In case parents get too focused on winning, a special report to the President from the Secretaries of Health and Human Services and Education helps put things in perspective:

"Our nation's young people are, in large measure, inactive, unfit, and increasingly overweight. In the long run, this physical inactivity threatens to reverse the decades-long progress we have made in reducing death from cardiovascular diseases and to devastate our national health care budget. In the short run, physical inactivity has contributed to an unprecedented epidemic of childhood obesity that is currently plaguing the United States. The percentage of young people who are overweight has doubled since 1980."

Youth sports have much to offer kids beyond the joys of winning a game. Though a child may lack certain skills in a particular sport, the fact that the child is playing and being physically active is something of which parents can always be proud.