Parents: Have an athletic son or daughter? Do you encourage him to play to his highest level of excellence? Do you spend time and money making sure she can reach her potential? Well according to The Washington Post, you’re being really unfair to my slow fat kid.

Yes, to its horror the Post has once again discovered that life isn’t fair. It seems participation in youth sports is down and writer Michael S. Rosenwald knows the culprit: parents. Specifically, parents “in the suburbs, where the shift to elite competition over the past two decades has taken a growing toll: Children are playing fewer sports, and the less talented are left behind in recreational leagues with poor coaching, uneven play and the message that they aren’t good enough.”

It must be true – a professor thinks so.

“The system is now designed to meet the needs of the most talented kids,” said Mark Hyman, a professor of sports management at George Washington University and the author of several books on youth sports. “We no longer value participation. We value excellence.”

Excellence? The horror!

The “system” Hyman is railing against amounts to a free market and the free association of people – an intolerable situation to modern liberals.

Rosenwald gives a pretty accurate description of how this happens:

The most talented kids play on travel teams beginning at age 7 (or sometimes younger), even though many athletes bloom much later; the best coaches (often dads who are former college athletes) manage travel teams, leaving rec leagues with helpful but less knowledgeable parents in charge.

Kids who excel and whose parents have the means make the most of their talent. They work hard and practice. A lot. They naturally gravitate to other kids who do too, and to coaches who can help them. Their parents commit the considerable time and money to make it happen.

But in such a soul-killing “system,” you can’t swing a participation trophy without hitting a victim. Rosenwald found a Washington mom who whined, “It’s just about impossible to stand up to it if you want your kids to play competitively.” Apparently, her kid “felt pressure even from his baseball teammates because he wasn’t playing year-round.” He felt pressure.

But according to Rosenwald, “Those who study the issue are more worried about the millions of kids who just want to play sports for fun but get the least attention.” Of course they are. Has it occurred to “those who study the issue” that by definition the kids in it for fun require less attention?

Others who study the issue, like GWU’s Amanda Visek have surveyed kids about what they like about sports. Not surprisingly, their priorities warm the liberal heart. Winning is 48th on the list. “Also low on the list: playing in tournaments, cool uniforms and expensive equipment. High on the list: positive team dynamics, trying hard, positive coaching and learning.” You can almost see Rosenwald’s smirk as he typed that.

Of course, nobody asked the kids if they thought the really good among them should be made to play down to some level arbitrarily selected by liberals.

Regardless, those liberals are on the case: “Many of the adults trying to fix the problem remember a simpler, less competitive, less expensive time in youth sports,” Rosenwald writes. “There were no travel teams, no faraway tournaments — now a $7 billion industry. There were pickup games with friends and leagues at neighborhood parks, with the focus mostly on fun. All of the kids in the neighborhood played together: the stars, the stalwarts, the daisy pickers.”

Funny, I don’t recall Little League being quite so much like a PBS cartoon.