Boys Benefit From Playing Sports

It is well-established that boys benefit from playing sports. Indeed, some experts contend tha, given the way they hard-wired, boys need sports and competition.

Here are some of the reasons boys benefit from playing sports:

• Sports help keep boys active and physically fit.

• Sports provide boys a healthy way to channel their intense physicality and aggression and feel strong.

• Sports help boys develop self-control.

• Sports help boys develop self-confidence.

• Sports provide a place in which boys can form friendships with other boys. Indeed, sports are central to boys' social relationships. As a 2003 article in Developmental Review suggests, one of the functions of team sports for boys is to help them develop the social skills needed to form competitive groups or coalitions in adulthood, such as business organizations. Many of these developmental activities also mirror and provide practice for specific behavioral skills associated with primitive warfare, such as throwing and tracking the trajectory of projectiles (This might explain why fathers seem so intent on spending so much time with their sons practicing throwing and catching - they are hard-wired to pass these skills on to their sons to prepare them for warfare - and seem far less interested in teaching their daughters these same skills.)

• Sports provide boys increased social status. Research shows that male athletes across all sports are significantly more popular than non-athletic male peers, with the most popular group being those boys who play both contact and non-contact sports.

• Participation in sports makes it less likely that a boy will smoke cigarettes, use drugs, or think about or commit suicide (the suicide rate has almost tripled over the past forty years and is now the third leading cause of death among adolescents 15 to 24, with the rate for boys higher than for girls).

• Boys who play sports in high school get better grades and do better on standardized tests.