Caffeine & Energy Drinks: A Quick Guide for NSEA Families

Why this matters: A lot of teams (volleyball, swim, you name it) are seeing more kids show up to practices and meets with energy drinks. The science says caffeine isn't the enemy — but the doses in most energy drinks are built for adults, not for a 12-17 year old. This guide is about getting the dose right, not banning caffeine outright.

The one-sentence version

A little caffeine, early in the day, can genuinely help focus and energy. A lot of caffeine, especially in the afternoon, tends to backfire — jitters, a rough night's sleep, and a worse performance the next day.

What a "little" and a "lot" actually look like

Most energy drinks aimed at teens are 150–300 mg of caffeine per can. Pediatric guidance (American Academy of Pediatrics) suggests capping total daily caffeine for a 12-18 year old around 100 mg — meaning a single can can already blow past the daily recommendation, and two or three in a day (which is common at tournaments) can put a young athlete at 6-8x a sensible amount.

For comparison:

Why the timing matters as much as the amount

Caffeine sticks around for hours (typically 3-7+ hours to clear half of it, longer for some people). A drink at 4pm can still be very much active in the body at bedtime. The single biggest, most avoidable harm isn't a scary medical event — it's a bad night's sleep, which is one of the most reliable predictors of a flat, sluggish, emotionally frazzled performance the next day. That's exactly the pattern a lot of coaches and parents have watched play out at tournaments: kids load up on energy drinks in the afternoon, sleep terribly as a team, and play worse the next morning — the opposite of what the drink promised.

Rule of thumb: nothing caffeinated after early-to-mid afternoon (roughly noon-2pm) on a competition day.

The real health risks, without the scare tactics

• Sleep disruption is the most common and most consequential downside — see above.
• Jitters, anxiety, elevated heart rate, GI upset are common at higher doses and are usually reversible once caffeine clears.
• Serious cardiac events are rare but real, especially when several caffeinated drinks are stacked in a short window, or in someone with an undiagnosed heart condition. This is well documented enough that it's part of pediatric guidance, not internet scare content — a widely cited case involved a 16-year-old who died after combining a soda, a coffee drink, and an energy drink within about two hours.
• Kids aren't just "small adults" here — because they weigh less, the same can of energy drink is a proportionally bigger dose for them than for an adult, even before anything else is different about how their bodies handle it.

"But my kid seems totally fine on it" — genetics is why

Two real genetic factors explain why one kid on the team can drink an energy drink and seem unaffected while another gets shaky and can't sleep:

• How fast their body clears it. A common gene (CYP1A2) makes some people "fast" processors (caffeine's mostly gone in a couple hours) and others "slow" (it can still be active 8-10 hours later). Roughly 1 in 6 kids falls in the slow category.
• How strongly their body reacts to it. A separate gene (ADORA2A) affects how jittery or anxious caffeine makes someone feel, and independently, how much it disrupts their sleep — regardless of how fast they clear it.

These two things are independent, which means a kid who "seems fine" (no visible jitters) isn't necessarily clearing the caffeine any faster — they may just be a low-anxiety-response type who's still quietly caffeinated at midnight. There's no way to tell by looking, which is exactly why a flat dose-and-timing rule for the whole team (rather than "let each kid judge for themselves") is the more reliable approach.

What actually helps, if a kid wants a boost

• A modest amount earlier in the day — a small coffee, tea, or a fraction of an energy drink — is genuinely supported by the science as a performance and focus aid, in the same way it works for adults, just at a smaller dose.
• If using an energy drink at all, treat a full can as more than one serving for a teenager — splitting it, or choosing a lower-caffeine option, keeps the dose reasonable.
• Hydration, food, and sleep the night before do more for performance than any amount of caffeine — caffeine works best as a small assist on top of those basics, not a substitute for them.
• A specific note for a pool deck:"caffeine dehydrates you" is mostly a myth at the doses discussed here — research shows moderate caffeine doesn't meaningfully worsen hydration during exercise, even in heat. Dehydration risk from a swim practice or meet comes from fluid intake and sweat/loss, not from a small dose of caffeine — so this isn't a reason to avoid it, though it's also not a reason to skip water.

Bottom line for parents

You don't need to ban caffeine — you need to manage how much and how late. A 25-50 mg dose (a small coffee, tea, or a quarter-to-half can of a typical energy drink), finished by early afternoon, captures most of the real benefit with very little downside. A full can in the late afternoon at a tournament is where things reliably go sideways — jitters that day, bad sleep that night, and a flat performance the next morning.

Companion document: a longer research write-up with full citations is available on request — this handout is the practical summary of that research.