In new study, team sports improve executive function in kids

UPI:

“Scientific data indicate that playing a team sport like soccer improves executive function skills, which are among the most key life skills of all,” Dr. Alison Brooks wrote in a journal commentary accompanying the new study. She’s professor of orthopedics at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

The new study was published Tuesday in the journal JAMA Network Open. It was conducted in The Netherlands and led by Lu Yang, a graduate medical student at the University Medical Center Groningen.

Yang’s team looked at data on almost 900 schoolchildren tracked from 2006 through 2017. The kids were assessed at two age periods: Ages 5 to 6 and then again at 10 to 11.