The Multi-Sport Approach: How Playing Multiple Sports Can Help Make You a Better Athlete

By Sam Cortes, Communications Coordinator

Sport Manitoba champions the benefits of the multi-sport approach. Our Play More Be More campaign advocates for helping athletes improve at their chosen sport by avoiding the downfalls of early specialization and reaping the benefits that come from playing multiple sports.

In our provincial and national team programs, we’ve shared stories from multiple high-level athletes who endorse being a multi-sport athlete. In our facility, we coordinate and host multi-sport camps for kids, teaching them fundamental movement skills and introducing them to a variety of sports.

Play More Be More

Sport Manitoba’s #PlayMoreBeMore campaign was launched to promote the benefits of being a multi-sport athlete, and to point out the dangers of allowing kids to specialize in one sport too early in their athletic careers. This multi-sport experience also makes sport and physical activity fun.

Benefits of playing multiples sports include:

• Multi-sport athletes excel in their chosen sport. For example, a hockey player could benefit from playing soccer and volleyball. Soccer improves their conditioning, change of direction and ability to control the puck with their skates, meanwhile volleyball improves their leg strength and reaction abilities.
• Playing other sports benefits overall athleticism, not just sport specific skills.
• Splitting training time between sports helps athletes avoid overuse injuries they might sustain if they put all their time into one sport.
• Burnout can be a harmful side effect of focusing on one sport too intensely.
• Playing more than one sport takes some pressure off of any individual event creating positive enjoyable experiences for kids in sport.

Multi-Sport Athlete vs. Early Specialization Athlete

There is a multitude of evidence to back the #PlayMoreBeMore campaign. In this article on the benefits, risks, and proper timing for multi-sport athletes, Sport Manitoba’s Sport Performance Specialist Jeff Wood concludes that the healthiest way to become a successful athlete is with a multi-sport approach. 

Jeff outlines a scenario that is not unlikely when comparing a multi-sport athlete to an athlete that has focused solely on their chosen sport early on.

• Athlete 1 has chosen to focus on playing hockey from the age of 4 and by the time he is 13 years old, he is one of the best players in his age category. 
• Athlete 2 has played multiple sports every year from the age of 5 and he has a particular interest in hockey. 
• Due to the benefits of playing multiple sports, Athlete 2 is above average in his age category for all the sports he plays. Athlete 1 spends all his time playing hockey and has started to complain about some nagging injuries in some of the areas that are heavily stressed when playing and training for hockey (groin, and lower back). Athlete 2, however, splits his time between 3 different sports throughout the year and hasn’t experienced any signs of overuse injuries. 

At age 16, we see a similar story.

• Athlete 1 is now playing at the highest level for his age category and excelling. He is still experiencing some injuries and requires a surgery this offseason to fix. 
• Athlete 2 is excelling at all three sports that he plays. Although he wants to pursue hockey in the future, he is not ready to give up soccer and volleyball. He recognizes that these secondary sports improve areas of his hockey skills as well. Athlete 2 is playing hockey one level below Athlete 1 but is continuously improving and has been staying healthy all season long.

Athlete 1 is better than Athlete 2 at hockey at age 16, so there are upsides to specializing early. But, by doing so, Athlete 1 has increased his risk of injury, burnout, and has sacrificed the opportunity to play other sports. Athlete 2 has built a strong athletic repertoire, can excel at many sports, and has stayed injury-free. 

There are countless success stories from both early specializing athletes and multi-sport athletes – both paths can lead to success in sport. At the end of the day, sport is about the friendships you make, the character that you build, the teammate and leader you become, and the mentor that you are to the next generation of athletes.

Multi-Sport Star: Alexa Scott

Manitoban speed skater Alexa Scott played a number of sports growing up and is a big advocate for playing multiple sports. Her love of skating first started with figure skating. At the age of nine, she transitioned to speed skating and made her first provincial team at 13. She’s been quite successful in her young career:

• 2019 Canada Games – Gold x3
• 2019 – Sport Manitoba’s Junior Athlete of the Year
• 2020 ISU World Junior Championships – All Around – Bronze 
• 2022 – Olympian, Beijing Olympic Games

Alexa credits some of her success to playing multiple sports when she was younger. She was involved in soccer, volleyball, swimming, and track and field throughout middle and high school. Alexa notes that soccer helped her develop a great aerobic base, which is crucial for speed skating and that volleyball strengthened her legs and knees to help prevent injuries and improve performance. Alexa wishes she kept playing multiple sports even longer than she did. 

“I got a lot of back injuries at a pretty young age, like 16. It was because my stabilizing muscles weren’t stabilizing. They were completely neglected in my body. Maybe if I hadn’t focused on speed skating so early in my life, I could have saved some of those injuries, because I would have developed some of those stabilizing muscles from soccer, especially like stopping and turning.”

As we know from our hockey athlete scenarios, young athletes that specialize early are at an increased risk for overuse injuries. Unfortunately, Alexa Scott was no exception. She wonders if focusing less on speed skating early on would have reduced the effects of the injury. “If I did more sports in middle school, especially, I could have maybe limited how aggressive that injury was,” said Alexa.

Sports are a great way for kids to socialize and make friends. Some of Alexa’s best sports memories were not made at her competitive speed skating events, but rather poolside at casual swim meets. 

“I remember talking at the side of the pool was so much more fun than actually swimming. And I like to swim, but I liked to socialize with [friends] more than I liked to swim. Maybe that’s why I didn’t become a swimmer, but just that memory, being in the sun in the pool – that was the best times,” said Alexa.

Multi-Sport Summer Camps

Canada’s movement guidelines recommend kids get a minimum of 60 minutes of physical activity per day. It’s tough to know what sports kids may like, and it can feel easier to let them play the same sport year round. We know that playing multiple sports is good for young athletes and gives them a leg up in the sports world. 

Multi-sport camps like the one we host every summer provide introductions to multiple, varied sports. Kids learn sport-specific skills for their chosen sport but also to experience what other sports have to offer and how new sports can compliment the ones they already like. We want to introduce kids to a variety of sports to teach them fundamental movement skills that help build an athletic foundation so they can be active for life. 

Girls Multi-Sport Series

We also have a Girls Multi-Sport Series, which runs similar to our summer camps, but is a half-day program offered on school inservice days and is completely free of charge!

To check the next series day and find out which sports will be featured, visit our website.