Sports

Over the last two decades the growth of youth sports has reflected the popularity of professional sports in our society. Sporting events and news are available to the public twenty-four hours a day on television and radio: sports are an enormous industry. The outstanding popularity of the sports industry has profoundly affected youth sports organizations. An estimated twenty-five million children age six through eighteen participate in at least one school or community based athletic program. These numbers increase exponentially as the age of boys and girls entering sports keeps falling. In order to supervise, teach and manage these athletes about 2.5 million coaches spend an average of eighty hours a season with them. The majority of these coaches volunteer for programs organized by the community, religious organizations, and recreational facilities. Without a national agency to coordinate sports programs, there exists great variation in the manner in which sponsoring agencies organize...