Introduction Övik has become a good sports town for teenagers today, you can find remodels, clubs and great coaches and all of it together creates a good environment to grow in many sports. I the centre of Övik there, are several bigger sports clubs, with many different sports, everything between air rifle shouting, elite ice hockey and Premier Division football. Success Despite the fact that the municipality is small and with only 55 000 inhabitants, many teenagers have had large success in principally ice hockey, just look at players like Peter Forsberg and Markus Näslund. The football in Övik has grown bigger and better these last couple of years. For example Friska Viljors latest success, or the Själevad in the Premier Division. In the shadow of all the football and ice hockey success we have here in Övik two of the world’s greatest ice racers, Stefan Svensson and Per-Olof “Posa” Serenius. Unfortunately there are no new talents and that’s because of the very expensive costs.

The Sports Importance Sport is a very important part for today’s teenagers. It’s not just the physical exercise that’s necessary but also the social part. The friendships are booth on and off the field/ track. For many young persons, sport is a big friendship source, when they may find it hard to find new friends with similar interests. In an investigation that has been made 60% of Parkskolans students are active in some kind of sport. It varies from keep-fit exercises to elite dance. For many of them sport is important, even though in most cases it’s not on an elite level.

The Sports Negative Side Unfortunately sport clubs are losing their members to computers and TV. This can get serious consequences with overweight and reduced immune defence. In a recent investigation an old myth is killed. The old myth about teenagers who don’t participate in any sport drink more alcohol than teenagers who are involved in sports. Aftonbladet published the 24/3-05 a research made on 1000 eighteen year old students. It shows that teenagers who practise on a high level and especially in team sports consume more alcohol than the ones who don’t exercise. The reason for this, according to us, is that teenagers who are active in sports get more friends and the bigger your friendship circle is it’s easier to try new things, because a pressure easy builds up and you want to be one in the gang. It’s kind of a macho thing which is more common among boys then girls. This new fact is probably the only big problem sports bring about. Future. Sports in Övik are and will be great in the future, just take a look at all the new talents in different kinds of sport. One reason is because we have one football high-school and one ice hockey high-school where teens can grow their talenst. The football high-school is more at the local level, and has never produced any big players. But that will, hopefully, change now when Själevad has showedthe way. The ice hockey high-school here in Övik has for the last twenty years produced great players, and it looks like it won’t change. This, compared to the football high-school, is regional. This means that teenagers from Malmö can come here and play ice hockey. Because of that greater talents can come here to live and play. But this is not as good as it sounds, when the talents graduate they’ll leave town, and then they have only been an unnecessary cost. That’s why they are going to change the catchment’s area to only Västernorrland, instead of the whole Sweden. So the futures for the coming athleticstars are and will be good. The athletic success creates a good reputation for the town too. Övik is the so called “nursery”.

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Writers: Erik Odén (nv06-16@park.se) and Stefan Nilsson (nv06-11@park.se).
HTML by: Joakim Strom Ramén (te05-02@park.se).