Tip

Benefits of Sports Camps for Kids: Building Life Skills

Summer is a great time for kids to develop their life skills. Outside of their normal school routine, they have a chance to explore unfamiliar environments, challenge themselves, and discover new interests and abilities!

Attending a sports camp is one excellent way for kids to hone these off-the-field skills. While athletic skills are important—and we LOVE watching campers have breakthroughs in their sport—we find it’s even more rewarding to see young athletes leave camp with new life skills that will serve them both in their sport and beyond.

In our fifty years running sports camps, here are four life lessons we’ve seen our campers learn.

>> Sometimes, you’re all in on sending your kid to camp—but they may need a nudge. Is your child apprehensive about attending camp? Have them check out Five Reasons to Attend a Sports Camp. We suggest chatting through the benefits and what they can get out of the experience together.

Life Skills Athletes Learn at Camp

1. Making friends in a different setting.

Your child is accustomed to the ins and outs of social life at their school and on their sports team. At camp, they’ll get to practice building new friendships and interacting with other kids outside of these typical routines.

Because everyone at camp shares the same passion for their sport, it’s a fun social environment where athletes often make fast friends! This experience helps them learn to connect with others, something that will help them with future teammates, classmates, and eventually, colleagues.

2. Building independence.

It isn’t just social life at camp that’s different from home. Everything’s different! At camp, your child will need to find their way around, follow instructions from a new coach, try out different drills and training styles they may not have experienced before, and—for overnight campers—sleep and eat in a place that’s totally different from home.

All these tiny details add up to a big boost in your child’s independence! They gain confidence in their ability to navigate a new environment, advocate for themselves, and make good choices.

In fact, camp is linked to a variety of positive outcomes for campers later in life. And we often hear from parents of teenagers that their experience at our overnight camps helped ease later transitions, such as moving away to college.

3. Working toward a goal.

At camp, the coaching staff will help your young athlete lean into the strongest aspects of their game and work on areas of improvement.

This targeted approach provides a great opportunity to set goals and practice making progress toward them, step-by-step. Over the course of camp, coaches will encourage your child, keep them focused, and help them tackle any challenges that come up.

And when your child achieves their goal? That’s a sense of accomplishment that will stick with them for a long time.

4. Remembering the importance of FUN!

Many young athletes are competitive and love winning. And that’s great! Working your hardest on the field, court, track, etc. is important. And they’ll definitely get to practice this ethos of challenging themselves physically and mentally at camp.

But camp is also a place where they’ll lean into FUN. In connecting with other campers, trying out new drills and approaches to training, and enjoying social time with fellow athletes, your child will get a chance to deepen their love of the game, too.

And it’s this fun side of the experience that will help them develop a lifelong practice of staying active.

Sports Camp: On the Field and Off

At a sports camp, the on-the-field experience should be top-notch, with veteran coaches and an expert training plan. But the best sports camps also take a wider view of their mission.

When you’re choosing a sports camp, look for one that also focuses not only on elite training, but also on creating a supportive, welcoming, and FUN environment.

That way, your child will get the most possible out of their camp experience.

Including life skills that will benefit them for years to come!

Ready to explore sports camps near you? Browse camps by sport and region to find the best match for your young athlete!