Level Playing Fields According to American Youth: How Young People Understand and Navigate Meritocracy in Sports

This paper draws on interviews with a large and diverse cross-section of youth (N = 81) in the Twin Cities of Minnesota to explore how American young people understand, experience, and act upon ideals of meritocracy and fairness in youth sports. Qualitative thematic coding yields four sets of findings. First, we document what American youth value about participation in organized sports activities: friendship, fun, and growth. A second set of findings shows that the ideals about meritocracy in sports are widely embraced by youth of all backgrounds. These ideals are grounded in beliefs about individual skill development, hard work, competition, and a fair distribution of rewards; they also emphasize accountability of coaches. The limitations of these ideals in practice constitute a third set of results. These include uneven access, differential treatment, and racism for low-income youth and youth of color as well as how competition can displace other benefits of involvement. A fourth and final section explores how youth exercised agency to enact meritocratic ideals when their expectations of fairness were violated via building solidarity, enlisting adult support, or simply dropping out. The paper concludes with a discussion of the novelty and significance of these findings for future research and in practice.