At baseball tournaments, kids don’t always need a sports drink. Most of the time they just need water, food, and enough rest.

If you have spent any time at the diamond on a tournament weekend, you know the drill. It is never just one game. It is two, sometimes three back to back, sitting on hard bleachers in the heat with about forty minutes between innings to shove food into your kids, get them in the shade, and send them back out. After a while, those weekends start to shape habits, especially around what kids are drinking and eating between games.

So the question that comes up often is: Do kids actually need sports drinks?

The short answer is: not always.

What Sports Drinks Were Made For

Sports drinks aren’t really necessary for every practice or short game. They’re more useful when kids are playing continuously for more than an hour and losing more fluid and sodium through sweat. Tournament days can be a different story, especially when they’re playing back-to-back games and there isn’t much time to sit down and eat a proper meal. In those situations, a sports drink can be a convenient way to get some fluid, electrolytes and carbohydrates in while they’re still playing.

They generally provide:

• Fluids for hydration
• Carbohydrates (often in the form of sugar) – a readily available source of carbohydrate
• Electrolytes like sodium and potassium, which are lost through sweat

For many young athletes, especially in stop-and-go sports like baseball, water is still the first place to start. But during long tournament days, if there isn’t much time to eat between games or a child just isn’t hungry, a sports drink can be a helpful backup to provide some extra hydration and carbohydrates.

One thing I think is important to mention is that sports drinks and energy drinks are not the same thing. Energy drinks often contain caffeine and stimulants, which are not appropriate for children and teens.

What Most Young Athletes Actually Need

For most kids, staying hydrated is pretty simple.

For regular practices and single games, water before, during and after activity is usually enough. Electrolytes don’t only come from sports drinks either. They’re found naturally in plenty of everyday foods. Potassium is in things like fruit and yogurt, while sodium is found in sandwiches, crackers, soups, cheese and a lot of the regular meals kids are already eating.

Tournament days can be a little different. When games are back-to-back, the weather is hot, or there isn’t much time to eat between games, some kids may benefit from a sports drink. It can help replace fluids and sodium lost through sweat while also providing a quick source of carbohydrates when energy needs to be replenished.

This is where I think it gets a little confusing for parents. Sports drinks are marketed so heavily to kids and teens that it can start to feel like every young athlete needs one. But a short baseball game, with breaks between innings, is pretty different from hours of continuous endurance exercise. Once I started looking at it that way, it made a lot more sense. It’s really about looking at what the kid is actually doing and what they’re likely losing through sweat, rather than assuming every athlete needs the same thing.

It’s also worth remembering that every kid is different. Some kids barely sweat during a baseball game, while others come off the field with soaked hats and jerseys. How much fluid and sodium they lose can vary quite a bit, so their hydration needs aren’t going to look exactly the same either.

What We’ve Learned As A Baseball Family

We always try to go with real food between games first. Fruit, sandwiches, crackers, yogurt, whatever is easy to eat and actually sits well. If a kid is getting their carbs from food, they don’t need to get them from a drink too. But anyone who’s spent a full day at a tournament knows it doesn’t always work that way. Sometimes getting kids to drink isn’t even the hard part. Getting them to actually eat can be. They’re excited, nervous, talking with their teammates, or they’ve only got 30 or 45 minutes before they have to be back on the field. Some days they just don’t feel like eating much.

That’s where we keep sports drinks as an option. Not as a replacement for food, but for those longer tournament days when getting enough food in between games is just harder and they could use a little extra fuel.

So if you do decide to use a sports drink, what should you actually look for?

I’m using Gatorade and BioSteel here because they’re two of the ones I see most often around baseball. The same general things apply to other electrolyte drinks too. I don’t think there’s one “right” drink for every kid. It really comes down to what your child needs, what else they’re eating and drinking that day, and what actually works for your family.

When my boys were younger and we were getting into baseball, Gatorade was pretty much our go-to. It was easy to grab, everyone knew what it was, and it gave them fluids, sodium and carbohydrates. Those things can be useful on a long tournament day when they’re playing multiple games and don’t always have much time to eat.

A typical 20-ounce bottle has around 140 calories and 34 grams of sugar. That sugar is essentially the carbohydrate that can be used for energy, which can be helpful during longer periods of activity. That doesn’t mean kids need that much carbohydrate every time they step onto a field, though. It really comes down to when it makes sense. As I learned more about sports nutrition over the years, I started looking at tournament days a little differently. Real food, regular meals and snacks became the foundation, and sports drinks became more of a tool we used when they actually made sense, rather than something they automatically needed.

For us, we eventually started using BioSteel more. We weren’t using it to replace food. We were still packing meals and snacks and making sure they were eating. I liked that it had zero sugar and was sweetened with stevia instead, and it didn’t have artificial colours. It just seemed to fit better with how we were approaching tournament days.

With that said, I don’t think one drink is necessarily “better” than the other. They’re different products, and what makes sense can depend on the day. If a kid hasn’t been able to eat much and has been playing for hours, a drink that provides some carbohydrate can be useful. If they’ve been eating well and mainly need fluids and some sodium, a lower-carbohydrate electrolyte drink may make more sense. For us, water is still what we use most of the time. Sports drinks are more of a tournament-day thing, especially when the games are long, back-to-back, and getting enough food in isn’t always easy.

And honestly, that’s probably the biggest thing I’ve learned over the years. You have to look at the whole day. Did they sleep? Did they eat breakfast? Are they getting enough food between games? Are they drinking enough? The sports drink is just one small part of all of that. It can be helpful when you need it, but it’s not going to make up for a kid who hasn’t eaten enough all day. Food is still the foundation.

A Note On Ingredients and Electrolytes

For a lot of families, it really just comes down to preference. Some parents prefer products without artificial colours or certain additives, while others aren’t particularly concerned about them. Kids can also respond differently to certain ingredients, so I think it’s reasonable to pay attention to what you notice with your own child.

The electrolyte amounts can also vary quite a bit from one drink to another. Gatorade, for example, provides sodium and potassium, with sodium being the main electrolyte lost through sweat. Other drinks, like BioSteel, include smaller amounts of minerals such as magnesium too. So when you’re comparing them, it’s worth looking at the actual nutrition label rather than assuming all electrolyte drinks are basically the same.

Magnesium does play a role in normal muscle function, but the amount you’re getting from one serving of a sports drink is usually pretty small. Most kids can get plenty of magnesium from food anyway. For young athletes, especially during a tournament, I’d still focus on the basics: getting enough fluids and replacing some of the sodium they’re losing through sweat.

But at the end of the day, no drink is going to make up for not eating enough real food.

If your kid only slept six hours and skipped breakfast, no magic drink in the cooler is going to save them. On the flip side, a well-rested, well-fed kid is often going to be just fine with water. I think we sometimes overthink the drinks because it’s the one thing we can actually control. You hand them a bright bottle through the fence and feel like you’ve done something to help. But when they hit a wall in game three, it’s often the lack of sleep or food finally catching up with them.