Death of Three Sport Athlete

[the Q]

There was a recent article in the NY Times about this. Dealing with Ajax mostly. It wasn't pretty at all. You're told to hit the road. You're in your teens, and you have a substandard education (you leave school each day at 10:30). It's ugly.

This is why I sometimes think we need to cool it a bit when we denigrate schools for taking in students who would not otherwise be admitted. As long as the school tries to help these athletes increase their academic aptitude, it just might beat the alternative you see in Europe.

I think some bring it on themselves like duke and their self righteousness until it was exposed that the average sat score of the 2005(ish) team was like 850.

College sports are what they are...big business for the school and a vehicle for some to a better life for students, and not just the future professional athletes.

 

[QDOG5]

The best/worst part about it is the overwhelming majority of the parents who are maniacal about this have a kid that never ends up playing anywhere. All that money, time, and effort wasted and then at the end of it your kid can't stand you.

Personal experience? Were you the kid or the parent?

 

[HooperScooper]

A subject near and dear to my heart. I've been talking about this since my kids were in middle school playing multiple sports and saw the inevitably of it being an issue when they got to high school.

You can blame the proliferation of club and AAU teams in every sport. How did all this come about? Crazy parents and people who had no other skills but their sport and who were able to profit off it because us crazy parents were willing to pay for our kids to play a sport all year long.

A friend of mine in high school was a high level basketball player all throughout high school. I asked him what he did in the offseason with basketball. He said nothing except a couple of weeks at a basketball sleep away camp during the summer and playing pick up down the park. He said there was nothing else. There was no AAU back then. Same with soccer. There was no club soccer back then.

My younger son was a very good athlete in middle school playing soccer, basketball and baseball. I told him that if he wanted to play in high school he was going to have to play AAU/club in sports or he wouldn't make the teams in high school because other kids would specialize and pass him by in ability. He was offered a spot on a club soccer team but their season went from mid-August to the end of May with just a break between Thanksgiving and the first of the year. He decided against it because he said he wouldn't be able to play any other sports if he played club soccer. He's played AAU baseball and that is the only sport he still plays.

Unless you're just an awesome athlete almost every varsity level athlete at our high school specializes in their sport and plays all year long. And the high school coaches promote this.

One of my son's friends is a great athlete who plays baseball and played basketball through sophomore year. At tryouts for basketball his sophomore year the coach pulled him aside and told him he needed to choose between basketball and baseball. He said if you're going to play basketball for him he needed you to be devoted to the sport all year long. He wanted you to play AAU in the spring and fall and play in a summer league with the team. How can you possibly do that and play other sports? His parents were livid. The kid quit basketball after sophomore year and now just plays baseball.

There just aren't many 3 sport athletes in high school varsity sports any more. Football is interesting because they don't ask you to do anything in the sport offseason except work out. I can only think of a a handful of boys in my son's junior class who play 3 varsity sports. And some of the sports are like cross country, wrestling, golf, etc. which don't force you to play all year long. In our high school if you want to play soccer, basketball and baseball it's almost mandatory you play all year long. And that's just wrong.

 

[superjohn]

Personal experience? Were you the kid or the parent?

No but it's very rare for kids to get full D1 rides for sports and even more rare they grow up and make a lot of money in their chosen sport.

It did apply to one of my best friends growing up. His dad got him playing basketball 24/7 from a young age. His dad played college ball and was 6'3 or so and the mom was 6'0 so their pedictrician told them the son would be like 6'8.

We would all be playing at the local park or gym and his dad would show up and take him to the other end of the court and make him shoot hundreds of ft's. They made basketball his whole life and even got crazy enough with it that they basically floated the idea to my uncle if their son could live with our uncle and go to St. Anthony's to play for Bob Hurley. The truth was he wasn't good enough to play there and my uncle thought they were nuts for entertaining the idea. End result after traveling around the country playing in a million tournaments and camps he only grew to 6'2 and wound up playing D3 ball and quit because he was totally burned out and wanted a social life. To his credit he always had a great relationship with his parents, don't think this is the case with a lot of these situations.

 

[intlzncster]

Reading this article while sitting at physical therapy session for my freshman daughter's post shoulder surgery.

Young athletes confront pressure to specialize in a single sport, despite risks - Hartford Courant

Some good perspectives from both sides of the argument.
Randy Edsall makes a good point about recruiting kids who play different sports and using different muscle groups. It is a bit ironic though considering Uconn's football players are generally less athletic than their opponents. To be fair several of his recruited players were NFL combine warriors and freakishly off the charts good athletes.

The specialization affects some athletes more than others and can be regional based on sports schedule.

A couple of examples.

My daughter plays volleyball which is a fall sport in Florida. State championships generally end by mid-December. In early December tryouts for travel/club teams start and tournaments go Jan-Apr. AAU tryouts are May and AAU I'd Jun/Jul. Summer conditioning for the HS season also starts in June and I'd 3 days a week of sport specific training (This is actually the best time of year since the facility trains HS through pro level athletes in multiple sports. They know their stuff). Also during summer are two mandatory summer camps and then tryouts for HS are first week of August. Lather, rinse, repeat. By the time many of these girls are seniors in HS or in college their bodies are shot.
Second example is football. Son is playing for first time as a HS senior Seasonal sport but there is no winter football. Many of the players move to basketball, indoor track or other sports. Yes, there is 4 day a week weight training but you are building muscles and using body differently than games. Spring ball is two weeks and then summer camps are done in helmets and shorts. No full contact or full speed for 8 months a year.
Baseball is real bad down south. It's literally year round. There have been some good rules regarding pitch count and days of rest but these kids play 10-11 months startingno later than age 10.
Lacrosse is starting to pick up and take some soccer talent away and their seasons overlap. You caniay both.
Swimming? Year round?
Track and Field and Cross Country? Year round.

Another benefit of the multisport athlete was leading and following. Some athletes were good enough to betop dog in everything. Most kids were better at onesport and a filler in the others. That allows them to learn when to lead, when to follow, understand equal amounts of work and effort can lead to differing results, being coached by different coaches with different styles, cross over friends from the sports and a bunch of other life skills. Specialization puts you with the same group for 6-8 years while body and brain develops. Not a fan.

My high school baseball program in CT was year round as well.

Not many 2 sport athletes either.

I would have gone nuts. I played 3 (soccer/hockey/lax) up until sophomore year of highschool, when I moved to 2.5*. Sometimes I doubled up playing soccer during other seasons on top.

*I substituted real hockey, for pond hockey. We had a league. There were four big ponds in our town and each pond got a team. Plus we had a fifth team called The Stoners who got high before every game. Some of my best memories form High School were these pond hockey sessions. WE still talk about it to this day.

Fun is being thrown away to the god of competitiveness.

For the record, playing soccer made me so much better with other sports. Same with hockey and lacrosse. The ambidextrous-ness and Ambipedal-ness of these sports added to an overall level of coordination that I believe helped (and still does) in many things.

It bled over to sports I enjoy now like surfing, snowboarding, and disc golf. And I continue to play soccer.

 

[CL82]

Exactly.

If you just like soccer, play it a bit and do other stuff.

Don’t just run around the soccer field for 10 months.

Soccer is a highly undervalued sport. Soccer players have stamina, "spurtability", and understand angles and pursuit.

 

[Paesano]

I would like to add a few comments to this discussion based on my own experience with my youngest son. I will start out by saying something that I KNOW will get a really negative response. If your kid is an exceptional student, but not an exceptional athlete, consider guiding them away from sports entirely. By exceptional student, I mean a kid that will be well within the top half of applicants that get accepted to Ivy and Ivy-level schools. By exceptional athlete I mean a kid that can get recruited to play their top sport at an Ivy or a top academic D3 school like Chicago or Williams.

Here is why. This push to get kids to "specialize" does not apply only to sports. There is a term in current day college admissions called "pointed applicants". It means an applicant that was exceptional and totally "passionate" about something. A recruited athlete is a pointed applicant. A kid that is on the national Science Olympiad or Math Olympiad team is pointed. A nationally ranked ballroom dancer is pointed. You get the point. The top schools are starting to admit that they no longer want well rounded applicants. A kid that is a three sport athlete and is good at all of them but not able to be recruited for any of them is not interesting to colleges. They already have their athletes in the form of their recruited athletes. The schools say that they want well rounded classes, not well rounded applicants. So if your "passion" was sports but you aren't a recruited athlete, you wasted your time from the standpoint of getting into a top school. If your kid wants to play three sports but could be recruited if they "specialized", well, you have a decision to make. Let the kid do what he/she wants or encourage the kid to do what they need to do to get their foot in the door of an elite college. If your kid has no chance at being at least a recruited D3 athlete, but wants to play sports, you have a decision to make. Tell them to dump sports and do something that will get them into a top school or let them do what they want.

This goes for everything a kid does in high school. Gone are the days when schools liked well rounded kids. Now they want well rounded classes full of kids that "specialized" or "focused" in one thing each. Really, what they want is a bunch of kids whose big accomplishments are impressive enough to put into their incoming class profile. Admissions offices are full of virtue signaling narcissists now. The better the school, the worse it is. There are thousands of kids who are the best player on their high school basketball or soccer or baseball or football teams. There are thousands of kids that are team captains. There are thousands of kids that are valedictorians. There are thousands of kids that score at or above a 1550 on their SAT. There are thousands of kids that are student council or class presidents. There are thousands of kids that volunteer hundreds of hours in their communities. Back in the day, a kid that was all of those things was the golden unicorn of applicants. Not many kids are ALL of those things. But, now, they are not interesting. Now you need to have played your instrument at Carnegie Hall or you need to have done published cancer research or you need to have started a million dollar business and so on. If you have done something they can brag about, you can have weaknesses in other areas. Recruited athletes and kids with other "hooks" I haven't even touched on yet can have major weaknesses in other areas.

Advising your children is way more complex than I ever anticipated. The advice you give depends on where they fall academically. It depends on where they fall athletically. It depends on where they fall artistically. It depends on whether or not they can be nationally ranked at SOMETHING. It depends on their level of maturity and self discipline. It depends on their competitiveness. It depends on your family finances. It depends on your family's logistical hurdles. And, oh yeah, it depends on what will make them happy. That last one was what drove a lot of our advice to our kids. Frankly, it is becoming rare and I am not sure it was the right thing to do.

 

[QDOG5]

@superjohn, I hear ya. Believe me out here in the burbs it can get pretty ridiculous. The funny thing is the dads that I know that played college sports are for the most part the easiest going on their kids. They know despite all the coaching the kids receive the desire has to come from the individual and every kid is not going to have the same mental makeup.

 

[superjohn]

Soccer is a highly undervalued sport. Soccer players have stamina, "spurtability", and understand angles and pursuit.

Not exactly undervalued, it's by far the most popular sport in the world.

 

[intlzncster]

Not exactly undervalued, it's by far the most popular sport in the world.

Yup. 'Underappreciated in the US' would have been a better phrase.

 

[buckley503]

@superjohn, I hear ya. Believe me out here in the burbs it can get pretty ridiculous. The funny thing is the dads that I know that played college sports are for the most part the easiest going on their kids. They know despite all the coaching the kids receive the desire has to come from the individual and every kid is not going to have the same mental makeup.

As a former baseball player at Uconn who realized that there will always be someone better and more committed and know a club baseball coach (only because my son's tuition is my "pay"), you are 100 % correct on the parents who get it and don't get. You can tell pretty quickly who has it and who doesn't but as you say it all comes down to skill, desire, and commitment by the players regardless of the opinions and misguided expectations of a lot of parents.

 

[CL82]

Not exactly undervalued, it's by far the most popular sport in the world.

Yup. 'Underappreciated in the US' would have been a better phrase.

Agree. The point the I was trying to make is that soccer players are well conditioned athletes with good skills that translate well to other sports, including football.

 

[Excalibur]

I would like to add a few comments to this discussion based on my own experience with my youngest son. I will start out by saying something that I KNOW will get a really negative response. If your kid is an exceptional student, but not an exceptional athlete, consider guiding them away from sports entirely. By exceptional student, I mean a kid that will be well within the top half of applicants that get accepted to Ivy and Ivy-level schools. By exceptional athlete I mean a kid that can get recruited to play their top sport at an Ivy or a top academic D3 school like Chicago or Williams.

Here is why. This push to get kids to "specialize" does not apply only to sports. There is a term in current day college admissions called "pointed applicants". It means an applicant that was exceptional and totally "passionate" about something. A recruited athlete is a pointed applicant. A kid that is on the national Science Olympiad or Math Olympiad team is pointed. A nationally ranked ballroom dancer is pointed. You get the point. The top schools are starting to admit that they no longer want well rounded applicants. A kid that is a three sport athlete and is good at all of them but not able to be recruited for any of them is not interesting to colleges. They already have their athletes in the form of their recruited athletes. The schools say that they want well rounded classes, not well rounded applicants. So if your "passion" was sports but you aren't a recruited athlete, you wasted your time from the standpoint of getting into a top school. If your kid wants to play three sports but could be recruited if they "specialized", well, you have a decision to make. Let the kid do what he/she wants or encourage the kid to do what they need to do to get their foot in the door of an elite college. If your kid has no chance at being at least a recruited D3 athlete, but wants to play sports, you have a decision to make. Tell them to dump sports and do something that will get them into a top school or let them do what they want.

This goes for everything a kid does in high school. Gone are the days when schools liked well rounded kids. Now they want well rounded classes full of kids that "specialized" or "focused" in one thing each. Really, what they want is a bunch of kids whose big accomplishments are impressive enough to put into their incoming class profile. Admissions offices are full of virtue signaling narcissists now. The better the school, the worse it is. There are thousands of kids who are the best player on their high school basketball or soccer or baseball or football teams. There are thousands of kids that are team captains. There are thousands of kids that are valedictorians. There are thousands of kids that score at or above a 1550 on their SAT. There are thousands of kids that are student council or class presidents. There are thousands of kids that volunteer hundreds of hours in their communities. Back in the day, a kid that was all of those things was the golden unicorn of applicants. Not many kids are ALL of those things. But, now, they are not interesting. Now you need to have played your instrument at Carnegie Hall or you need to have done published cancer research or you need to have started a million dollar business and so on. If you have done something they can brag about, you can have weaknesses in other areas. Recruited athletes and kids with other "hooks" I haven't even touched on yet can have major weaknesses in other areas.

Advising your children is way more complex than I ever anticipated. The advice you give depends on where they fall academically. It depends on where they fall athletically. It depends on where they fall artistically. It depends on whether or not they can be nationally ranked at SOMETHING. It depends on their level of maturity and self discipline. It depends on their competitiveness. It depends on your family finances. It depends on your family's logistical hurdles. And, oh yeah, it depends on what will make them happy. That last one was what drove a lot of our advice to our kids. Frankly, it is becoming rare and I am not sure it was the right thing to do.

An interesting take, and something to think about. However, I do expect the higher education bubble to eventually burst in this country, to the point where it will be a buyer's (i.e. student's) market. Also, there is a big difference between what will successfully get you into college and what will make you successful when you get out of college.

 

[UConnJim]

Sometimes the parents need to step in. The parents of my son's baseball team wanted their kids to play multiple sports, but the elite teams wanted almost full year commitment or winter practices conflicted with hockey, basketball, ski racing. So, the parents hired a coach and we formed our own AAU team. Practice schedules were set up to avoid other sport conflicts and kids were allowed to miss practices for other sports. Kids and parents are happy. And, we have people asking to join our team because they like the philosophy. As an added bonus, the cost is about 1/3 of a traditional AAU baseball team because there is a lot of profit margin in youth sports and we run it to break even.

 

[Chuck]

For those disenchanted by this discussion, I will add that the travel team that I coach for my 12 year old daughter (7th grade) plays at a pretty competitive level (A flight of north NJ league, but Upstater's team would destroy us). 12 out of our 14 girls play at least one other travel sport (our town is very small so rec is very weak). At least a handful play two other sports including being the star players on those teams (basketball, lacrosse, softball). Even my daughter's best friend who plays at a level like Upstater's daughter also plays basketball with the blessing of her intense coach. My son's soccer team (also 12) is similar with 12 out of 15 playing multiple sports.

So if the parent and/or kid (hopefully the kid is on board) want to specialize, there is no shortage of options, but while they may have to give up the highest level of competition in a sport (which only the best-of-the-best should care about), there are definitely options to still be a muti-sport athlete.

@Paesano's post is equally scary. I've had that argument with friends also. I personally think it's similar to the the driven athlete. If your kid is smart AND loves school, then it's a great thing to reinforce, but if they are crying about all of the work you are pushing on them, it's not right in the long run. Right now I'm happy where my kids are academically, athletically, life in general. They are relatively happy 12 year olds, which isn't always easy. But I know it all gets more serious in a couple years (high school).

 

[QDOG5]

I can speak to this. My son (turning 11 shortly) is a very good soccer player, and could be great if he wanted to play year round. He doesn't. He wants to play basketball (he's decent but small) and baseball (not very good). He's also started running -- 5ks for now but asking about longer races. He understands the consequences but will not cave to pressure and thus will not play on the premier club in our town given their futsal and training requirements during the winter. So he plays at the competitive travel level, where he is the dominant presence and learns valuable lessons about leadership, and still gets to play other sports that he enjoys. He says he'll eventually want to concentrate more on soccer, and I've explained that it will likely be harder to break into the premier level the longer he waits. He gets it, and doesn't care. As far as I'm concerned, if it comes to that, it's the club's loss.

Specialization probably makes sense for about 5% of kids that are truly exceptional at a sport from a young age and that clearly love that one sport. But it's tough to field enough teams with only that 5%, so the people running the teams appeal to parents' egos, and it works.

Good on ya. Your letting your child make his athletic decisions. I would disagree with your assertion that it will be harder for him to join a premier level team later on. If he is talented enough an elite level team will take him. It's cutthroat at the upper levels and the talent pool shallower. The elite teams recruit by winning leagues and tourneys and putting trophies on their website. My friends daughter was an incredible soccer player but ran track in high school too. She stayed with her soccer club that was just a level below the premier teams despite those teams telling her it would hurt her recruiting. She ended up getting multiple D1 soccer offers and played four years at Marquette. If your a excellent athlete teams will find you (Ja Morant excepted). My advice would be to let your son make the decision when he wants to concentrate on one sport.

 

[the Q]

A friend just posted this on Facebook today:

Perfect timing


Christian McCaffrey Says Playing Multiple Sports Is the Best Thing He's Ever Done

 

[upstater]

For those disenchanted by this discussion, I will add that the travel team that I coach for my 12 year old daughter (7th grade) plays at a pretty competitive level (A flight of north NJ league, but Upstater's team would destroy us). 12 out of our 14 girls play at least one other travel sport (our town is very small so rec is very weak). At least a handful play two other sports including being the star players on those teams (basketball, lacrosse, softball). Even my daughter's best friend who plays at a level like Upstater's daughter also plays basketball with the blessing of her intense coach. My son's soccer team (also 12) is similar with 12 out of 15 playing multiple sports.

So if the parent and/or kid (hopefully the kid is on board) want to specialize, there is no shortage of options, but while they may have to give up the highest level of competition in a sport (which only the best-of-the-best should care about), there are definitely options to still be a muti-sport athlete.

@Paesano's post is equally scary. I've had that argument with friends also. I personally think it's similar to the the driven athlete. If your kid is smart AND loves school, then it's a great thing to reinforce, but if they are crying about all of the work you are pushing on them, it's not right in the long run. Right now I'm happy where my kids are academically, athletically, life in general. They are relatively happy 12 year olds, which isn't always easy. But I know it all gets more serious in a couple years (high school).

Your team beat teams that could beat ours, so... you must be a good coach with talented girls.

As for Paesano's post, I would only add as an educator that the most important thing is for your child to truly enjoy learning.

So many obstacles will prevent this from happening. For many exceptional students, they don't enjoy learning. School is a grind. They are good grinders. They get the grades. In AP classes, they have to grind. They get to college, and they have difficulty flipping that switch. With the emphasis on testing and the Common Core, I wonder what's it all for? If you don't want your tuition money wasted, then think about the ways to have your child actually enjoy what they are doing.

 

[Paesano]

An interesting take, and something to think about. However, I do expect the higher education bubble to eventually burst in this country, to the point where it will be a buyer's (i.e. student's) market. Also, there is a big difference between what will successfully get you into college and what will make you successful when you get out of college.

I agree. Where my self doubt creeps in is when I consider the opportunity cost. If a kid loves sports and is at least a decent athlete, well, that has value. And, of course, learning about team work and being physically fit have value. The question I ask myself now is, what was sacrificed for these things? I have a nasty tendency to evaluate every decision I make and this one is no different. Should I have been a tiger parent? It certainly worked for most of them. I don't know. Parenting is a tough gig and no one has all the answers.

 

[Paesano]

Your team beat teams that could beat ours, so... you must be a good coach with talented girls.

As for Paesano's post, I would only add as an educator that the most important thing is for your child to truly enjoy learning.

So many obstacles will prevent this from happening. For many exceptional students, they don't enjoy learning. School is a grind. They are good grinders. They get the grades. In AP classes, they have to grind. They get to college, and they have difficulty flipping that switch. With the emphasis on testing and the Common Core, I wonder what's it all for? If you don't want your tuition money wasted, then think about the ways to have your child actually enjoy what they are doing.

I get what you are saying but what does it mean "to truly enjoy learning"? Every meaningful goal, academically, includes having to take classes you don't enjoy. Getting into top colleges requires a high GPA and doing all the right extracurriculars. That means sacrifice and stress. And that doesn't change when it comes to getting into med school or a good law school or a top PhD program. If you refuse to take classes you don't enjoy and/or you don't do well in them, doors close. Same thing for doing the right extracurriculars. But, if the kid does "the right things", you risk it not being fun and enjoyable anymore.

To me, it is still clear as mud. We all do our best when advising our kids but none of us really know what is best for them.

 

[the Q]

I would like to add a few comments to this discussion based on my own experience with my youngest son. I will start out by saying something that I KNOW will get a really negative response. If your kid is an exceptional student, but not an exceptional athlete, consider guiding them away from sports entirely. By exceptional student, I mean a kid that will be well within the top half of applicants that get accepted to Ivy and Ivy-level schools. By exceptional athlete I mean a kid that can get recruited to play their top sport at an Ivy or a top academic D3 school like Chicago or Williams.

Here is why. This push to get kids to "specialize" does not apply only to sports. There is a term in current day college admissions called "pointed applicants". It means an applicant that was exceptional and totally "passionate" about something. A recruited athlete is a pointed applicant. A kid that is on the national Science Olympiad or Math Olympiad team is pointed. A nationally ranked ballroom dancer is pointed. You get the point. The top schools are starting to admit that they no longer want well rounded applicants. A kid that is a three sport athlete and is good at all of them but not able to be recruited for any of them is not interesting to colleges. They already have their athletes in the form of their recruited athletes. The schools say that they want well rounded classes, not well rounded applicants. So if your "passion" was sports but you aren't a recruited athlete, you wasted your time from the standpoint of getting into a top school. If your kid wants to play three sports but could be recruited if they "specialized", well, you have a decision to make. Let the kid do what he/she wants or encourage the kid to do what they need to do to get their foot in the door of an elite college. If your kid has no chance at being at least a recruited D3 athlete, but wants to play sports, you have a decision to make. Tell them to dump sports and do something that will get them into a top school or let them do what they want.

This goes for everything a kid does in high school. Gone are the days when schools liked well rounded kids. Now they want well rounded classes full of kids that "specialized" or "focused" in one thing each. Really, what they want is a bunch of kids whose big accomplishments are impressive enough to put into their incoming class profile. Admissions offices are full of virtue signaling narcissists now. The better the school, the worse it is. There are thousands of kids who are the best player on their high school basketball or soccer or baseball or football teams. There are thousands of kids that are team captains. There are thousands of kids that are valedictorians. There are thousands of kids that score at or above a 1550 on their SAT. There are thousands of kids that are student council or class presidents. There are thousands of kids that volunteer hundreds of hours in their communities. Back in the day, a kid that was all of those things was the golden unicorn of applicants. Not many kids are ALL of those things. But, now, they are not interesting. Now you need to have played your instrument at Carnegie Hall or you need to have done published cancer research or you need to have started a million dollar business and so on. If you have done something they can brag about, you can have weaknesses in other areas. Recruited athletes and kids with other "hooks" I haven't even touched on yet can have major weaknesses in other areas.

Advising your children is way more complex than I ever anticipated. The advice you give depends on where they fall academically. It depends on where they fall athletically. It depends on where they fall artistically. It depends on whether or not they can be nationally ranked at SOMETHING. It depends on their level of maturity and self discipline. It depends on their competitiveness. It depends on your family finances. It depends on your family's logistical hurdles. And, oh yeah, it depends on what will make them happy. That last one was what drove a lot of our advice to our kids. Frankly, it is becoming rare and I am not sure it was the right thing to do.

I don’t disagree, but still, how many kids can do any of these?

It’s a lot less than you think, otherwise they wouldnt be special

 

[upstater]

I get what you are saying but what does it mean "to truly enjoy learning"? Every meaningful goal, academically, includes having to take classes you don't enjoy. Getting into top colleges requires a high GPA and doing all the right extracurriculars. That means sacrifice and stress. And that doesn't change when it comes to getting into med school or a good law school or a top PhD program. If you refuse to take classes you don't enjoy and/or you don't do well in them, doors close. Same thing for doing the right extracurriculars. But, if the kid does "the right things", you risk it not being fun and enjoyable anymore.

To me, it is still clear as mud. We all do our best when advising our kids but none of us really know what is best for them.

It's plainly obvious to me which kids truly enjoy what they are doing in their majors, or even taking some classes outside them. Our educational system is often organized to make students hate their classes. Even at a younger age, kids can tell the difference. My daughter sees a stark difference between her current school and her previous one.

 

[Fishy]

Our 15-year old daughter is on a USA Swimming team. It's an operation - there are three full-time paid coaches and four or five other part-time coaches. Practice is six days a week, two hours a day. According to team guidelines, swimmers at my daughter's level are expected to attend practice six days a week.

There are two seasons in swimming - short course and long course. Short course runs from late August through the last week of March. Then, there is a one-week break and long course begins and runs until the end of July. It is an 11-month season.

And somewhere in the middle of all that, both boys and girls have a 12-week high school season where they are racing for two programs and practicing with one or the other. There's always friction between the two programs - the coaches all know each other and they are in competition for their swimmers.

It really is more about the adults than it is about the kids. The coaches want more swimmers swimming more days and more meets and paying more fees. Some of the parents have allowed the team culture to become their social lives. Their kids come to every practice because that's when the parents get to hang with their friends.

I am sure a lot of sports are the same, but a good number of swim parents get upset with their kid's progress and they burn a bridge with their current team and move to a new one. And then they do it again and again. We have one parent on our team who drives their two kids 90 minutes to and from practice every day because she alienated every swim program closer to her house.

As parents, it's our job to make sure it doesn't get to be too much for our kid. (She's been in other sports, but actively disliked them - she isn't aggressive by nature and she hated every sport that involved a ball. And she violently dislikes running, which breaks my heart, but whatever.) She tells us if she's tired or if she has too much homework and we'll skip that practice. She generally goes four days a week. Once in a while she'll go five days, but it's much more likely that she goes three. We skip some meets if the travel looks to be more trouble than it's worth - she can't hit school on Monday morning more tired than she was when it ended Friday afternoon.

And then we bail out before the end of long course. The long course championships are at the end of July - she prefers going to her grandparents house at the Cape the second school ends in June, so she skips them. Her friends are stuck spending the first five weeks of their summer vacation getting up at 6 am for swim practice - that strikes us as nuts.

 

[intlzncster]

Our 15-year old daughter is on a USA Swimming team. It's an operation - there are three full-time paid coaches and four or five other part-time coaches. Practice is six days a week, two hours a day. According to team guidelines, swimmers at my daughter's level are expected to attend practice six days a week.

There are two seasons in swimming - short course and long course. Short course runs from late August through the last week of March. Then, there is a one-week break and long course begins and runs until the end of July. It is an 11-month season.

And somewhere in the middle of all that, both boys and girls have a 12-week high school season where they are racing for two programs and practicing with one or the other. There's always friction between the two programs - the coaches all know each other and they are in competition for their swimmers.

It really is more about the adults than it is about the kids. The coaches want more swimmers swimming more days and more meets and paying more fees. Some of the parents have allowed the team culture to become their social lives. Their kids come to every practice because that's when the parents get to hang with their friends.

I am sure a lot of sports are the same, but a good number of swim parents get upset with their kid's progress and they burn a bridge with their current team and move to a new one. And then they do it again and again. We have one parent on our team who drives their two kids 90 minutes to and from practice every day because she alienated every swim program closer to her house.

Absolutely not a shot at you or your daughter, but this whole setup is psychotic.

And this is coming from a sports (doing) nut.

 

[Fishy]

It all depends on the sport. We get this talk often about premature specialization. But my answer is, what if your kid plays one sport and is also into a bunch of other things (not sports)? You can't do everything. She's not going to play more than one sport just for the physical benefits when she could be doing other things she loves. The multisport push assumes athletes will only do athletic extracurriculars and not other things.

About soccer--our club season begins right after school soccer (November) and goes until late June. She has 2 months off, then begins school soccer. Overall that's 10 months a year.

That is kind of how I look it with our daughter.

She doesn't like sports outside of swimming. She doesn't need to be shoehorned into another structured environment.

But she does need time to be a 15-year old.