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.
