A generation of children are growing up aware that winning is important but admit that they wouldn’t miss it if it was gone, according to research undertaken by the Marylebone Cricket Club and Chance to Shine, a leading sports participation charity in the UK.
There was a clear gap between how parents and children felt about competition in sport. 39% of the children interviewed, between the ages of 8 and 16, felt their parents would be less interested in watching them play sport if competition was removed. This compares to only 22% of parents who admitted this would be the case.
In a long and detailed analysis of competitive sport in schools it emerged that there was very little difference between how boys and girls view winning and losing with a small lift in the number of girls that considered winning to be the most important aspect of sport (14.2% vs 13.0% for boys).
In similar vein there was a higher proportion of girls (29%) versus boys (27%) who believed winning to be very important.
In terms of the values that they felt were most important girls ranked teamwork higher (36% vs 33% for boys) while boys marginally favoured exercise (37% vs 36% for girls).
The same questions asked of parents produced figures of 43% who believed teamwork was the most important element of sport with exercise coming in second at 34% and winning much lower down the scale at only 4.2% behind discipline (9%) and a sense of worth (6%).
84% of the 1,000 children interviewed for the survey felt that experiencing winning and losing was an important aspect though the biggest single answer to how they would feel if winning and losing was removed was that so long as they were enjoying themselves that was fine (30.3%).
Sport for Business will have a more detailed look at the findings of the survey as part of The Business of Youth Sport, our summer conference taking place at the Dublin Institute of Technology on June 12th. The full programme for this event will be released next week and will cover all aspects of youth sport from primary to third level education, and featuring case studies from the spectrum of Irish sport. Click here to find out more and book your place.
