Sport Is a Means, Not an End

For sixteen years, I coached basketball. Fourteen of those years were spent coaching girls and women at both the high school and collegiate levels. I’ve had many rewarding experiences coaching female athletes. As a result, I developed a deep admiration for female athletes, women’s basketball, and the coaches who devote themselves to the game. Especially the coaches I consider mentors.

For these reasons, recent discussions surrounding declining participation in high school girls' basketball have captured my attention.

Earlier this year, I read an article from the National Federation of State High School Associations examining the long-term decline in girls' basketball participation. According to NFHS data, participation fell from roughly 451,600 athletes in 2000 to 356,240 athletes in 2025, a decrease of more than 21 percent despite growth in the number of participating schools.

The article identified several possible explanations, including sports specialization, burnout, travel athletics, social media, economic pressures, and changing interests among young women. Many of those explanations contain an element of truth. Burnout is real. Overuse injuries are real. Excessive pressure is real. In previous essays, I have explored several of these concerns, along with questions about retention, program culture, institutional responsibility, and why some girls choose not to continue playing basketball.

Those conversations deserve careful attention.

This piece, however, focuses on one issue that appears repeatedly whenever participation declines are discussed: sports specialization.

One of the most common criticisms of specialization is that it increases the risk of injury, contributes to burnout, and imposes unhealthy demands on athletes. Research supports many of those concerns. Even so, from a Catholic perspective, specialization itself is not the central issue.

The deeper question is whether athletic participation remains governed by prudence and temperance–whether desire remains subject to reason, whether effort remains proportionate, and whether good things remain within honorable limits.

Specialization is not a vice. It is simply focused attention directed toward a particular pursuit. Human excellence often requires that kind of concentration. Musicians specialize. Physicians specialize. Scholars specialize. Craftsmen specialize. The relevant question is not whether a person specializes but whether that focus remains ordered by virtue so that effort serves the person rather than reducing the person to effort.

One problem in the current debate is that specialization and excess are frequently treated as though they are identical.

I would argue that they are not.

A young woman who chooses to focus primarily on basketball is not automatically making a poor choice. The same is true of a young woman who devotes herself primarily to volleyball, soccer, softball, or another sport. Concentrated effort, by itself, does not produce burnout, injury, or imbalance.

More to the point, everything depends on how that pursuit is approached.

A player who trains year-round without sufficient recovery increases her risk of injury. A player whose identity becomes dependent on athletic achievement increases her risk of burnout. A player whose schedule leaves little room for family, friendships, academics, faith, or rest increases her risk of imbalance.

Those same concerns can arise among multi-sport athletes.

A student who plays volleyball in the fall, basketball in the winter, soccer in the spring, and travel sports throughout the summer may experience less rest and less balance than an athlete who focuses on a single sport while maintaining healthy boundaries. The issue is not merely the number of sports being played. The issue is whether an athlete’s life remains ordered by virtue.

This is where the Catholic virtues of prudence and temperance become especially helpful.

The Catechism teaches that temperance “moderates the attraction of pleasures and provides balance in the use of created goods” and “keeps desires within the limits of what is honorable.” Athletics, competition, achievement, recognition, and personal development are all capable of being good things. Temperance does not require their removal. Rather, it seeks balance, discretion, and self-mastery in their pursuit.

The Catechism also teaches that temperance disposes us to “avoid every kind of excess.” Excess, therefore, is not simply a matter of quantity. It occurs whenever desire ceases to be governed by reason and begins to dominate a person’s life.

Prudence serves a complementary role. The Catechism describes prudence as the virtue that “disposes practical reason to discern our true good in every circumstance and to choose the right means of achieving it.”

Prudence is often misunderstood as caution or risk avoidance. In reality, prudence concerns right judgment. It asks what should be done, what sacrifices are justified, and what obligations deserve priority in a particular circumstance.

Basketball can be a real good. Prudence begins by recognizing that fact. The challenge is discerning how that good should be pursued alongside other goods that also deserve attention: family, faith, friendship, education, health, and rest.

Prudence helps a person judge what level of commitment is appropriate, what sacrifices are justified, and when a worthy pursuit has begun to demand more than it should. It enables a person to pursue meaningful goals without allowing any single goal to dominate the whole of life.

Taken together, these virtues offer a framework that is regularly absent from contemporary discussions about girls' athletics.

Instead of asking whether a girl should play one, two, or three sports, prudence and temperance direct our attention elsewhere. Is this activity helping her grow in discipline and self-mastery? Is there sufficient room for family, friendships, academics, faith, and rest? Is commitment being cultivated without becoming compulsion? Is sport serving her life, or is it beginning to govern her life?

These questions carry particular importance during adolescence.

Between the ages of thirteen and eighteen, young women are developing far more than athletic ability. They are forming habits, relationships, identities, and priorities that will remain with them for years. Athletics should contribute to that formation rather than overwhelm it.

When athletic participation is viewed through the lens of prudence and temperance, the conversation becomes less about the number of sports an athlete plays and more about whether those activities remain properly ordered within a balanced life.

When that balance is lost, athletics can become distorted. Training becomes compulsion. Achievement becomes identity. Success becomes an idol. The athlete gradually comes to be valued more for performance than for personhood.

At that stage, the problem is no longer specialization.

The problem is disorder.

Training, competition, and achievement are good things. Difficulties arise when those goods cease to be governed by reason and virtue and begin to govern the rest of life. Excess is often a symptom of that disorder, which is precisely why temperance seeks to avoid it.

This brings me to an important possibility that is frequently overlooked in discussions about participation decline.

Many commentators assume that girls are leaving basketball because they are distracted, less committed, or simply attracted to other interests. Some cases undoubtedly fit those explanations. Another possibility, however, deserves consideration.

Perhaps some young women are exercising prudent judgment.

Some may be looking at increasingly crowded schedules and concluding that something must give. Others may be recognizing legitimate limits. Still others may be choosing activities that align more closely with their talents, interests, responsibilities, and commitments. Many may simply be pursuing a more balanced life.

If so, their decisions should not automatically be viewed as evidence of decline. They may instead reflect the very kind of judgment that prudence encourages: the ability to discern what is truly good in a particular circumstance and to act accordingly.

This possibility becomes even more compelling when we remember that girls are not abandoning athletics altogether.

Opportunities for female athletes have expanded dramatically over the past several decades. Young women now have access to far more sports than previous generations. Wrestling, soccer, volleyball, lacrosse, flag football, softball, track and field, and many other activities compete for their attention.

That reality raises an important question.

If overall participation among female athletes remains strong, is the concern that girls are leaving sports altogether? Or is the concern that some girls are choosing sports other than basketball?

The first possibility points toward a broader participation problem. The second points toward expanded opportunity and changing preferences.

From a practical standpoint, expanded opportunities for female athletes represent a genuine success. More girls can discover their talents, pursue meaningful competition, and participate in communities that support their physical, social, and emotional development.

Basketball remains a wonderful sport. It shaped my life and the lives of many young women I had the privilege to coach.

Basketball, like all sports, however, is not entitled to every athlete.

One young woman may discover that volleyball aligns more naturally with her abilities. Another may find greater fulfillment in soccer. Another may thrive in track and field. Still another may conclude that athletics should occupy a smaller role in her life.

Such decisions should not automatically be interpreted as failures. In many cases, they may reflect thoughtful judgments about where a person’s talents, interests, and responsibilities can flourish most fully.

The debate over sports specialization often begins with questions about schedules, training volume, and how many sports an athlete should play. Those questions have value, but they do not necessarily reach the heart of the issue.

Specialization and multi-sport participation can both be abused. Neither guarantees balance, and neither guarantees human flourishing.

At the heart of this discussion lies a deeper concern: whether young women are being formed in the virtues necessary to order their lives wisely.

Prudence helps them recognize limits and choose rightly in concrete circumstances. Temperance helps them maintain balance and avoid excess. Together, these virtues allow good things to remain good things without allowing them to become controlling things.

Some girls do leave basketball because of burnout, injury, or unhealthy pressure. Those concerns deserve serious attention.

Others, however, are making thoughtful decisions about how best to order their commitments amid expanding opportunities and growing demands.

If both are true, then the discussion surrounding declining girls' basketball participation may require a different starting point. The central question is not whether girls are specializing too much or playing too few sports.

The deeper question is whether the athletic culture we have created encourages prudence, temperance, respect for human dignity, and a genuinely well-ordered life.

If it does, some girls will choose basketball. Others will choose different sports. Still others may decide that athletics should occupy a smaller place in their lives.

Those outcomes are not necessarily signs of failure. They may be evidence that young women are learning how to order good things wisely.

That is a question worth considering–not only for basketball, but for all of female athletics.

References

1. National Federation of State High School Associations, Participation Survey Data, Girls' Basketball Participation Statistics.
2. Catechism of the Catholic Church, §1809.
3. Catechism of the Catholic Church, §2290.
4. Catechism of the Catholic Church, §1806.

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