"What are your goals for a child playing sports?"

Peter Barston is back with another question. Peter is the remarkable teen from Darien, Connecticut who enlightened us last winter with an unusual research project.

Peter, assisted by his dad, decided he had to get to the bottom of this question: Why do kids play sports? So he put together a survey and passed it out to hundreds of kid players in his hometown. When he'd analyzed the responses, Peter concluded the following. Kids play sports for fun. Not for scholarships. Not so they can advance to travel ball. Not to win necessarily. Playing for fun was the most cited answer in every sport, among girls and boys and across every age group.

This week, Peter is sharing data from his survey of parents. He polled several hundred in his hometown asking: What are your goals for your child playing sports?

Here are responses from 141 football parents.

Encouraging stuff. Hats off to the exceptional (and presumably truthful) sports parents of Darien.

MY GOALS FOR MY CHILD PLAYING FOOTBALL-RANKED IN ORDER OF IMPORTANCE

1. TO HAVE FUN
2. TO BE PART OF A TEAM AND LEARN TEAMWORK
3. TO IMPROVE HIS SKILLS AND LEARN TO PLAY FOOTBALL THE RIGHT WAY
4. TO STAY IN SHAPE AND GET EXERCISE
5. TO INCREASE HIS SELF-CONFIDENCE
6. FOR THE EXCITEMENT AND CHALLENGE OF COMPETITION
7. TO MAKE FRIENDS
8. TO GET TO A HIGHER LEVEL OF COMPETITION, SUCH AS HIGH SCHOOL SPORTS
9. TO WIN
10. TO HELP HIM GET INTO THE BEST POSSIBLE COLLEGE
11.TO EARN A COLLEGE SCHOLARSHIP

Why do kids play sports? Peter Barston still asking

Back in January, I wrote a piece for the New York Times about Peter Barston, a young man from Darien, Connecticut who had spent many hours studying the reasons kids play sports.

Peter, 15, put together a survey listing 11 potential reasons. The top answer again and again was the simplest: To have fun. As the article noted, i=t was the top response from football and basketball players, from boys and from girls, and from players in each grade from fourth to eighth. In the basketball survey, 95 percent of boys and 98 percent of girls cited fun as a reason for playing, nearly twice the number who mentioned winning.

I just got a note from Peter telling me he has added two more sports to his research: baseball and softball programs in Darien.

Here's what he found this time around - essentially more of the same.

In the softball survey, the top five reasons given by youth players:

1. To Have Fun
2. To Make Friends
3. To Improve My Skills and Learn to Play Softball the Right Way
4. For the Excitement and Challenge of Competition
5. To Be Part of a Team and Learn Teamwork

"To Win" was No. 9.

In the baseball poll, here are the most cited reasons:

1. To Have Fun
2. To Make Friends
3. To Improve My Skills and Learn to Play Baseball the Right Way
4. To Stay in Shape and Get Exercise
5. To Be Part of a Team and Learn Teamwork.

"To Win" was No. 8.
"To Earn a College Scholarship" was No. 10.
"Because My Parents Asked Me To Play" was No. 11, dead last.

Why do kids play sports? In Darien, fun is first

Here's a piece that I wrote for Sunday's New York Times about Peter Barston, an enterprising young man from Darien, Connecticut. Since August, Peter, 15, has been touring local youth leagues asking the kid players: Why do you play sports?

Peter's survey is a single sheet with 11 reasons listed including: to have fun, to make friends, to earn a college scholarship, to go to a higher level of competition. The answer cited the most? To have fun. It was the top answer for kids in every grade (fourth to eighth), for boys and girls, for players in basketball and football.

One thing that I wasn't able to work into the article was the reaction of the youth players in Darien to Barston's project. Peter told me, "A lot of kids said: Thank you, it's good to be asked."

Peter says he's thinking about launching a Web site where he would post results collected so far (for football and basketball) and those still in the pipeline (softball, baseball and lacrosse). And, he hopes to inspire other kids to do similar surveys in their hometowns.