more important than a private coach."-Robert Lipsyte, author of Raiders Night

"It took a son's sore arm for Mark Hyman to recognize a hard truth: we're destroying youth sports, and maybe not even producing better athletes in the process. Until It Hurts is a sobering manifesto that should be required reading for every parent, coach, administrator, and referee. Though my daughter's U-7 soccer team doesn't know it, I've already implemented its smart, sensible, and long-overdue advice."-Stefan Fatsis, National Public Radio sports commentator and author of A Few Seconds of Panic

"Mark Hyman . . . shows how adults are . . . turning youth sports into a high-pressure, big-money enterprise. When did kids' sports become more work than play? Until It Hurts provides the answer-and offers the solutions we've been looking for."-Joan Ryan, author of Little Girls in Pretty Boxes