Professional athletic teams worldwide are offering high-paying contracts to teenagers as game-changing additions to their teams. In 2023, soccer team Sacramento Republic announced that it signed 13-year-old Da’vian Kimbrough to a professional contract. This made Kimbrough, according to CNN, the youngest professional athlete in U.S. team sports history. After joining the team’s academy set-up, he scored 27 goals in 31 matches against a team made up of members older than himself, already proving his athleticism to the world.
Similarly, in 2023, Melanie Barcenas, a 15-year-old soccer player, made her professional soccer debut as the youngest player ever in the Nation Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) for the San Diego Wave. Barcenas signed a contract with San Diego for about $280,000, joining a growing league of teen players advancing their careers to professional levels.
This development is not unique to soccer. In 2021, 16-year-old Jalen Lewis signed a contract with the Overtime Elite League to become the youngest basketball player to turn pro in the U.S.. According to The Athletic, Lewis signed a deal worth more than $1 million after receiving interest from schools such as Duke and UCLA.
More examples can be found in the world of tennis. Most prominently, at 17 years old, men’s tennis player Carlos Alcarez won his first Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) title and skyrocketed to fame after beating “Big Three” member Novak Djokovic to win the French Open, one of the four highly prestigious tournaments (Grand Slams) in the tennis world, in 2023. The “Big Three” refer to the tennis trio Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer, and Rafael Nadal, each considered to be one of the greatest tennis players of all time, so for a 19-year-old to take one of them down is significant. Now, at 20 years old, Alcarez has been ranked as high as world No. 1 in men’s singles by ATP.
Coco Gauff, a professional women’s tennis player, experienced a similar path to fame. At just 15 years old, Gauff became the youngest player to reach the main draw at Wimbledon, another of the four tennis Grand Slams, and upset five-time Wimbledon champion Venus Williams in straight sets. After becoming an instant global tennis star, according to WTA Tennis, Gauff went on to win her first Grand Slam in the U.S. Open tournament by defeating former world No. 1 women’s singles player Aryna Sabalenka.
Young athletes are not only showing up in professional sports teams but also at world-famous events such as the Olympics. In the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, Japanese skater Momiji Nishiya won gold in the women’s street event at 14 years old. And at 13 years old, Brazilian skater Rayssa Leal debuted at the Tokyo Olympics and won a silver medal, second only to Nishiya, in the same event, solidifying her place in Olympics history by becoming one of the youngest Olympians to ever medal according to Teen Vogue.
The visible trend of younger, teenage athletes competing at a professional level is not a coincidence. According to UCLA Health, in the past few decades, younger athletes have gone through remarkable transformations. They tend to be bigger, faster, and stronger than younger athletes of previous generations due to a variety of factors. With modern medicine, internet access, and resources, it has become easier for young athletes to have access to the best coaching and training techniques. Additionally, athletes are able to have a better grasp on nutrition and health and train their bodies more vigorously without getting injured, as a result. Altogether, this makes the younger generation of athletes something to behold, a trend and a sight that we will likely continue to witness well into the future.
