About Mustaches and Peach Fuzz

by Rainer Martens

"That boy has a mustache!" the lady shouted in a state of shock. "The pitcher has a mustache," she repeatedly told the person sitting to her right, to her left, in front of her, and behind her. "Don't tell me he isn't over 12 years old." The stands were buzzing with the big news of the boy with the mustache.

The game began and what some people feared occurred. He threw his first pitch and the fans had trouble seeing it, it was so fast.

"Oh Lord! He'll kill somebody."

"He can't be 12!"

"I've never seen anything like him."

"Somebody had better check his birth certificate."

Eleven pitches and the side was retired. The boy stepped up to bat and knocked the ball out of sight. "Oh, God, now I know someone will get killed. If he ever hits one to our boys it will break their hand or head."

"He shouldn't be permitted to play!"*

We've all seen the boy with a mustache competing with boys who haven't discovered "peach fuzz," and it is great when the mustached boy is playing on your team. But is it fair and is it safe when youngsters are so obviously mismatched in physical maturation?

In most sports we group children for competition by chronological age and sex, although in some sports, like wrestling, weight is also used. And in other sports chronological age and skill levels are sometimes used jointly to classify competitors. But, as we all know, chronological age is not always closely related to children's physical or psychological maturity.

Biological Clocks Differ

From about 10 to 16 years, the range of individual differences in physical structure at any given chronological age is greater than at any other time in the human life span. Boys of the same chronological age may differ by as much as 60 months in their anatomical or skeletal age. Skeletal age is measured by X-raying the wrist bones and then comparing the degree to which the bones have completed growing with pictures showing normal growth for a particular chronological age.

For example, with two boys both 13 years of age, one could have a skeletal age typical for boys aged 10 and the other for boys aged 15. These same boys may vary as much as 15 inches in height and 90 pounds in weight. That is something to be concerned about when matching children for safe and equitable competition in sports where speed, strength, and power are likely to determine the outcome.

The child who matures early obviously has a substantial advantage in sports—the same advantage postpubescent boys have over postpubescent girls. Some sports-avid parents are quick to recognize this advantage, delaying their children's entrance into school for the expressed purpose of giving them an additional year to mature for sports participation.

How many boys and girls in sports have an advanced biological clock, and how much faster do their clocks run? Creighton Hale, the present director of Little League Baseball, studied the physical maturity of boys, participating in the 1955 Little League World Series. He reported that 46% of the boys were physically advanced in physical maturation for their chronological age of 12 or under. In fact, these players equaled the norms for height and weight of the average 14-year-old boy.

Hale also reported that most of the starting pitchers, first basemen, and left fielders were physically maturer, as was every boy who batted fourth or cleanup, the key position in the batting lineup. In a similar study with the participants of the 1957 Little League World Series, 71 % of the boys were advanced in skeletal age, with 45% being over one year advanced.

In an extensive study by Clarke of young athletes in Medford, Oregon, boys who made the interscholastic teams at elementary and junior high school were 11 to 13 months advanced

Dr. Rainer Martens is Professor, Department of Physical Education, University of Illinois and founding Director of the Office of Youth Sports on the Urbana-Champaign campus. The purpose of the Office is to conduct and promote research in youth sports, and to retrieve, synthesize and disseminate pertinent research results to youth sports coaches. Professor Martens is the author of three books on physical activity and sports, and over 50 articles in scholarly journals. He has taught in the Department of Kinesiology, University of Waterloo, Canada, and was a visiting lecturer at the USSR Sports Institute in Moscow, Leningrad, and Tbilisi. He currently is Chairperson, Sport Psychology Academy, American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance. His leisure pursuits include handball and cross-country skiing.

•Reprinted with permission of the authors from Laughing and Crying with Little League, pp. 13-15. New York: Harper and Row, 1972.

Illinois Parks and Recreation 4 March/April, 1980

in skeletal age, body size, strength, endurance, and power in comparison with their nonathlete peers. Other scientists have found that the best predictor of success in football and track was not a measure of motor skill or physical size, as might be expected, but skeletal age.

Both observation and scientific evidence lead us to the conclusion that physically maturer children are more likely to succeed in sports. Yet there is some doubt as to whether these children gravitate to sports or whether participation in sports hastens the maturation process. After substantial investigation, researchers have found no evidence indicating that competitive sports hasten physical maturation, but they have found considerable evidence that the rate of maturation is genetically predetermined under normal conditions. Hence, all factors considered, it is highly probable that sports tend to select out physically mature youngsters.

This selection process often eliminates late maturing children from sports. And, more significantly, even after they physically catch up, many never re-enter sports. By then late maturing children have missed the advantage of early training or they have lost interest because of early failure.

Fall from Stardom

But differences in physical maturation may also hurt the early maturer. There is an old cliche which says, "The earliest light burns out first." Its meaning in sports is that the star of the midget league is the first to lose his position of stardom. For those youngsters whose light goes out so that they no longer enjoy the prestige and status of being a star athlete, the psychological adjustment may be a difficult one.

The problem may be accentuated when coaches mistakenly attribute a youngster's fall from stardom not to the improvement of the other youngsters, but to the erroneous belief that the early maturer is no longer putting forth the needed effort. The result is that some youngsters become frustrated and quit because both the coach and the youngster fail to understand the biological basis for initial advantage in sports and subsequent loss of it.

I think we'd better check year birth certificate, son!

But just how often do early maturing children get passed by as the slower maturing children move through puberty and into postpubescent adolescence? The Medford growth study, an impressive 12-year longitudinal investigation, helps answer this question. Of the athletes studied, 45% were stars in elementary but not junior high school, 30% were stars in junior high school but not in elementary school, and only 25% were stars in both elementary and junior high school. In other words, only one out of four star athletes in elementary school maintained such a rating 3 to 4 years later in junior high school.

I think every young athlete and certainly every coach of children's sports should be cognizant of this fact. This information should serve to encourage slow maturing children to persist, for more than likely their day is coming. It should warn early maturing youngsters that someday success may not be obtained so easily. And it should tell every coach that the practice of eliminating youngsters who may be slow maturing is foolish. Coaches, and parents alike, cannot afford to forget that kids mature at different rates and the single most important fact or determining their success is their physical maturity.

Maturation Matching

So what is the best way to group children for physically and psychologically healthy competition? It is clear that the mere use of chronological age, or age and weight, is not satisfactory. Skeletal age is the most reliable method for matching children on physical maturity, but the use of skeletal age is not practical because of the cost.

The problem of "maturation matching" for young sports participants has no simple solution. A practical method for measuring physical maturity is needed as well as answers to such questions as the following:

1. What are acceptable ranges in maturity for grouping young people to safely engage in different sports?

2. What are the practical constraints of the situation when grouping—for example, the number of children per category, available facilities, coaches, equipment, etc.?

3. What should be the degree of self-selection into groups by young people?

See Mustaches . .. Page 28

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Mustaches. . . From Page 5

Even though we do not have answers to these questions from sport research at this time, we can do better than haphazardly grouping children by age or grade as so often is done. Two types of maturation matching are possible. One is to match children to sports suited to their maturity level. And the second is to match children within a sport to make competition safe and equitable.

Matching Children To Sports

One elaborate classification system that counsels youngsters into different sports is called the Selection Classification Age Maturity Program (SCAM), which is being used experimentally in the New York State public school sports program. It classifies students on the basis of physical fitness, skills, and physical maturity. The physical maturity of boys is measured by an examination of their pubic and underarm hair rather than chronological age or skeletal age. Girls, on the other hand, do not have their hair scrutinized, but are asked at what age they experienced menarche. This simple method of measuring physical maturity compares quite well with skeletal age for youngsters who are pubescent or postpubescent (but not with younger children).

Young athletes are also tested for agility, strength, speed, endurance, and skill specific to the sport of their interest. All this information is converted to an achievement score based on norms for each grade, ranking each student on a scale from 1 to 10 (underdeveloped to superior). Then, using tables which specify the demands of each sport on the basis of strenuousness and physical contact, the student is matched to a sport suitable for his or her present level of development.

The system has enthusiastic supporters because the injury rate in its first year of use was reduced from 32 per 100 to 3 per 100. SCAM also is relatively simple, inexpensive, and not overly time consuming to use. It works best for large school systems or recreation and park districts which offer a wide range of sports.

The system has limitations though. First, it does not match children within sports. This need for matching within a sport is reduced, however, by better matching of students to suitable sports. Second, the use of hair and menarche as indices of physical maturation are useful for pubescent and postpubescent youngsters, but not for prepubescent children. Third, late maturing children will always be counseled away from contact and collision sports, but once they catch up it may be difficult to shift into these sports. And fourth, the system disregards psychological maturity as a criterion for classification. Despite its limitations, I believe SCAM is better than permitting children to enter sports without any counseling regarding their readiness.

Matching Children Within a Sport

Maturation matching within a sport is even more difficult than matching children to a sport because precise measurement is needed over the full range of physical development to achieve effective matching. The appearance of secondary sex characteristics as used in SCAM permits only crude classification. Skeletal age is the only measure of physical maturation capable of measuring the full range of physical development, but, as previously explained, is impractical. So it is understandable that sports officials continue to rely on chronological age or grade as the only functional means of matching children for competition.

What Can Be Done?

Yet here are some things league officials, coaches, and parents can do to diminish the probability of mis-matching children in sports:

1. Weight should always be used in conjunction with chronological age in all collision sports (e.g., football, ice hockey). The more homogeneous the grouping on these criteria the better.

2. Skill tests specific to the sport should be used so that children can be matched for equitable competition. In contact and collision sports, closer matching on skills also reduces the risk of injury among the less skilled players.

3. More limited age ranges within each grouping will decrease the extreme differences in maturation among players. For example, rather than an 8-team league of 9- to 12-year-olds, two 4-team leagues, one of 9- to 10-year-olds, and one of 11- to 12-year-olds is better.

4. A governing council of league officials should have the authority to move players up or down in classification when the players are obviously biologically advanced or delayed, regardless of chronological age. Such flexibility should be available to league officials when in their judgment it is in the best interest of all players. Such decisions, of course, could easily be the source of much controversy in programs where winning is foremost in the minds of the adults involved. But if the development and the safety of all children are to be foremost, then such decisions will have to be made.

5. By providing a wider range of sports programs and varying the skill level and intensity of competition, children will have greater opportunity to self-select a level of competition appropriate for their maturation level. All too often, children have but one choice—to compete at a very intense level or not to play the sport at all. If at least two, three, or four different levels of competition were available, based on skill and the degree of competitive intensity, children would probably match themselves quite well to the competition best suited for their development. This may be one of the best ways for children to match themselves on psychological maturity as well.

6. Parents should use their good judgment to help counsel their children into appropriate competition—perhaps in consultation with a physician, physical educator, or coach.

Editor's Note: This article is reprinted by permission of the author from the October, 1979. issue of Sportsline published by the Office of Youth Sports, Department of Physical Education, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

POSITION OPENING

Land & Water Conservation Fund Program Manager, Illinois Department of Conservation. Salary range $14,700 to $21,708. Recreation/related degree plus experience in field preferred. Closing date March 28. Contact Scott Schmitz, Division of Grants Administration, N.W. Office Plaza, 600 N. Grand Ave. W., Springfield 62702, (217) 782-7481.

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