BLOOMING – FAST AND SLOW 

The arc of success in sports, school and career 

We all “bloom” at our own pace and in our own way. But in recent decades, there has been a strong push for kids to focus early in whatever they do. We are often told that the more complicated the world gets, the more specialized skills we will require, and the earlier we must start in order to survive and thrive. That trend has been seen in the hyper competition for kids to succeed almost immediately in academics and then gain entrance to top schools, and for young people to obtain employment offers from big firms. This hurry-up attitude has also infiltrated youth sports, including minor hockey.   

A Tale of Two Athletes  

In his 2019 book “Range,” science writer David Epstein starts with a comparison of two athletes.  

One of them started swinging a club before he was a year old. When he was two, he entered his first tournament and won the 10-and-under division. His father started mapping out his son’s future. He would drop his four-year-old son at a golf course at nine in the morning and pick him up eight hours later. By the time the young man entered college, he was already famous. His father called him “the Chosen One.”  

The second boy loved all sports. He played basketball, soccer, tennis, squash, badminton, and snow skied, swam, wrestled, and skateboarded. His parents had no particular athletic aspirations for their son. When he started to gravitate toward tennis, they told him to stop taking it so seriously. And when his tennis instructor moved him up to be with a group of older players, he asked to move back down so he could stay with his friends. By the time he finally did focus on tennis, thousands of other kids had long since been working with specialized coaches, sport psychologists and nutritionists and had an apparent head start. He would later give credit to the wide range of sports he played for helping him develop his athletic skills and hand-eye coordination.   

Unlike Tiger Woods, whose story fed into the “start early and do 10,000 hours” narrative (made famous in Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Outliers”), Roger Federer’s story is about “sport sampling” in an unstructured or lightly structured environment and gaining overall athleticism before concentrating on one sport.  

Hockey as a “Late Specialization” Sport   

A comparison of how sport skills develop may depend, in part, on the nature of a particular sport – i.e. whether it involves precise, repetitive elements (like a golf swing) or dynamic and fast-changing conditions (like tennis or hockey). In sport-specific analyses done by experts from 100 organizations world-wide, sports have been characterized as “early specialization” or “late specialization”. Well known early specialization sports include gymnastics, diving, and figure skating. Hockey is characterized as late specialization (along with sports such as basketball, baseball, and soccer). Experts agree that, if parents have their kids specializing in a single “late specialization” sport too early on, that may contribute to poor development of fundamental sport skills, overuse injuries, and burnout. (See IOC consensus statement on youth athletic development).  

Putting kids into such programs at a very early age can also create high parental expectations and a pressure cooker environment. If kids are to be successful and go on to excel in a sport, the drive to succeed must be intrinsic.  

Of course, athletic development and the trajectory from novice to elite levels varies greatly among individuals. But an interesting stat from a random study of NCAA Division 1 athletes showed that 98 per cent of them had played other sports before specializing in the one that they played in college. 

In his book, “Late Bloomers,” Rich Karlgaard notes that it is to an athlete’s initial advantage to bloom young. Early achievement wins a spot on good teams, garners good coaching, and makes available the greatest resources such as additional practice time. This has always been the case.  What’s changed in recent years is how much earlier athletes get picked for being “exceptional.”  

The way youth sports are instructed and experienced has also changed. Sports have become highly specialized and competitive at earlier ages. However, several studies have shown that 70 per cent of kids quit sports by age 13 – and kids have a common explanation: “It’s not fun anymore.” As the Washington Post reported: “Our culture no longer supports older kids playing for the fun of it. The pressure to raise ‘successful’ kids means that we expect them to be the best. If they are not, they [may be] encouraged to cut their losses and focus on other areas where they can excel.” 

Ian Yates, a British sports scientist and coach who helped develop future professional athletes in a range of sports, says that parents often come to him and “want their kids doing what the Olympians are doing right now, not what the Olympians were doing when they were 12 or 13 – which included a wider variety of activities that developed their general athleticism and allowed them to probe their talents and interests before they focused narrowly on one sport.”  

Of course, there is nothing wrong with applauding or encouraging early success if it is child-centric and child-driven. But it must be recognized that some kids who are early bloomers enjoy success in sports because they grow faster, not because they have more raw athletic talent. And some early bloomers simply benefit from the “relative age effect” (RAE) – as noted in “Outliers” with respect to selection of players on Canadian minor or junior hockey teams which disproportionately favours those born in the first or second calendar quarters. Certain coaches, driven by a “play to win” mindset even for very young teams, fail to differentiate in player selection between maturity and skill.  

Some sports organizations, recognizing the inequities of RAE, have taken steps to address it. For example, New Zealand’s youth rugby teams have long grouped young players together based on weight rather than age, so that skillful but smaller players are not disadvantaged. Some soccer leagues do the same. Another structural solution is to create more age categories, shrinking the impact of RAE. Studies have been conducted of programs – e.g. for 9- to 15-year-old Swiss sprinters and 10- to 18-year-old Australian swimmers – that apply adjustments of performance times based on relative age distributions, demonstrating that such corrective adjustments enable better coaching evaluations and help inspire the athlete’s experience.  

Although RAE reduces after puberty and maturation, some potentially great athletes will end up leaving sports prematurely as a result of RAE. They take their foot off the gas pedal right when they should be stepping on it. However, it’s also interesting to recognize a notable paradox. That is, there is evidence of an “underdog effect” – indicating that younger athletes may ultimately achieve greater performance success by virtue of the enhanced skill development, resiliency, and coping skills required to overcome a RAE sport system that disadvantaged them initially; (Patty Weir and Kristy Smith, U of Windsor).  

The Cult of the Head Start in Academics 

What Epstein calls the “cult of the head start” is also seen in non-athletic endeavours, including in early vs. (supposedly) “late” blooming in academics. Of course, many factors can slow a young person’s development in school, including delayed physical or neurological development, non-standard learning styles, socioeconomic status, illness, family or academic turbulence, etc. – even plain bad luck.  

Furthermore, the race toward specialized academic achievements can be a double-edged sword. Skills that young people demonstrate on standard tests (where applicable) or in college are more perishable in an age of faster change. There is a risk of narrow training for jobs that few of them will ever have. If students focus early, they do compile more specific skills that prepare them for a certain type of employment. On the other hand, if they sample and focus later, they enter the job market with fewer domain-specific skills, but a greater sense of the type of work that fits their abilities and inclinations. 

For some children, the intense pressure for early achievement is damaging to their mental health. This negative impact on health may largely result from society’s extreme celebration of the early achiever and a shift to extrinsic goals, leading to expectations around material gains and other status measurements. When a student falters, they may have difficulty coping with a shortfall. Social media platforms play an outsized role in exacerbating this negative impact. They speak directly to the anxieties of young people. 

In this respect, youth sport participation can counteract negative social media effects by promoting physical activity, real social interaction, and self-esteem. Engaging in sports helps youth develop resilience, teamwork, and leadership skills, which are crucial for mental well-being. It provides a healthy outlet for stress and reduces screen time, lowering exposure to cyberbullying and social comparison. Sports foster a sense of community and belonging, countering the isolation often associated with excessive social media use. Through positive experiences in sports, youth can build confidence and form supportive peer relationships, mitigating the adverse impacts of social media. 

Late Blooming in Careers 

There are numerous stories of people who bounced around from one job to another before finding their lane and thriving. Such stories include some of history’s greatest scientists (Darwin), artists (van Gogh), philosophers (Aristotle), inventors (Thomas Edison), popular writers (Ian Fleming, J K Rowling), business people (Phil Knight, Jack Ma, Ray Croc), movie makers (Ang Lee), technologists (Gunpei Yokoi of Nintendo), actors (Harrison Ford, Morgan Freeman among many others), investors (Ken Fisher), astronauts (Scott Kelly), and leaders in fashion (Vera Wang), cooking (Julia Child), politics (Vaclav Havel, a poet who became President of Czechoslovakia) … the list goes on. Those trailblazers almost always credited their early struggles and diverse experiences as laying the foundation for their later life success. It may take time – and foregoing a “head start” – to develop personal and professional range, but it can be very valuable in playing the long career game. 

Epstein notes that the challenge young people now face is how to gain and maintain the benefits of breadth, diverse experience, inter-disciplinary thinking and delayed concentration in a world that increasingly incentivises, even demands, hyper-specialization. “One good tool is rarely enough in a complex, interconnected, rapidly changing world.” 

It is becoming very apparent in the last couple of years that millions of white-collar workers who thought their careers were immune to automation will learn that at least a significant part of their highly respected jobs can be performed by software programs. Indeed, it’s hard to identify a career that isn’t at risk of being affected by artificial intelligence. Specifically, Karlgaard notes that our society’s favoured STEM track (science, technology, engineering, and math) encourages young people to go into jobs that AI, ironically, may soon replace or shrink. 

But the glass-half-full perspective is that machines and humans frequently have opposite strengths and weaknesses. The more constrained and repetitive of a job, the more likely it will be automated, but great rewards may accrue to those who can take conceptional knowledge from one situation or domain and apply it in an entirely new one. And that is where the late bloomer who has had exposure to multiple environments may ascend. As AI continues its relentless march into specialized realms, the winners may well be the jack-of-all-trades. “Unless your job requires repetitive, routine tasks, being a specialist isn’t [necessarily] an asset. Having a wide range of skills and experiences is more beneficial because it allows you to be nimble and creative.” (K. Evers, “The Art of Blooming Late”, Harvard Business Review).  

It’s Never Too Late 

Whether in sports, school or careers, some of us simply need more time, experience, and experimentation to develop a path and realize our talents. Life is often defined by snags and setbacks, by detours and disappointments. Purpose and insight – strengths of the late bloomer – come from a “portfolio” of experiences, making late bloomers more reflective, adaptable, and patient. 

As Professor Angela Duckworth (author of “Grit”) notes, over time, as we learn life lessons, grow older, and are thrust into new circumstances, “we rise to the occasion. In other words, we change when we need to.” Blooming has no finish line. We are capable of blooming anew at any age and in any stage of our lives. Our future story can be changed.   

Returning to the words of philosopher-tennis player Roger Federer, as he spoke to graduating students at Dartmouth a few weeks ago: 

“The truth is, whatever game you play in life… sometimes you’re going to lose. A point, a match, a season, a job… it’s a roller coaster, with many ups and downs. Whatever game you choose, give it your best. 

Go for your shots. Play free. Try everything. 

Most of all, be kind to one another… and have fun out there.”