The teenagers who quit were exhausted and worried at the same time

In the autumn of 2024, Lu Liu and Tianzhi Zhan asked teenage athletes at sports schools and clubs in Xuzhou and the cities around it how the sport actually felt. A typical one was 14 and a half, in training about 12 hours a week. Among the ones struggling most, the athletes worn out by practice were the same athletes who had gone cold on the sport and who worried, on match day, that they would play badly.

There were 864 of them, and 402 were girls. Ages ran from 12 to 17. Badminton, table tennis, swimming, tennis, track, and the team sports were all in the rooms, and class sat in the same week as practice. Liu and Zhan, at Jiangsu Normal University, waited a year and asked the schools who was still on the roll. They counted her as gone if she had stopped training and competing in her sport and had not joined another. 137 names had come off.

A sour feeling toward the sport, not knowing why she continued, a tight body, a mind that left the point: those rose with the tiredness, in the same athletes. 456 of the 864 were low on all of it. 289 were only a little raised. 119 were high on every part. Dislike of the sport, and being worn out by it, were the two that ran highest in that smaller group.

Of those 119, 42 were gone a year later. About one in three. Of the 456 who had been fine, 39 were gone. About one in twelve. The 289 in the middle lost 56, about one in five, twice the calm group. Teenagers who were only somewhat off were already going.

Being a girl did not put her in the exhausted group. Older teenagers were more likely to be in it, and so was anyone whose week had crept past the 12 hours that were typical. Among teenagers the same age, training the same hours, the ones who quit had still been nearly four times as likely to start in that exhausted group.

A name off the roll might be an ankle, a coach’s cut, a family that moved, or a parent who took the evenings back for homework. Liu and Zhan could not tell those apart. Everyone they followed was already inside a sports school or a club around Xuzhou. A girl who had never been chosen for a team was not on the list. They also say a coach should not total these questions and treat the number as a verdict. That still has to be tried.

If the exhaustion, the coldness toward practice, and the worry about playing badly have lasted for weeks, she is with those 119, and about a third of them were gone within the year. One bad afternoon does not make that month. Longer weeks were already where the exhausted athletes sat, so shorten hers. Give her a practice she can leave feeling she got better, and ask what she is afraid of before the next match. Liu and Zhan offer that as something to try. And look earlier than the worst month. The teenagers who were only a little off had already lost one in five.