Colman Noctor: Aiming for the top in sport can come at a high cost for our children

It’s like when we were children, and we all went out on our street with our tennis rackets for the few weeks of Wimbledon, but the rackets gathered dust in the shed for the rest of the year.

My interest in sport is limited to the big three: Rugby, soccer, and GAA. I remember my uncle telling me that if someone was good at darts or pool, it was a sign of a wasted youth. But I got sucked in to this year’s World Darts Championship because of the phenomenon that is 16-year-old Luke Littler.

The British teenager has taken the darts world by storm, beating seasoned professionals to reach the final. The media has focused on not only his darts performances, but also his personal life: His age, his girlfriend, and the controversy around an image of him holding a copy of The Sun newspaper. For someone like Littler, born near Liverpool, this would be frowned upon in a city that boycotted that newspaper for its coverage of the 1989 Hillsborough disaster.

While many might be in awe of his ability to throw darts, others wonder if he can carry the burden of such expectations at such a young age. Fellow darts professional Gary Anderson has come out in defence of Littler and asked the media to back off and, ‘Just let the boy play darts’. In an interview during the tournament, Anderson compared media coverage of Littler to that of another young darts player, 22-year-old Josh Rock.

Anderson said media demands had made life difficult for Northern Ireland player Rock, and said he feared that Littler was being forced down a similar road, with constant interviews, Zoom calls, and so on, when he should be practising darts. Anderson’s warnings will be ignored by the media, but we should consider the cost to a young person of such exposure.

Another example is 18-year-old footballer Evan Ferguson, from Bettystown, Co Louth. He has been shooting out the lights in the English Premiership and Irish fans see him as the man to drive the national team to success. This pressure, while inevitable, is the negative side of being a sports star.

‘The next big thing’

I have worked with many teenagers who have been identified as ‘the next big thing’ because of their sporting prowess. The pressure they feel is real, whether it is a boy performing well on the tennis court, a girl recording impressive times in the swimming pool, or a local U15 hurling or camogie star.

We sometimes point at parents as the culprits, but this is not always true. It is often coaches, club members, and fans who contribute to the pressure. I interviewed Olympic hurdler Derval O’Rourke some years ago for my podcast series about her experiences as a promising child athlete. She said her parents were relaxed about her success, but that the parents of other child competitors would apply pressure by approaching her before a race to quiz her about her diet and training regimens.

One teenage boy told me that he could not go to the local shop without being stopped by locals, so as to be given an unsolicited review of his last performance for the club minor team or to be advised on what he needed to do in upcoming games.

The weight of expectation is a burden for anyone, never mind for someone also contending with the challenges of puberty, adolescence, and identity.

People might presume this pressure is limited to elite sporting environments, but it is not.

Young sports people all over the country are facing similar scrutiny. I treated a 14-year-old girl who was evolving into a promising swimmer.

Her routine consisted of being in the pool at 5.30am four mornings a week and doing four-hour weekend sessions. She began to hate swimming because she could not be a teenager and spend time with her friends, but also she could not give it up, as ‘it meant so much to so many, people’.

Despite numerous attempts to communicate this to her parents and coaches, she was dismissed as ‘not knowing what she wanted’, so she stopped swimming as quickly as she could in the hope of not qualifying for competitions. She was referred to me for therapy because of her reduced race times.

The expectation was that therapy would improve her times, as opposed to her mental wellbeing. The girl told me: ‘Being a good swimmer ruined it for me’.

While most parents hope their child will excel at a particular sport, their ambition can come at a cost. Some young people will be able to manage this pressure and maybe even thrive on it, but others will struggle.

Often, the parent or coach is so focused on the glory of the child’s achievements that they are blind to the child’s struggles. It may be hard to comprehend how being successful can be difficult to manage, but it can be.

Dangers of perfectionism

The stress of competitive sports is not confined to children. A 2023 systematic review of the most recent literature, by Hanna Glandorf and colleagues at St John’s University in New York, showed that athlete burnout was associated with ‘increases in negative mental health outcomes’.

Other research identifies risk factors for young athletes, including the intense pressure to succeed and meet expectations, which can lead to performance anxiety. Additional demands of top-tier sports, like the rigorous training schedules and competition pressures, can also contribute to burnout.

In my clinical work, I’ve observed that the time commitment required for elite sports can also cause social isolation and the pursuit of perfection in performance. Constant self-criticism, if not managed, can also lead to anxiety and other mental health challenges.

Injuries and rehabilitation can also be mentally challenging, as can academic commitments, when combined with the demands of elite sports.

I have also treated young people who were involved with ballet, horse racing, and gymnastics, where the emphasis on body image and weight can contribute to body dissatisfaction and unhealthy attitudes towards food. This can cause eating disorders.

The danger is that a sport becomes a dominant part of the child’s identity, with everyone asking them, ‘How is the hurling/swimming/ gymnastics going?’ and nobody interested is in any other aspect of their lives.

Walking away from elite-level sports in childhood is not easy. The child will feel that they are letting people down, and there are no supports for those who bravely choose to leave.

The best outcome is that the adults will step back and listen to the young person’s concerns and consider reducing the training load or taking a more relaxed approach to the child’s involvement in competition. Unfortunately, in my experience, this outcome is relatively rare.

It is unlikely that I’ll become an avid darts fan, but I plan to follow Luke Littler’s career, in the hope that his team is aware of the pitfalls of early success and popularity and will step in and moderate his exposure to the public glare.

Dr Colman Noctor is a child psychotherapist