The professionalization of youth sports

I have been coaching youth sports (baseball, basketball, soccer and bodybuilding) both as a personal trainer and as a team coach for 40 years.  I have been “in the trenches” with the club sport/ professionalization of youth sports long enough to see first-hand the seduction of families into this dark web.  The real problem is not the passion of the athletes and their families for wanting to be the best in a single sport.  The real problem is that youth are not prepared physically to play and they play way too many games.  When I say they are “not prepared physically to play”, I mean they are not getting consistent nutrition, recovery (this is much more than just rest and sleep) and physical conditioning training by a qualified trainer to play their sport.  Most team coaches at schools and clubs are not qualified to train their athletes properly in these ways nor do they have time to do so even if they are.  At best, their time and talent is limited to training their players to win games, medals, and trophies.  Parents see their children do “conditioning drills” during practice and think this is sufficient to safely prepare their child’s body to play the sport.  It’s not.  In short, exercises done for rehabbing an athlete post injury are many times the same ones that should have been done proactively to prepare the athlete to play the sport.  Some of the athletes I train, play one sport, some play multiple sports, but before I will take them on as clients they must commit to train with me in the gym for months prior to playing their sport and this includes a strict commitment to nutrition and all aspects of recovery.  Therefore, while my athletes might still be injured in a collision playing a sport, they will not be injured otherwise.