All the way from the frigid climes of southeastern Canada (not far from fabled Moose Factory Ontario - the home of the indomitable Sharks forward Jonathan Cheechoo), Nick Guerrero introduced today's speaker, Jean Cote, Professor of Kinesiology & Health Studies at Queens University at Kingston.   Jean is the author of numerous books and papers on sports and coaching performance and psychology.

 

His talk is entitled "Size Does Matter"... but not in the late-night-cable-TV-advertisement sense. :) His research investigated whether the city size from which athletes gain their formative experience has an influence on performance and personal development. Cutting right to the chase, the answer is a resounding YES.  Jean found in evaluating data from 4400 professional athletes across a number of sports that big cities may provide better facilities, paid coaches, more formal/organized programs and full-year teams, but they don't produce a commensurate number of top athletes.

In fact, Jean's study shows that the sweet spot for the highest production of accomplished athletes per capita is in cities of population between 25,000 and 50,000. Jean offered some possible explanations for his findings, foremost of which is the idea of early specialization.  Athletes from smaller towns tend to specialize later thereby giving them the opportunity for more varied athletic experiences, more unstructured/uncoached play and less stress helping to avoid early burnout and disillusionment.   One common attribute of elite athletes that Jean identified is that most played sports when they were young "just for fun." 

This was a fascinating talk with some valuable take-home messages, especially to those of us with youthful athletes.