Sports are a big part of the All-American lifestyle. Families rally for their state team, their alma mater teams, their fantasy teams and their kids’ leagues. Here in Lake Nona, we are blessed to live near the USTA and Sports and Performance District so that a healthy lifestyle involving sports is literally in our backyards.

If you have ever committed your child to a sport on a team, you know that it’s an actual commitment! With evening practices, early weekend morning games, long drives to tournaments, and tons of expenses, participation is quite an obligation. Do you sometimes wonder if it is worth all the effort? Especially if your child isn’t that enthusiastic about it, either, it makes it easy to waive it off and say, “Fine, just forget it,” and thinking, “Is it such a big deal if they don’t play sports?” The answer is, absolutely!

It’s not a coincidence that most leaders and CEOs have played some sort of sport growing up and not necessarily at a high-level. Even Mark Zuckerberg, who one wouldn’t exactly peg as an athlete type, was a high school fencing star. Even if your child isn’t performing well, it still has great benefits beyond building self-confidence and getting exercise.

So, if you succeed in ignoring the tired voice in your head saying, “Is it really worth it?” here are some of the things your child will gain:

• Learning the importance of WE over ME, where the collective success is more important than individual success.
• Experiencing the association between hard work and growth. Learning that there is no home run moment, and that success comes from the repeated act of greatness.
• Learning how to follow so they can learn how to lead: You can’t be a chief without being a warrior first.
• Learning how to WIN, not just how to lose: The saying goes, “When you are green, you are growing, and when you are ripe, you are rotting.” In the right competitive environment, sports help kids learn to stay humble and acknowledge that there is always room to grow.
• Experience getting knocked down and getting up, literally, and fighting through that.

As for girls and young women, according to an article published on CNBC.com, “If you want to be a CEO later, play sports now.” Referencing a series of Ernst & Young studies, it is even more common for female executives to have played a sport. A survey of 821 high-level female executives was conducted, and the result came back revealing that 90% of them had played sports. For women holding C-suite positions, the number is even higher and comes in at 96%.

“Playing sports teaches you important life skills at an early age, skills like time management and organizational skills. More importantly, it gives you the chance to experience camaraderie and the ideology of working collectively for a common goal,” said Lake Nona resident, exercise physiologist, and coach Anthony Wishart.

In life, we all strive to find a role and excel at it. That is something that sports allow children to experience at an early age, and it has long-lasting effects into adulthood. So, if you are a parent who is struggling with the kids’ sports schedules, just remember that the benefits are going to be well worth the trouble.