More Than Play: How Law, Policy, and Politics Shape American Youth Sport

In this fresh, accessible, meticulously researched work, Dionne Koller, a professor of law and the director of the Center for Sport and Law at the University of Baltimore, has tackled with aplomb the Sisyphean task of wrestling a sprawling, constantly morphing, socially fraught body of sport-relevant jurisprudence and policy positions into a coherent treatise. In fact, she has provided scholars, jurists, students, and citizens concerned about the current role of sport in the United States with a volume that can serve in graduate and higher-level undergraduate classrooms or even sit in a federal judge's bag of summer reading—the work is that informative and suited to broad appreciation. For regular readers of the Journal of Sport History, More Than Play continues the discussion from the Spring 2025 issue and Marty Clark's review of Hockey Priest: Father David Bauer and the Spirit of the Canadian Game (2024). In that review, Clark saw his topic as relevant to inviting readers “to reconsider the role of youth sports in society” (107) and to see youth sport as more than a pipeline to professional athletic outlets. In More Than Play, Koller has outlined the jurisprudential, policy, and philosophical bases for precisely such a reconsideration.In just over two hundred pages, Koller addresses a wide range of topics central to understanding youth sport in America. These include concepts relevant to defining youth sport and the issues surrounding it; key historical points in the development of sports law and policy; data on youth-sport participation and relevant financial considerations; current scientific and social-scientific research (including work in medicine and psychology), with an emphasis on the need for further study; economic perspectives; and, of course, the body of law that touches youth sport, from topics in family law and child labor to issues of state versus private actors to statutes related to concussions and to volunteer immunity. Her research into secondary sources features well-known names in the field of sport management and policy, recognized legal scholars, and several respected medical sources. Her primary-source work, in turn, brims with citations to government sources and agency materials, legislative history, state and federal statutes, and enough case law to keep legal scholars following in her footsteps busy for quite a while. On the theoretical front, she brings to bear a variety of perspectives, including exploration of feminist thought, critical theory, and Marxist economics, to make sense of the historical and current social, political, and legal pressures that have influenced youth sport and that continue to shape it.The book kicks off by laying a foundation for the discussion, defining terms and issues, and exploring the current youth-sport landscape in the United States. In the second part of the book, Koller walks her readers through the relevant jurisprudential thickets. Her explanations are detailed enough to enlighten legal scholars and practitioners but display a light enough touch to allow a layperson to grasp the topics and even enjoy the intellectual journey. In the book's final section, Koller builds her critical argument: The current competition-oriented, relatively unregulated, pay-to-play model of youth sport in America results in surplus value that is appropriated by non-athlete stakeholders and results in questionable distributive consequences for the system's key participants, namely, the child athletes (and would-be child athletes) whom the system should be serving. She distinguishes play from sport and explores the impact of the current competitive youth-sport system on various stakeholders, contrasting such impact with what might be realized in a reenvisioned system based on notions of lower stakes and “freer” play. In closing, she argues for a grassroots youth-sport system “constructed primarily for children's present well-being, informed by the notion that play—and the benefits it provides children—is enough” (143).Not everyone, of course, will agree with all of Koller's positions. In many ways, her theories are simple (most people would likely say they want what is best for children) and complex (even scholars are likely to disagree sometimes over the best means to achieve a desirable end). Issues of public versus private action, and investment, and of government intervention often spark lively debate. Scholars and practitioners within the fields of sport, law, government, and child development are likely to disagree, at least to some extent, about how best to structure and regulate a system as multifaceted as youth sport. And evolving case law is constantly moving and hiding the proverbial ball. From the recent House settlement (In re College Athlete NIL Litigation, No. 4:20-CV-3919 N.D. Cal. June 6, 2025) to pending federal actions against the U.S. Center for SafeSport, one can see certain legal points referred to by Koller shifting rapidly (or as rapidly as civil cases in America move, which may not qualify as “rapid” for many observers). This common state of affairs challenges legal scholars interested in any cutting-edge area of law, and it makes Koller's efforts here that much more noteworthy.In More Than Play, a reader will get more than a simple exposition of legal principles relevant to this area of sport. Koller's work represents a comprehensive theoretical and philosophical stance. Thus even if certain legal pillars beneath the arguments shift and resituate themselves, a fundamental framework will endure, allowing the book to remain relevant through the vagaries of jurisprudential outcomes, appeals, and remands, and through legislative changes. Simply put, More Than Play offers valuable insights for a wide range of readers: scholars interested in how the current American youth-sport system operates and, especially for sport historians, how it became what it is; students trying to understand fundamental concepts in American sports law; politicians and lawmakers interested in serving their sports-minded constituencies; and even parents who are open to an intellectual challenge and curious about the system in which their children kick balls, swim laps, or skate across ice. More Than Play provides more than a little food for sporting thought and more than a passing suggestion for effecting practical changes in this vital area of American life. It certainly accomplishes Koller's goal of “creating a deeper understanding of the activity we call youth sport” (8).