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Body Dysmorphia, Disordered Eating, and Depression and Their Roots in Youth Athletics
Youth sports are meant to send young people into the world full of courage, confidence, and commitment that they developed through hard work and competition yet sometimes these communities send them off with profound feelings of inadequacy instead.
How is this possible?
Let me tell you a story.
There was a girl, eleven years old and in the fifth grade; she stood five feet four inches tall when the average height for a girl her age was four feet nine inches and she weighed more than one hundred and fifty pounds. She grew so fast her mother could not keep her in clothes and nothing her friends wore looked as good on her as it did on them — and that was if she could even find it in her size. She was a child in a grown woman’s body and the shame of that was unbearable. Her size was not because she was overeating or inactive; this girl was an athlete! If only she could have seen it as the advantage it was in a sport where tall and strong are priceless physical attributes, but that perspective was stolen from her before she had the chance to see.
An official on the pool deck at a local swim meet saw her walking up to the blocks for one of her races. She was friends with this woman’s daughter and their families were close. As she…
