Most of them can’t anyway. And the talented kids don’t have to run around playing club just to be on a high school team. |
Good for you but that's not the case for many schools in the DMV. |
Any male who is doing musicals and plays is never going to get cut or not get a part. And for too many years girls were not given the opportunity to play sports. However, now schools must balance the number of boys and girls participating in high school sports. Since football teams tend to have very large rosters of 50-60 per team so if a school has frosh/soph, jv, and varsity football that could be 150 boys at a school playing football. Even if there are only two levels of football that is over 100 boys. So you need enough girl sports at multiple levels (varsity, jv, etc) to compensate for that and you can't offer that many levels of boy sports. So it can be hard for a boy to make a team in high school |
Dying to know which schools around here have "massive" amounts of fields. |
|
I haven’t read the entire thread, but I can talk about what happened to my two sons at local Catholic privates. They both played baseball through middle school.
In high school, my oldest knew he wasn’t going to make the HS baseball team so tried a new sport freshman year. He joined the crew team, worked hard, became team captain senior year and was named MVP by the coach his senior spring season. He learned that he could do hard things, developed leadership skills, was part of a boat that raced at the national level, and made some very close friends and met mentors that have been helpful now and will be good for him in the future. Second son was cut freshman year, devastated by that, and almost quit sports entirely. He talked to a friend who was trying rugby and liked the coach. He went to some practices and became a rugby player. He, too, worked hard, earned a starting position his second season, and won the coaches’ award his senior year. He has made some phenomenal friends and developed a personal toughness that I don’t think he would have if not for rugby and trying something new. He may play club rugby in college. I believe that not continuing with baseball in HS were good things for both young men. There have been stories about baseball team politics that I’m glad my sons avoided. They had wonderful high school experiences in part because of sports. They also learned that change isn’t bad and trying something new can be positive. |
|
Love the post above about 2 boys who switched to new sports.
Our nonDMV rowing club has a cap on how many kids they can take in order to protect the experience for those on the team. They want everyone to have a spot both on the erg and in the boat. There is a limit to how many boats a coach can watch at once, while giving meaningful feedback and support. So there are significant cuts despite everyone being new in 8/9th. They test for fitness and look for tall kids. The swimmers looking to change sports do quite well. |
They aren’t in the DMV area. Wealthy suburbs typically have large fields. Private schools in cities usually have fields that they bus the kids to after school. If a high school wants opportunities for all students to play they would find the space. |
I absolutely love this. This is good parenting and good flexible kids with great attitudes. That will serve them well in life. |
|
And the truth is even the kids who go to private schools to be scouted end up benched in high school. Just keep that in mind if you’re thinking private is the golden ticket. Money only gets the kid so far. Or they make it to college playing the sport and then are benched.
|