Ask most people why children should play organized sport, and "to manage stress" will appear near the top of the list. It is an intuitive answer, supported by decades of evidence linking physical activity to better mental health. But intuitions deserve to be tested, and when we examined nationally representative data from Chile, the picture that emerged was more nuanced — and, we believe, more interesting.

Our study, "Association between organized sport participation and stress-related motivation for physical activity among Chilean children and adolescents", published in Discover Public Health, began with a question that has received surprisingly little attention in Latin America: do young people who participate in organized sport actually report stress relief as their motivation for being physically active?

An unexpected pattern

Using data from 4,150 participants aged 5–17 years in the 2024 Chilean National Physical Activity and Sport Survey (ENAFyD), we found that children and adolescents engaged in organized sport were substantially less likely to endorse stress relief as a primary motivation for physical activity. After adjusting for sex, age, socioeconomic status, and area of residence, participants in organized sport had 49% lower odds of reporting stress-related motivation than non-participants.

At first glance, this might seem to contradict the well-documented mental health benefits of sport. We would argue the opposite. The finding suggests what we describe as a motivational displacement: organized sport appears to operate through alternative psychosocial pathways — social integration, competence development, and the building of self-regulatory skills — that may reduce the need to use exercise as an immediate coping "escape valve". Those who exercise outside structured settings, by contrast, may be turning to physical activity precisely because they are seeking relief from stress.

Self-Determination Theory offered us a valuable lens here. When basic psychological needs — autonomy, competence, and relatedness — are satisfied within sport contexts, motivation tends to become more autonomous and sustainable, oriented toward enjoyment and mastery rather than symptom management.

The question behind the question

Working with these data also confronted us with a persistent public health concern: access. Organized sport participation in our sample was higher among urban residents and higher socioeconomic groups, echoing international evidence of stratified access to youth sport. If organized sport indeed cultivates deeper psychosocial resources, then unequal access to it is not merely a sporting inequity — it is a mental health inequity.

This is where we believe the study speaks most directly to policy. Chile, like many countries in the region, has made important efforts to promote youth physical activity. Our findings suggest two complementary priorities: reducing socioeconomic and urban–rural disparities in access to organized sport, and intentionally integrating mental health–promoting components into youth sport programs rather than assuming they occur by default. The motivational climate created by coaches matters; environments emphasizing encouragement, effort, and enjoyment promote psychological safety, whereas performance-pressured climates may do the opposite.

Interpreting with humility

As with any cross-sectional analysis, we interpret these associations with caution. Our design cannot disentangle selection effects from true program effects, and all measures were self-reported. We conducted sensitivity analyses under alternative outcome codings, and the association remained consistent in direction and magnitude — but the deeper causal questions remain open. Longitudinal designs and objective measures in Latin American populations are, in our view, the natural next step.

This humility is not a weakness of the study; it is part of how we understand science. Findings that complicate a simple narrative are often the ones that teach us the most.

A collaborative effort

This work reflects the collaboration of colleagues across nine institutions in Chile, Ecuador, and Spain, and would not have been possible without the Chilean Undersecretariat of Sport granting access to the ENAFyD 2024 data. Behind the tables and odds ratios lie many conversations about what motivation means for a ten-year-old kicking a ball after school — conversations that continually reminded us why we do this work.

We hope this study contributes to a more textured understanding of why young people move, and we welcome dialogue with researchers, practitioners, and policymakers interested in youth sport, motivation, and mental health across Latin America and beyond.

Read the full open access article: https://rdcu.be/fsdp8