by Barry Finegold, CommonWealth Beacon
March 4, 2026

EVERY CYCLE OF the Winter Olympics brings a familiar but uncomfortable storyline: The United States, with its vast population, enormous resources, and deep sports culture, continues to be outperformed by a nation that is home to roughly as many people as live in Minnesota.

With a population of just 5.6 million—smaller than the 7.1 million people living in Massachusetts—Norway has once again topped the Winter Olympics medal count at the Games that just concluded in Italy. The Nordic nation now also leads the all-time Winter Olympics medal count, with more than 400 medals to its name.

For decades, Americans have dismissed Norway’s dominance as a quirk of climate or geography. But the real explanation cannot be found entirely on a ski slope. It also has to do with the way each nation approaches youth sports.

Norway has embraced a model focused on broad inclusion, player happiness, and a turn away from the competitive dimension of sports for younger participants.

The Norwegian national youth sports framework is guided by idrettsglede, “the joy of sport,” a philosophy that shapes everything from rules to resource allocation. Children in Norway play without scorekeeping, league standings, or travel demands until at least age 13. The purpose is exploratory rather than competitive: to help kids fall in love with movement and stay active for life.

The US model is the opposite of Norway’s. American kids step into competitive pressure almost immediately, with early rankings, elite travel teams, and parental anxieties that rival professional sports environments. By age 13, 70 percent of American children have quit organized sports, overwhelmingly because it stopped being fun.

Norwegian children, by contrast, stay in sports because the system is designed to keep them in. With 93 percent youth participation, Norway’s sports world draws from a deeper, healthier, and more resilient talent pool than the US ever does.

Adopting this broad-participation approach would bolster our ability to cultivate more elite athletes for Winter Olympics success. But above and beyond that, it would give millions of kids the lifelong physical, social, and mental health benefits of youth sports.

In Massachusetts, we aren’t waiting for the next Winter Olympics to act on these lessons. Last fall, the Legislature launched the nation's first-of-its-kind Youth Sports Working Group, prompted by growing concerns over burnout and inequality, despite our resources, in youth sports.

The working group, created under the huge development bill enacted in 2024, includes a mix of legislators, currently active coaches in various communities, and other youth sports leaders, including a medical expert. This is more than a policy group; it brings together professionals who have firsthand experience addressing these issues on a daily basis.

The group has met regularly and already held one public hearing; more are planned this month, with recommendations expected soon, including draft legislation for a state oversight body modeled on the NCAA or Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association.

Norway’s advantage in the Winter Olympics comes from a youth sports system designed for long-term development, broad participation, and genuine joy—values that America abandoned a long time ago. But it also enjoys a financial advantage. The country directs lottery and sports betting proceeds into youth and community sports, ensuring low-cost, equitable access nationwide. Participation costs are capped—typically around $1,000 annually—and long-distance travel is prohibited for young children.

The US, by comparison, runs youth sports as a largely privatized marketplace. Families pay for club teams, elite coaching, equipment, tournament travel, and showcases. Costs can climb into thousands of dollars, creating a system where income determines opportunity.

If the US funded youth sports proportionally to Norway, it could redirect a portion of the $232 billion spent annually on lottery and sports betting into publicly accessible programs, rather than accepting a pay-to-play system that routinely sidelines children who cannot afford to participate.

American sports culture clings to the belief that early competition builds champions—that competition produces toughness, and that lowering the stakes makes kids soft. Norway offers the most compelling counterexample imaginable.

Its winter athletes—cross-country skiers, biathletes, and endurance competitors—are among the toughest in the world, consistently outperforming athletes from much larger nations. Their youth experience is not shaped by coddling, but by sustainable development, late specialization, and a focus on enjoyment that prevents burnout.

Norway’s youth sports model has produced not only Winter Olympic leaders but also global stars in soccer, tennis, golf, track, and even chess. These successes are not anomalies—they are the product of a broad, inclusive ecosystem that treats sports as a public good.

If the United States truly wants to close the gap with Norway—not just on the medal count, but in public health and youth development—we must rethink our assumptions and rebuild our youth sports system in a way that embraces Norway’s core insight: Youth sports should serve children, not the other way around.

Barry Finegold is a Democratic state senator from Andover, a dedicated youth football coach, and a member of the Youth Sports Working Group.

This article first appeared on CommonWealth Beacon and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.