Canzano: Grown-ups ruin everything, don't they?
Sprinter stripped of state title.
Clara Adams was disqualified from the California High School State Championships after winning the 400-meter final due to her post-race celebration involving a fire extinguisher.
Adams, a 16-year-old sophomore at North Salinas High, won the 400 in a blistering time — 53.24 seconds. Then, she retrieved an extinguisher from her father, jogged to the infield, and sprayed it on her track spikes in a fun little “my shoes are on fire!!!” celebration.
Officials deemed the act unsportsmanlike, stripped Adams of her state-title victory, and disqualified her from running in the subsequent 200-meter final.
Adams told KSBW-TV: “I worked so hard for that title.”
The extinguisher celebration wasn’t original. It was first performed by Olympic Gold Medalist Maurice Greene years ago. Some persnickety track official in California decided to feign outrage and draw the line at the feet of a teenage girl who learned one of life’s greatest axioms this week — grown-ups ruin everything.
Adams wasn’t showing up her competitors. She was having some fun. It’s not a celebration I’d endorse, but I’m cognizant that we’re dealing with kids. She won the race. She was excited. Adams didn’t wag a finger in the face of her competition; she took her party to the infield and has become a shining example of what happens when people in a position of authority insert themselves unnecessarily into a situation that would have been just fine without them.
Give Adams back her medal. Reinstate her 400-meter title. Get rid of the official who didn’t read the room. But the whole thing got me thinking about how little the youth sports scene needs the intervention and involvement of adults.
Kids used to organize themselves. I don’t know how you grew up, but I used to pack a football, a baseball glove, a bat, and head to the nearest elementary school on my bicycle. My friends would meet there. We’d divide into teams, play a variety of games, and have a blast. And I don’t see that happening on playgrounds anymore.
There were some positive byproducts of those self-organized games. It was a healthy way to spend time. We learned conflict resolution skills and mediated disputes with old-fashioned “do-overs.” No adults needed. No instant replay. No parental supervision. Somehow, we got through it as friends, and we played so frequently that it must have been fun.
I’ve wondered for a while about the negative impact of the multi-billion-dollar youth sports industry. Orthopedic doctors that I know tell me they’ve seen a boom in business as it pertains to overuse injuries with kids. Youth coaches reach out to me every week with horror stories about parental interference. And when I drive past elementary school fields, I rarely see kids playing by themselves anymore.
I’m not innocent here. My youngest daughter plays lacrosse, soccer, and runs track and field. It’s a year-round thing. She gets home from practices sometimes after 7:30 p.m. My oldest daughter used to have club volleyball practices that ran from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. on school nights due to limited gym availability.
Childhood?
Still as simple as it once was?
Discuss.
Because I’m left thinking about the grown-up official at that track championship meet sucking the joy out of a nice moment for a 16-year-old kid and wondering when we decided to take ourselves so seriously. It’s a small mental leap from professional athletics to the college game when you involve NIL and the transfer portal. But the truth is, we’ve fostered a youth sports system that features unrestricted free agency, overhyped stakes, championship belts, plane trips to tournaments, and a phony sense of grandeur.
“How did your team do at the tournament last weekend?” I asked a youth coach recently.
“We won the natty,” he said.
I don’t know if there’s any going back. But I’m listening if you have ideas. A club volleyball coach I respect told me something a few years ago that I can’t stop thinking about. I’d asked him what my 12-year-old daughter, who stood 5-foot-6 as a middle blocker, needed to do in the offseason. He got real with me.
“You can either sign her up for all the workouts and camps and get her weekly personal lessons with a private coach and trainer,” he said, “or you can just let her be a kid.”
Ain’t it the truth.
Thanks, John, for framing this mess and the issue around it. Aside from my feeling annoyed with Clara’s Dad for providing the extinguisher, overreaction by power inflated adults is rampant in kids’ sports. You’ve documented this really well in past articles. And we can’t overlook the fact that kids watch adult sports icons overcelebrate on TV all the time. We shouldn’t punish kids for what we ignore in ourselves. But we do—all the time.
"Or, just let her be a kid."