Parents: Five Questions to Consider Before Conceiving Your Expert Athlete

By: Kendahl Shortway

That’s right, there are various things to consider before even conceiving your expert athlete—
you know, the child that is going to grow up to be a professional athlete. Regardless of the
training regime that you have planned for your child, there are decisions that have already been
made that will determine if your seed will sprout into the expert athlete that you’ve imagined.
Here are a few questions to consider:

1. Where do you live?

2. When will your child be born?

3. How tall are you, and how tall is your partner?

4. Will your child have siblings?

5. What are you willing and able to sacrifice?

1. Where do you live?

According to research conducted by C t , Macdonald, Baker, and Abernethy, there is a

relationship between the birthplace of an individual and the likelihood of that individual
becoming an expert, or professional, athlete. In the article, When “where” is more important
than “when”: Birthplace and birthdate effects on the achievement of sporting expertise (2006),
C t et al. examined the birthplace of athletes in the National Hockey League, National
Basketball Association, Major League Baseball, and Professional Golfers Association, and found
that cities with populations of less than 500,000 people produced more professional athletes in
those sports than cities with more than 500,000 people. This finding may be a result of the fact
that although larger, urban cities offer more resources (leagues, facilities, or competition), mid-
size cities offer athletes more attention and use of facilities to develop their expertise. For
example, a 13-year-old hockey player in New York City may practice in a full-size, lined, arena
with polished ice, but that athlete may be restricted to only 30 minutes of ice time per day. On
the contrary, a hockey player of the same age in the city of Rochester, New York may be able to
practice on a less-impressive rink for two hours a day. Or consider the athlete who has a pond
in his backyard to practice on every single day for as long as he desires—you won’t find that
athlete in New York City. In addition, are there kids in the neighborhood that you live in for
your child to practice or play with? Are there experienced coaches in your town? Will the child
be exposed to the observation of sports in the town that you live in?
2. When will your child be born?

In the aforementioned article, C t et al. also concluded that certain sports, such as baseball and
hockey, show a relative age effect in sport expertise. According to their research, there were
more professional baseball and hockey players born in the first quarter of that sport’s calendar
year than any other quarter. This relative age effect has also been demonstrated in other research
on athletic expertise and is evident across a variety of sports (Baker, Horton, Robertson-Wilson,
& Wall, Michael, 2003). The relative age effect may occur because the older athletes are likely
to be more physically-mature (larger and stronger) than their peers born later in the year. This
being so, the coaches and parents are more likely to devote attention, feedback, and instruction to
those athletes. In addition, the older athletes may be at an advantage when it comes to mental
maturation and the experience of achievement. As the older athletes excel, they may develop
more confidence and self-efficacy, thus resulting in even more success. Eventually, the older
athletes become more advanced than their competitors and climb to the level of professional
athlete. This finding is evident in several studies, but it does not always apply. However, you
may want to check out a calendar and the cut-off dates for the local leagues that you’re expecting
your child to participate in.

3. How tall are you? How tall is your partner?

Some athletic advantages, such as height, are beyond your control. Even the most driven parents
with a vastness of sport knowledge cannot alter the physical make-up of their offspring (well, not
in 2010 at least). Anders Ericsson, a prominent researcher of athletic expertise and editor/author
of Expert Performance in Sports (2003), claims that height is basically the only genetic factor
that contributes to the development of expertise. Ericsson states that many of the other
physiological factors that influence athletic performance, such as muscle fiber type, anaerobic
power, and flexibility, are adaptable through training (p. 21, 2003). However, there is no
exercise or diet that is proven to enhance an athlete’s height; and height is considered an
advantage in many professional sports. So, how tall are you again? If you don’t quite measure
up to the height of expert athletes, you may want to seek out a partner who does. Then again, a
tall partner won’t always guarantee a tall child, and you also can’t significantly map-out your
child’s rate of growth. Junior may be tall for his age as a fifth-grader, but he may find himself
among the shortest by his freshman year. Now things are becoming a bit more complicated for
all of you parents who were set on giving birth to a professional athlete.

4. Will your child have siblings?

Fear not, there are still aspects within your control. Do you already have children, or are you
planning to have more beyond the chosen one (the expert athlete)? When a child develops in an
environment with siblings present, that child has the opportunity for more practice and play than
the child who has organized practice with his peers only three nights a week. Throughout the
childhood of an athlete with siblings, he is constantly competing for privileges like sitting in the
front car seat, or racing against his siblings on a supermarket sidewalk. A child with siblings is
constantly engaging in physical contact and will have a rival to compete against or a friend to
play with. Even if there is a wide age gap between the siblings, the younger one can increase his
potential for acquiring athletic expertise by observing the older one engaging in sports, and the
older child can increase his potential for athletic expertise by teaching the younger child his
skills. Both of those experiences require mental awareness and processing of movements,
allowing the child to develop athletic expertise. There are many professional athletes that
support the positive effect that siblings have on reaching athletic expertise: Serena and Venus
Williams (tennis), Philippe, Jacques, Pierre-Paul, Mario, Monique, and Jocelyne Lamoureux (ice
hockey), Bob and Mike Bryan (tennis), Peyton and Eli Manning (football), Casey, Ryan, and
Michael Powell (lacrosse). Despite the small amount of professional athletes in America, there
are many siblings who share the career of a professional athlete.

5. What are you willing and able to sacrifice?

If you’re thinking that not all expert athletes have siblings, you’re right. However, if the child
doesn’t have siblings or a neighborhood of kids to play with, or access to expert coaches, then,
well, what are you willing to sacrifice? Ericsson claims that a constraint on the development and
acquisition of sport expertise is the availability of resources (2003). The size of your wallet,
your interest and knowledge of sports, and your commitment to your child’s athletics are all
contributing factors to your child’s sport expertise. Fortunately, this aspect of your child’s
athletic development can compensate for some of the other aspects that may be lacking. In other
words, if the child’s birthplace doesn’t meet the average population of professional athletes’
birthplaces, you can provide the means for transportation to the resources at other locations. If
your child is one of the younger and smaller ones on his soccer team, and seems to be fulfilling
his coach’s low-expectations, you can pay for your child to receive private lessons from an
expert coach. What if your child’s school day is detracting from practice time, are you willing to
home-school your child? Do you like to travel? Are you willing to provide your child with
exposure to the sport? Attend professional competitions? Pay extra for the television channels
that show more of that sport coverage? An athletic child means more laundry to be washed, more
monitoring of diet, sleep, and physical activity, and more icing, bandaging, and perhaps most
importantly—more cheering. The parent of an athletic child has a demanding job, in addition to
the demands of the average parent’s job. As the parent, you provide the social support that
Ericsson claims essential for the development of sport expertise.
The final question to be asked is: Are you still planning on conceiving your expert athlete?
Many parents dream of raising an expert athlete, and there are many reasons why. Professional
athletes tend to be financially secure, they are exposed to many opportunities that the average
person cannot access, and they live an achievement-oriented, self-actualizing lifestyle by
engaging in a sport that they (hopefully) enjoy. However, despite the challenges of raising an
expert athlete who will be dedicated to his sport, there are many questions to consider even
before that expert athlete is conceived (and you may have thought that conception was the easy
part). In some ways, question number five relates to each of the questions preceding it. If you
are truly committed to raising an expert athlete at all costs, then you may need to sacrifice your
choice of where you live, when you want to have the child, how many children you will have,
and even who you have the child with! Of course, these are extreme measures to take, and even
still there is ultimately no guarantee that you will conceive an expert athlete. Good luck!

References

Baker, J., Horton, S., Robertson-Wilson, J., & Wall, M. (2003). Nurturing sport expertise:
Factors influencing the development of elite athlete. Journal of Sports Science and
Medicine, 2, 1-9.

C t , J., Macdonald, D. J., Baker, J., & Abernethy, B. (2006). When where is more important
than when: Birthplace and birthdate effects on the achievement of sporting expertise.
Journal of Sports Sciences, 10, 1065-1073.

Starkes, J. L. & Ericsson, K. A. (2003). Expert Performance in Sports: Advances in Research on

Sport Expertise. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.