Many of you may think that focusing on Youth Sports is really out of the realm of elite athlete development and the Olympic Committee. However, we realize that an athlete does not become an elite athlete overnight. There is an "Athlete Development Pipeline" for Olympians in many of the sports. This is a well-defined progression that an athlete will take, but for some sports it is dependent on the training and experiences that children have at an early age that determine the path they will take.

Children meet sport at the coach. The coach becomes the most important factor in sport development. If children have fun and receive social support as Dr. Istvan Balyi, Ann Hamilton and Dr. Maureen Weiss indicate in their articles, that child has a better chance of continuing in sport and developing their skills.

The concept of being well rounded is important in sport as well as life. A child needs a variety of athletic experiences. The idea of "matching the child to the sport, not the sport to the child" that Dr. Weiss raises supports having a variety of experiences. This is augmented by Bayli and Hamilton when they explain that "for late specialization sports, specialization prior to age ten is not recommended since this contributes to early athlete burn-out, drop-out and retirement from training and competition.

We would like to know what you think of our "new" approach to Olympic Coach magazine. You may or may not have noticed that we have gone thematic with the last three issues. The email address for any person at the USOC is simply "first name.last name @usoc.org". We would love to hear from you.