A 7-year-old has a lot to remember before his summer baseball games. The shirt, the hat, the mitt and, of course, the cup. The cup?
There was a time when a 1st grader’s only experience with a protective cup came when his older brother, the catcher, made him “breathe through the oxygen mask,” but now many 7-year-old would-be Derek Lees or Paul Konerkos are being required to wear them.
Some coaches are absolute cup cops, sitting the boys on the bench if they’re not fully equipped.
It does add entertainment value to the games. Seven-year-olds are naturally “hands on.” Give them a big chunk of plastic to wear and tell them not to touch it and you’re guaranteed a show.
But is the young cup requirement a case of modern medicine addressing what had been an overlooked, genuine risk?
According to Dr. Cynthia Labella, medical director for the Institute for Sports Medicine at Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago, it’s probably overkill. “I would say that younger than 10 is probably unnecessary,” she said.
Labella recommends talking to your son when he’s 9 or 10 to explain why it’s important to protect the testicl*s, but the risk is small before puberty hits. But don’t wait for your son to show signs of puberty before making him wear the cup. By then, according to Labella, he’s already at risk for injury.
“The first sign of puberty in a boy is growth of testicular size,” she said. “Even before the growth spurt starts, even before all the body hair starts appearing, even before the penis starts growing and the voice starts deepening, the first thing that heralds that puberty is starting is that the testicl*s start to grow in size.”
