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Message: [QUOTE="HooperScooper, post: 3010088, member: 10"] 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. [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach