By Wadane Sougoufara and Brendan Melnic
It’s transition season in the Canadian sporting world as hockey winds down, baseball ramps up and parents of young elite athletes engage in the perennial debate about whether it’s best for their kids to focus year-round on one game or pursue a multi-sport path to excellence.
According to a landmark Government of Canada report released in March, “there is a growing number of private for-profit clubs and institutes worldwide” fuelling a trend toward athlete specialization. The report says that as a result, some parents will opt to have their child train for the same discipline throughout the year, rather than sign them up for different sports during different seasons.
There is currently “a rising demand from parents and young athletes who aspire to ‘specialize’ in sport with a focus on elite and professional sport.” Success stories in early-development specialization — such as the record-breaking career of American pro golfer Tiger Woods, who focused intensely on golf from a very early age — have persuaded many parents and athletes to focus on only one sport. On the other hand, multi-sport superstars such as pro basketball legend Michael Jordan — who also played professional baseball — have convinced others to mix it up.
Legendary Ottawa athlete Sue Holloway, a Summer Olympics medalist in paddling and a Winter Olympics competitor in cross-country skiing, said her elite training in multiple sports enhanced her overall athletic performance.
Holloway competed in four separate Olympic Games, including the 1976 Summer Games in Montreal, 50 years ago. During her years as an Olympian, Holloway also completed a degree in physical education at B.C.’s Simon Fraser University. To round out her athletic training, she joined the school’s varsity swimming team.
“I had to change things because I got to a certain part of my career where I’d plateaued,’’ she said. “If I needed to make a difference, I couldn’t keep doing the same thing.’’
Holloway said she thinks it’s “unacceptable” for kids to specialize at a young age, with the exception of certain sports, such as gymnastics, where the abilities required for elite competition typically peak during adolescence. Holloway said she advocates for kids to engage in multiple sports when they are very young, with specialization only happening during their teenage years.
Mathieu Fleury, president of the Ottawa Sport Council, which studies and encourages community sports development, said some parents put their kids into sports as a strategy to make money — and may opt for specialization with that goal in mind.
“Parents need to be drawn into the reality that, hey, your kid is good, (but) the odds that they are going to be the best player are really bad,” he said. “Have fun in exercise and let them enjoy sport. Make them get all of the other advantages of sport rather than focusing on just performance.”
The Future of Sport in Canada report also expressed concern over parents’ unrealistic expectations of their children’s athletic potential. Holloway said young athletes should have more freedom when it comes to making decisions regarding their athletic journeys. She said the lack of freedom puts their mental health at risk.
“The key is for it to be the athlete’s choice. If they are making decisions for themselves then the outcome will be a successful one because they have decided,” she said. “When there is pressure and people telling them what to do, it’s a recipe for disaster.”
Paul Jurbala is a long-term development advisor with the Ottawa- and Victoria-based Sport for Life Society, a Canadian non-profit organization dedicated to facilitating a healthy social environment within sport. He said the problem isn’t that young people aren’t playing enough different sports, it’s that they aren’t playing enough sports purely for enjoyment.
“It’s an interesting problem when we talk about multi-sports because I don’t think it’s simply a question of being in four sports at a pro level instead of one. That would just make it four times worse,” he said. “It’s really more a question of being in sports at a lower pressure level, and then making a decision about where you want to go and what you want to do a little bit later instead of facing the pressure to choose when (you’re really young).”
Jurbala said there are physical and mental health concerns related to early specialization.
“The longer somebody participates in something at a relatively high level, the higher the probability is of burnout, injury, and other issues that will, or can lead to, them pulling out of not just the sport in question, but sport altogether,” he said.
This philosophy of youth sports is similar to that of Norway, the most dominant country at the past three Winter Olympics, including the 2026 Games in Milano-Cortina. Norway led all countries with 41 medals, including the most golds with 18 — though the majority were in different variations of skiing, a sport deeply ingrained in the country’s culture.
In Norway, youth sports leagues do not keep score or track standings until participants reach 12 years of age. The goal of Norway’s model is to emphasize participation rather than competition. Jurbala said Norway’s youth sport model would be beneficial for the Canadian youth if it was adopted in this country.
‘The longer somebody participates in something at a relatively high level, the higher the probability is of burnout, injury, and other issues that will, or can lead to, them pulling out of not just the sport in question, but sport altogether.’
— Paul Jurbala, long-term development advisor, Sport for Life Society
“I would hope that we could look at Norway and learn,” he said. “I think that if our goal is to have more people participating in sport, not just in their youth, but throughout their life in some way at some level, Norway’s (model) would be the kind of thing that we should be looking at.”
The Future of Sport in Canada report said that over the course of its engagement “the Norwegian approach to sport was most often referenced as an ideal model,” to promote successful sport experience at all ages and levels.
