Why track and field is such a great kids’ sport

Track isn’t a priority for most students or their parents, but it should be. Aside from the obvious health benefits, it is perhaps the best sport to teach children about goal setting, hard work, and sacrifice. This season, I gave all my kids last year’s winning track times and field distances, and at practices I inform them of their progress toward meeting those benchmarks. For example, a fifth-grade girl who runs a sixteen-second 100 meter dash understands she needs to work hard to get her time down to fifteen seconds to be competitive.

I enjoy basketball, soccer and other more popular team sports too. But it can be difficult to gauge one’s progress compared to the clarity of track and field. And in other sports, a promising athlete can sometimes be wrongly overlooked by a coach. My sons have both played soccer and frequently found themselves riding the bench and wondering why. It can be difficult to convince a coach that you’re a better defender than someone else on the team. But in track, if you can run faster and jump and throw further, no coach who wants to win will bench you.

Two seasons into my experiment as a track coach, I’ve found that I understand the world my children inhabit much better than before. Now, when my sons tell me stories about someone in their classes, I often know the kid, and can also recall their time in the 100-meter dash. Now, for a month each February, I have an escape, an opportunity to try to build the best... school track team possible, and hopefully teach the kids, and myself, some life lessons along the way. Our season has just begun, but I already know that the small victories our team has achieved will stay with us for a lifetime.

Excerpted from online Sports Article dated 2/18/23 by Dave Seminara