In 2004, eight of the first 19 players taken in the NBA draft were high schoolers. This year, 10 were taken in the draft.

Disturbed by the trend, NBA commissioner David Stern insisted that an age limit be included in the new collective bargaining agreement, prohibiting teams from drafting players before their 19th birthday.

"We'd like to get our scouts and general managers out of high school gyms," Stern said.

The NBA isn't the only association looking for young talent. Routinely, high school players are drafted by Major League Baseball teams, soccer has its teen sensation in Freddy Adu, and where would tennis be without its young, marketable stars including Maria Sharapova and Anna Kournikova? And at the Olympic level in sports such as gymnastics and figure skating, girls are has-beens by the time they legally become women.

There is a new race in sports, one not just to get stronger and faster, but to get the youngest. Sports are becoming more serious at increasingly lower

levels, raising the competitive bar to be sure but also forcing kids to work harder if they want to stay in the game and forcing out those who just want to play to have fun.

Games still draw a loyal audience of parents and grandparents, but now jammed into the stands next to them are scouts or college coaches.

"If you can identify the next LeBron James, then that is a notch up on someone else," said Bruce Svare, who founded the National Institute of Sports Reform and is a professor of psychology at the State University of New York at Albany. "Before long, we are going to start looking at petri dishes to find the next superstar."

While the emergence of a teenage star will set off a sponsor war and grab headlines, the talent chase doesn't end with the pro and college coaches.

High school coaches can't resist joining in the search, and stories of how supposed rec teams are becoming recruiting battlegrounds over players barely in their teens are becoming more and more common.

"Everyone out there is driving kids harder and harder and younger and younger," said Jeff Arbogast, Bingham High's track coach, who also serves as the chair of the National Federation of High School Sports. "New York allows seventh- and eighth-graders to compete at the high school level. Other states look at that and say, 'How do I compete if all my peers are doing that?' ''

Membership in the Amateur Athletic Union, one of the largest leagues, is growing at close to 15 percent yearly, now boasting more than 500,000 athletes in 36 sports.

AAU offers more than 250 national championships in 15,000 sports leagues. Its slogan is "Sports for all, forever," but there is little room for feel-good sports anymore, even at the AAU levels.

"You can't compete if you don't specialize," said Mike Killpack, AAU's director of sports, who started his career with the Salt Lake County Parks and Recreation Division. "You just don't see your three- and four-sport athletes anymore or, if you do, they're not your superstars."

Killpack is speaking from the Disney's Wide World of Sports Complex in Orlando, Fla., where he is watching a 9-under boys basketball national championship tournament.

Holding a national championship for such young ages makes some who follow youth sports cringe, but Killpack presents it as simply the natural progression of sports.

According to Killpack, during a nine-week period when AAU is holding most of its national championships, the Disney complex will feature 22,000 young athletes in its competitions.

"Kids are getting better younger," he said. "It is the parents' responsibility. They can participate in an event at school or church group or they can participate in one of our events. But I'd rather have them playing here for a national championship than sitting on a couch playing video games."

So what is wrong with going younger, if an eighth-grader is good enough to compete at the high school level? For Arbogast, it is getting away from the principle of high school sports: providing teenagers avenues for athletic participation.

Arbogast uses a cross country team in New York as an example. Most of its top female runners are eighth- and ninth-graders, and despite its lofty ranking, the school rarely produces college athletes. Few runners compete all four years because burnout, overuse injuries or the next great young runner force them out.

"By the time they are seniors, they are gone," Arbogast said.

John P. DiFiori, M.D., the associate professor and chief of the division of sports medicine at UCLA's department of family medicine, said there isn't any scientific data that proves athletes must start young to succeed, partially because it would be a very difficult aspect to study in itself.

But a lack of data doesn't translate into a lack of a push; if anything, the less proof there is, the higher the fervor.

While it's true some sports see athletes peak in their early teens, such as gymnastics, others require more physical development, such as football.

University of Utah gymnastics coach Greg Marsden said it isn't uncommon for promising gymnasts to be identified as such when they are 8 or 9 years old. Rarely does a star 11-year-old go unnoticed with many of the top club and college coaches attending elite championships and junior national championships, which feature athletes in their pre-teens.

"It is getting earlier and earlier, and I don't think that is necessarily a good thing for schools or athletes," Marsden said. "Everyone is out there pushing each other. It is getting out of hand."

Bob Bigelow, a former NBA player and author of the book "Just Let the Kids Play," blames the creation of select and all-star teams for much of the emphasis on young stars.

Bigelow argues it is impossible to tell the potential of a high school freshman, much less a 12-year-old basketball player.

"The general rule of thumb is you can't tell how good a player is going to be until he is a junior," Bigelow said. "If a high school coach tells you otherwise, then his [athletic director] needs to have a good talk with him."

But by then, many coaches say, a good high school player already needs to have experience on the select circuit and "get his name out there," so college recruiters and maybe the pros know about him.

Others see it as a matter of practicality. C.J. Miles, the Jazz's 34th pick in the 2005 NBA draft, didn't bloom into a star until his sophomore year in high school. But once his upswing started, he improved so much that high school life became abnormal for him.

Miles considered playing at the University of Texas, but ultimately decided the NBA would be almost a safe haven from the craziness that his life had become.

"There were so many people telling me what I should do and pulling me this way and that, it got to where none of it felt right," he said. "If [young] players are good enough and prove themselves, teams can't help but take us. Some say we aren't mature enough, but in Dallas, I'd gotten so big, it was too much."

BURNOUT

Mary Wright, owner of the Olympus School of Gymnastics in South Jordan, sees the largest dropoff in athletes from the ages of 14 to 16. That's in line with other sports as pressure builds for young athletes to specialize and the level of competition rises.

In gymnastics, for instance, long practice hours are necessary because a gymnast may perform 50 to 60 skills in a meet, and it takes an average of 1,000 repetitions before muscle memory kicks in.

At the same time, athletes are faced with such an extraordinary commitment, they're also learning that extracurricular activities exist outside gyms and practice fields.

"By the age of 13, 70 percent of kids have stopped playing sports," said Svare, the psychology professor. "A lot of them aren't having fun anymore. It's a reflection of a win-at-all-costs attitude."

The NCAA won't allow its athletes to practice with coaches more than 20 hours a week. In comparison, few youth leagues or school districts limit practice time for their athletes.

The result, concerned observers say, is overworked athletes who because of increased pressure and specialization, come to despise a sport they once loved.

Sometimes, it's overuse injuries that force them out of the sport.

Lyle Michele, M.D., and the director of the Division of Sports Medicine at the Children's Hospital in Boston, recommends young athletes who spend more than 18 hours a week training for a sport should be monitored by a sports doctor.

Giving a young athlete time to heal from a serious injury is crucial, but often rarely happens, leading to long-term problems when an athlete returns to a sport too soon.

"There is unrealistic expectations," said DiFiori. "Parents don't want to miss out on a tournament because they think someone is scouting. Often there is a lot of pressure to return to the activity."

Michele sees young patients with overuse injuries; although some are legitimate, others are made up by the athlete. That leads to Michele's diagnosis that the athlete has burnout, not an injury, and is looking for a reason to quit.

"We try to be supportive and give an out to an athlete who may not want to do their sport as much as they were, so we provide a way out," Michele said. "We're a sports clinic, so a lot of times parents will take from us what they won't take from their pediatricians."

Sometimes, breaking the news to a family that a child should stop an activity brings two reactions - relief from the athlete and disappointment from the parents, and Michele finds himself counseling the parents more than the athlete.

"A busy family also has a lot invested in the social aspect," Michele said. "All of the new friends are involved in the sport. It's a whole new circle of friends. And what happens when the kid suddenly says, 'I don't want to do this'? But it's what also defines that parent. What are they going to do then?"

Overuse

The Tribune wrote about overuse injuries in youth earlier this year. To read that article, go to sltrib.com

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