As a girl, Dawson County High School senior Kaitlynn Bennett tried a wide variety of sports and activities, ranging from tumbling to cheerleading to basketball, but it was when she discovered softball “at like the age of four” that she knew she had found her sport. “Growing up, I had a cousin that played softball and I wanted to be like her, I guess,” Bennett said. “She played when she was young, so I did too.” Sports specialization, defined by a summary study entitled Sports Specialization in Young Athletes published in May 2013 by the American Orthopaedic Society of Sports Medicine “as intense, year-round training in a single sport with the exclusion of other sports,” is a growing trend in youth sports across the United States.