Doug Abrams is a law professor
at the University of Missouri in Columbia, MO. He has coached
youth ice hockey since 1968, and has written numerous articles
and studies on Youth Sports. For his own research, Doug began
searching the country for newspaper and magazine articles
on youth sports. He shares these articles each day with an
email list of interested friends, including the parents of
players on his team. He has assembled literally hundreds of
articles dating back 2-3 years. Doug has shared his entire
archive with Kids FIRST In Sports, and Regis has organized
it by topic and compiled this catalogue.
Why perform this arduous and seemingly
insignificant task? First of all, to learn and become informed.
I have read each and every article and have meticulously filed
each electronically and in a hard copy file. The hard copy
files fill two cardboard storage boxes! Second, I have catalogued
these articles to impress upon people that the problems in
youth sports are not occasional, random, or localized. As
anyone can see from the catalogue below, these problems occur
every day, in every part of the country and in every sport.
This research alone should convince most people that the problems
are present, widespread, and serious. The research should
also convince us that many good people in communities from
coast to coast understand why it is so important to keep Kids
FIRST in Sports.
We hope that this body of research will
add to the serious dialogue that all communities must undertake
to restore balance to youth sports. I compiled this catalogue
so that other concerned parents, coaches, administrators and
serious researchers could obtain reprints of these articles
by contacting the appropriate sources. We offer this catalogue
as a valuable resource, a place to begin.
I will update the catalogue periodically
as I continue to receive these articles from Doug.
For information about future articles,
please contact Doug Abrams at: AbramsD@missouri.edu.
Note: The following catalogue will be
updated periodically. This is what I have been able to organize
to date. As can be seen, the categories from E – Equipment
to W – Winning-at-all-costs have not been completed
at this time. There are literally hundreds more articles.
I’m working on this daily.
