Sam Ruthe (right) became the youngest person in history to break the four-minute-mile barrier when he recorded 3m 58.35s on Wednesday night. He now poses the biggest threat to a national schools 1500m record held by Hawke's Bay athlete Richard Potts since 1989. Photo / Michael Dawson Athletics NZ
In a country where sports sometimes reign supreme, there’s a huge focus on prepping and priming our next generation of stars.
Last week, 15-year-old Sam Ruthe became the latest rising star to make headlines, after breaking the world record to be the youngest person to run a sub-four-minute mile.
And around 2200 young rowers are expected to take part in the Maadi Cup rowing regatta for secondary schools in Cambridge.
Earlier this year, schools overwhelmingly voted to ban ‘Year 14′ students - 18-year-olds who had finished high school but returned to school to take part in the regatta - from taking part.
Simon Walters, co-director of AUT’s Sports Performance Research Institute, told The Front Page an increasingly pressurised environment could potentially lead to physical and psychological impacts on young people.
“The evidence shows that, if there’s a supportive environment in place for young people as they enter these environments, a lot of those can be mitigated. So it’s really about the support networks in place to help young people navigate these pressures.”
He said teens had the potential to develop something called a “high athlete identity” - where someone’s character was defined by their ability and the status associated with it.
“That can be challenging in many ways because, if you get injured and, for example, your career ends, or if you get injured and you miss a season, if your sense of self-worth and self-esteem is so wrapped up in your athletic prowess, then that can have an impact on other aspects of your life.”
On Ruthe, Walters said it was important to support these kinds of achievers so the sudden spotlight did not affect them negatively.
“We know during adolescence the risk of injury is much higher. So it’s having that knowledge around them from the trainers and the people working with them physically to understand what an appropriate training load is.”
Meanwhile, secondary schools are opposing New Zealand Rugby’s plan for an Under-18 team, fearing it undermines the Secondary Schools team. Schools argue the move could compromise students' education.
NZ Herald sports journalist Gregor Paul told The Front Page that NZR wants to have control.
“For some kids, it’s a really short step from school to Super Rugby and the All Blacks. So New Zealand Rugby wants to have greater influence. They want to call that a pathway. They want to call that a high-performance team.
“There is a legitimate concern that, if you give a third party the right to schedule training camps, trials, when matches get played, you could easily have massive interference in your academic schedule because they won’t be aligned.”
This comes only a few years after some big scandals in school rugby. Allegations of poaching of students between Auckland secondary schools started in late 2018. Then, in 2020, issues over live streaming of school games on Sky Sport led to the broadcasts being pulled.
Paul said the different passions portrayed by parents had brought forth a spectrum of expectations that schools had to navigate.
“Everyone’s got a different view about what role sports should play. Whether it’s just for participation to round out an education. Is it to win? Is it a career prospect? And I think all of these things aren’t particularly well managed through the school system because schools come under such a variety of pressures from different parental expectations that they don’t quite know how to manage it.
“We’ve erred towards allowing those that want professionalisation of sport, that want their kid to be given every opportunity to go on and play at the highest level - I think we’ve kowtowed to that parental force.”
Listen to the full episode to hear more about young athletes and the pressures they face.
The Front Page is a daily news podcast from the New Zealand Herald, available to listen to every weekday from 5am. The podcast is presented by Chelsea Daniels, an Auckland-based journalist with a background in world news and crime/justice reporting who joined NZME in 2016.
You can follow the podcast at iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
The superstar winger is set to be sidelined for up to eight weeks.