Relative Age and its effect on youth sports

Relative Age and its effect on youth sports

Caroline McDermott 12/23/2010

*note: all athletes in this article, are referred to as “him” for simplicity’s sake.

ISSUE

Does the relative age of a child affect his ability to become an elite athlete, and if so, what should youth coaches do to allow athletes that may develop later a chance at elite greatness?  Should youth leagues be allowed to exist with the purpose of developing elite players for their respective sport leagues, or should these leagues be used in the general development of well-rounded youth?

BACKGROUND

            Ask any teacher, coach, or adolescent psychologist:  There is a huge difference in physical, emotional, and academic maturity (by this I mean the academic skills a child obtains—early and basic literacy and math skills being the most basic) between a child that is aged 8-years, 11-months and a child that is age 8-years, 1 month.  Also, ask any parent of more than one child if both (or all) of their children developed at exactly the same rate, in all aspects—physical skills, emotional maturity, and even at a basic academic level— and they will look at you incredulously and say “no, of course not!” 

It is impossible to think that in a society that openly acknowledges and accepts that children learn at different rates in their formative years to expect the same equal level of development in sports technique amongst all athletes who fit into the “10-year-old” class, but it happens every day in our age-based selection of sports.

            In his 2010 book, Bounce, author Matthew Syed discusses “aged based selection and streamlining,” specifically in Canadian Hockey, European youth soccer and U.S. Youth Baseball.  He challenges the notion that our most elite athletes in late adolescence and young adults are not the result of athletes with the most talent, but the result of a good birthday.  “Those who make it to the top…are not necessarily more talented or dedicated than those left behind:  it may just be that they are a little older” (Syed, 2010).

            In the early 1980’s, while attending her son’s Major Junior A league hockey game, Paula Barnsley discovered an intriguing fact in the game program.  What Paula noticed was that the majority of the players’ birthdays fell on the months in the beginning of the calendar year. She mentioned this to her husband, Roger, who is a Canadian psychologist. “I thought she was crazy, but I looked through it, and what she was saying just jumped out at me.  For some reason, there were an incredible number of January, February and March birth dates,” (Barnsley, qtd. in Gladwell, 2008). 

This discovery lead to a study by Barnsley and his colleague A. H. Thompson of the Ontario Junior Hockey league, (and an unknowingly parallel study by Simon Grodin, on the Quebec Hockey League) with very interesting results; “In any elite group of hockey players—the very best of the best—40 percent of the players will have been born between January and March 30; 30 percent between April and June; 20 percent between July and September; and 10 percent between October and December,” (Gladwell, 2008).  The following is a graphical representation of the relationship between birth date and participation rates in minor hockey . (Barnsley, R and Thompson, A.H., 1988)

What adults may see as ‘arbitrary’ as a birth date, in actuality, affects the development of youth in sports in as little as few years.  For example, in Canada, the eligibility cut-off for age-based hockey is January 1.  “That means that a 10-year-old boy born in January could be playing alongside another boy born almost twelve months later.  This difference in age can represent a huge difference in terms of physical development at that time of life,” (Syed, 2010).

 In Canada, coaches begin to select players for the “all-star” teams and traveling leagues at around age nine or ten.  It is no surprise that when selecting talent, for the majority, coaches identify the older athletes—the ones closest to the cut-off—as the ones with the talent.  These are the “bigger and more coordinated players, who have had the benefit of critical extra months of maturity,” (Gladwell, 2008).  What then happens to these athletes?  According to Gladwell, an athlete that is selected to these all-star leagues:

gets better coaching, and his teammates are better, and he plays fifty or seventy-five games a season instead of twenty games a season like those left behind in the “house” league, and he practices twice as much as, or even three times more than, he would have otherwise.  In the beginning his advantage isn’t so much that he is inherently better but that he is a little older.  But by the age of thirteen or fourteen, with the benefit of better coaching and all that extra practice under his belt, he really is better, so he’s the one more likely to make it to the Major Junior A league, and from there, to the big leagues. (2008). 

            According to Barnsley and Thompson, these older athletes “achieve more success, receive greater rewards for their endeavors, and thus are more likely to remain in minor hockey for a number of years,” (1988).  However, what happens to those players that do not make the “cut” into the first set of all-star leagues?  As you might predict, the opposite is true for these athletes. 

“As these children experience a developmental disadvantage in relations to their older playing mates, they are more likely to experience frustration and failure, and, as a result, develop a lower expectation of themselves as hockey players,” (Barnsley, R and Thompson, A.H., 1988).  This suggests that because of these negative feelings toward their sport, younger relatively-age children are more likely to “leave hockey for other activities in which they are more likely to achieve success,” (Barnsley, R and Thompson, A.H., 1988). 

The second figure, below, represents the relative age of athletes in each tier (top, middle, and bottom).  (Barnsley, R and Thompson, A.H., 1988)

Upon analyzing the above graph, several general observations can be made, according to Barnsley and Thompson (1988).  They are: 

1.      “In each league, with the exception of “Midget” …the lowest tiers demonstrate significant relationships between birth quarter and participation rates.  These results reflect fewer players with a relative age advantage playing at this lower tier level as opposed to quite a high proportion of players born in the last part of the year and thereby possessing a relative age disadvantage.”

2.      In the middle tiers, “No relationship exists in this tier between birth date and participation rate…at this level of play the hockey player’s birth months are evenly distributed throughout the year.”  Barnsley and Thompson believe this to be because “players born in the last two quarters of the year are underrepresented in the Minor Hockey League program,” as well as a “higher proportion of players will relative age advantage being placed in higher tier leagues.” (1988)

3.      In the top tiers, “statistically significant results exist that represent a much higher proportion of players born in the first half of the year than in the second half.   This finding supports the hypothesis that selection to a top tier or “rep” team highly related to the relative age advantage of the hockey players,” (Barnsley, R and Thompson, A.H., 1988).

Relative Age and Other Sports:  

      Relative age doesn’t just affect Canadian Hockey.  It affects, essentially, every sport where there is age grouping. In 1994, Ad Dundink, a professor at the University of Amsterdam, published a short article in Nature.  He found a similar relationship between 12-16 year-old tennis players in the Dutch youth league.  Out of 60 tennis players who were at the top of the rankings, half were born in the first three months of the competition year (Dudink, 1994).

            For youth soccer in Europe, the same relative age phenomenon can also be observed.  In England, the cut-off date is September 1.  “At one point in the 1990s, there were 288 players born between September and November and only 136 players born between June in August,” (Gladwell, 2008).  Internationally, the cutoff date for soccer used to be August 1.  “In one recent junior world championship tournament, 135 players were born in the three months after August 1…and just 22 were born in May, June, and July,”  (Gladwell, 2008).  The cut-off date has now changed to January 1.  On the 2007, Czech National Junior soccer team, 15 of its players were born in January, February, and March, with the remaining six players being born in April-September.  This shows that the birth date of elite players shifts with the change in the eligibility cut-off date, and that relative age, in essence, is an authentic concern in youth sports.

            In youth baseball, up until 2005, the cut-off date was July 31.  That meant that athletes who were born in August had, in terms of relative age, the best chance of making the major leagues.  In fact, “since 1950, a child born in the United States in August has a 50 to 60 percent better chance of making the big leagues than a child born in July,” (Spira, 2008).  Interestingly enough, as of the 2005 season, 503 athletes born in August had made the major leagues, in comparison to only 313 Americans who were born in July (Spira, 2008).   In 2005, USA Baseball (the governing body of the sport) changed the cut-off date of amateur baseball from July 31 to April 30.  It will be interesting to see if, in a few years, the relative age trend in the professional leagues will be altered just as it happened in soccer.

            An interesting side-note is that relative-age has not been seen in American football or in basketball.  There are two possible explanations for this.  The first is that in basketball and football, to be elite, size is a majoring factor.  If you are 5’5”, you just aren’t going to be a professional basketball player.   “An athlete’s ultimate height and weight aren’t clear until fairly late in his youth,” (Spira, 2008) which means that the cut-off dates aren’t nearly as important at a young age. 

Another determining factor may also be the popularity of football and basketball in American culture, along with willingness of people to play, the ease of getting equipment , and the amount of practice space available.  According to Gladwell, “a physically immature basketball player in an American city can probably play as many hours of basketball in a given year as a relatively older child because there are so many basketball courts and so many people willing to play…Basketball is saved by its accessibility and ubiquity,” (2008).

            It is important to note that relative age phenomenon is not “law,” that is to say, just because a hockey player is born in July, or December, even, they cannot make elite status.  Certainly there are elite athletes who counteract the very thought of relative age making or breaking a child’s chance to be successful at sports.  However, a child with average talent who has a relative age closest to the cut-off date may just be given that extra edge to provide them with the opportunities that positively affect the chances of becoming an elite athlete. 

ANALYSIS

What we see is that an athlete may start out as a little bit better than his peers.  However, it is because he is given that initial greater opportunity he then becomes an elite athlete.  Because he is just a little bit more talented (or just physically more mature) than his peers, over time he is given more and more opportunities to earn success.  At first, the difference is small, but over time, this fostered success grows exponentially compared to the bottom-tiered athletes.  He is now an “outlier” to his peers, and is seen as highly talented.

This occurrence has been dubbed “The Matthew Effect” by sociologist Robert Merton, after the verse in the Gospel of Matthew: “For unto everyone that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance, But from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath,” (Matthew, 25:29).  What Merton meant was that if a person is labeled as successful, he is given more opportunities to reach higher levels of success.  This “amount of success” grows exponentially compared to his peers. 

For example, take the example of a “poor” reader versus a “good” reader.  A “poor” reader may only read 100 words a day, while a “good” reader may read 250.  By the end of the week, a “poor” reader has read 700 words, while a “good” reader has read 1750.  It seems like a big difference, but consider the difference between that good reader and an “excellent” reader—a reader that reads, say, 500 words per day--by the end of the week, she will have read 3500 words.  It is no wonder poor readers struggle.  They read 700 words a week compared to 3500 words per week of an excellent reader.

This translates easily into athletics.  It is easy to see now, how, just because an athlete was identified as “talented” early on in his career, he would receive countless more hours of instruction and competition experience than his peer(s).  The table below is a hypothetical example of three children who are labeled—at age eight (regardless of relative age)—whether or not they are above average, average, or below the “normal” talent level.  It is assumed that the average total number of “exposure hours,” that is, time in which the child will be engaged in meaningful and purposeful practice and/or competition hours each year will remain constant for each tier every year (500 exposure hours for the highest level, 250 exposure hours for the middle tier, and 100 exposure hours for the lowest tier).

If 500 hours per year of practice seems excessive, it actually breaks down into 9.6 hours per week of practice, which is practicing 5 days per week, for one hour and 45 minutes with a one-hour game.   (Although this may seem high for an 8 year-old, consider a gymnast’s career, many of who are elite athletes by age 14.)

As you can see, an athlete who is identified in the highest tier at age 8 will receive 1000 hours of exposure time over the course of two years, where an athlete identified in the middle tier will need four years of exposure time…and even scarier, an athlete identified in the bottom tier at age 8 will need ten years, or his entire adolescence of exposure time to equal the same amount of exposure time an athlete labeled as “talented” will receive over two years. 

The results above, although analyzed in general terms, are astonishing.  It is no wonder that, by age 12, some athletes are seen as “prodigies” while others end up quitting the sport because they feel they aren’t “good enough. 

Even in sports where we do not see notable trends of the relative-age phenomena, it still exists.  In the “10 and under” class of pee-wee football, who are the best players?  Most likely those players closest to the age of 10.  Children that are 7, 8, 9 are competing against children that are almost 10 (or actually, 11, if they sneak in just before the cut-off date.).  These children are labeled as ‘good’ and therefore, may be aged up in order to be “challenged.” Another example is the best players in youth soccer at age 9 may play in a U-12 travel soccer league.

Relative age exists in individual sports as well.  In youth swimming, the elite are determined by time.  To qualify for Olympic trials, it doesn’t matter your age, just that you swim the qualifying time.  In the age-group aspect of swimming, our athletes compete at their actual age.  The age of a child for competition is determined by his age on the first day of the meet.  This means that each child is competing in an age bracket with his peers.  At first glance, relative age in swimming seems to have less of an impact than relative age in hockey.  However, consider a child who has been in the 9-10 age-group all season, which means he is one of the oldest swimmers in his age class.  He turns 11 the day before championships.  He has now “aged up” to the 11-12 age-group.  Who is he competing against?  Swimmers that have TWO YEARS more experience (and probably, as we have seen, exponentially more exposure time) than him.  In regards to his finishing place, he will probably finish towards the bottom, where as a 10-year old, he would have finished at the top of his age-group.  Fortunately, with swimming, we also have finish time as an evaluation tool, so as coaches we are able to explain to the child his overall place in regards to relative age, disregard it, and analyze the finish time.  Any improvement in time is a “winner” to a swim coach.

Another way swimming addresses the issue of relative age is to have “odd-age group” competitions. Instead of the age groups being 8 and under, 9-10, 11-12, 13-14, and 15-18, swimmers will compete in 7 and under, 8-9, 10-11, 12-13, 14-15 and 16 and over categories for a specific meet.  What this does is allow the children who would normally be the youngest in regards to relative age become the oldest, and vice versa.

RECCOMENDATION

I found this topic fascinating, because, as coaches, we are always trying to identify those athletes that are the most talented in our programs.  These talented athletes are the ones that represent the success of the program to the public, and ultimately the success of our businesses. 

As a coach, I try to treat all kids equally, but I know in reality, this isn’t the case.  The kids that are the most coachable get the most out of their exposure hours.  The athlete that is unwilling to “listen” to the coach gets less attention, whether through the coach or due to the athlete’s reception to the coach.

 On my program, (which is in its third season) travel swim meets are “optional” (although strongly encouraged).  Over the course of this season alone, it has become inherently obvious that those swimmers that frequently attend swim meets are showing greater improvement overall.  After researching this paper, I would consider relative age as a partial reason, but not that I am treating them differently as a reason for this improvement.  Because they are attending meets more frequently than their peers, they are receiving additional coaching and experiences that the rest of their teammates are not receiving…in essence, they are receiving more exposure hours, and are now approaching the “outlier” category because of this.

At swim practice, we use ability grouping (lanes) to group our kids.  I am curious after researching this topic to see the effect of relative age when we “move up” kids into higher lanes.  Are we moving up the kids with the most talent? Or are the kids with the most talent those just slightly more physically developed?  It will be interesting to find out.

It is apparent that relative age can affect the development of children in youth sports, but there is no real solution to eliminating it.  Generally speaking, athletes with the most talent will be exponentially greater than those athletes with average talent in the beginning.   The reason for this is that talent in our society is seen as a certain way, and it would take changing the way our entire society evaluates talent and success in order for relative age to be less of an issue.

One way coaches can help with this, is to consider the long-term success of an athlete, and what we are really striving to teach in youth sports.   Are we trying to develop mini-professionals before an athlete reaches college, or are we trying to teach sportsmanship, healthy lifestyles, goal setting, working together, and the value of learning a new skill?  Is it important to “be the best,” or is it important to learn not to give up when you fail the first 15 times you try to do something?   Youth sports should be a “paradigm of developing all according to their potential, instead of concentrating on the future superstars, [which] could lend to better combined team performance, and a better sport overall,” (Nolan and Howell, 2010).

CONCLUSION

The conclusion we are able to draw is that an athlete born closest to the cut-off date is given more opportunities to develop to his full potential than a player whose birth date falls towards the end of the cut-off date. Therefore, it may not be that any child is born with more innate talent than any other child, but that the older, more physically developed child was given the ‘head start’…and not because it was earned, or deserved, but the child just happened to be relatively older than his peers.  It will take an entire shift in societal identification of talent to alter the impact that relative age has on the success of our sports.

Bibliography

Barnsley, R and Thompson, A.H. (1988). Birthdate and success in minor hockey: The key to the NHL. Canadian Journal of Behavioral Sciences , 167-176.

Dudink, A. (1994, April 14). Birth Date and Sporting Success. Nature , p. 592.

Gladwell, M. (2008). Outliers: The Story of Success. New York: Little, Brown, and Company.

Matthew, 25:29. New Revised Standard Version.

Nolan and Howell. (2010, July). Hockey success and birth date: The relative age effect revisited. International Review of the Sociology of Sport , 507-512.

Spira, G. (2008, April 16). The Boys of Late Summer. Slate .

Syed, M. (2010). Bounce: Mozart, Federer, Picasso, Beckham, and the science of success. New York: Harper Collins.

Thompson, A. H. (2000, April). Achievement, Self-Esteem, Suicide, and Relative Age . Los Angeles, California, USA: American Association of Suicidology.