Performing artists are athletes. Like athletes, performing artists practice and/or perform most days with little off season, play through pain, "compete" in challenging environments, and risk career-threatening injury. Athletes and the Arts is a multiorganizational initiative linking the sport athlete and musician/performing artist communities. Performing artists of all ages and genre are an underserved population related to medical coverage, care, injury prevention, performance enhancement, and wellness. Sports medicine professionals are a valuable resource for filling this gap by applying existing knowledge of treating sport athletes (nutrition, injury prevention) while gaining a better understanding of performers' unique needs (hearing loss, focal dystonia) and environment. These applications can occur in the clinical setting and through developing organizational policies. By better understanding the needs of the performing arts population and applying existing concepts and knowledge, sports medicine professionals can expand their impact to a new patient base that desperately needs support.
Two developmental pathways to sport excellence have been described: early specialization and early sampling (Côté, Lidor, & Hackfort, 2009). Despite a common assumption that early specialization (defined as playing one sport exclusively and intensely before age 12) is a necessary precursor to success at the collegiate or professional levels, research to support this assumption remains unclear. To add to this literature, the current study was a survey of 708 minor league professional baseball players on the ages at which they began to specialize in their sport. Results indicated that most players sampled a diversity of sports up through late adolescence. Only 25% of players specialized before the age of 12 and the mean age of specialization was 15 years. Furthermore, those who specialized later were more likely to receive college scholarships. Finally, we examined patterns of specialization as a function of athletes’ home climate and culture. At least in this sample of professional minor league baseball players, an early sampling pathway seems to have fortified success at both the collegiate and professional levels.
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