Does anyone else focus on sports for other reasons than college recruitment?

[Anonymous]

I see a lot of questions with sports like why clubs, why select, etc?
Does anyone spend the money and focus on sports for other reasons than eventual college recruitment? My family has a horrible history of addiction. 4/4 of the grandparents were alcoholics and more than one sibling and cousin, aunt or uncle have struggled to the point of early death or rehab. That's my personal "why" for spending the money to keep my children busy through middle and high school on travel sports. They do other things too but I have found that being on teams and having a busy schedule is great for filling that time others are home with more free time and on the computer or video games or getting into alcohol and drugs.

It's also been good for social reasons and having that friend community, even if our kid isn't the star. I know you can get that from rec in some areas but our area tends to abandon rec in elementary school for most sports. Kids seem to go all in by middle and in HS most of the kids who made the teams for anything other than football did do club teams in middle. I am sure this will get a lot of negativity and pushback but as someone who has seen what idle time in HS can do (my own sibling died by an overdose right after HS), I have to do what I can to keep my own kids busy.

[Anonymous]

I think most parents who have kids involved in sports don't have any plans for college sports.

We have kids in multiple sports. There are a lot of benefits - exercise, friendships, teamwork, persistence, character building, staying off of electronics, keeping them out of trouble, etc. Rec sports don’t really provide the same level of competition or commitment that club sports require.

One of my kids really isn’t very good, but still enjoys it. I’m not sure if they will even make the high school team next year, forget about college.

[Anonymous]

Yes. 95% of parents fall into this category it is just that the other 5% are over-represented on this forum.

[Anonymous]

Sports have always been about fun, exercise, friends, hardworking, etc…. A very small percentage will play in college and even less will get money to play in college

[Anonymous]

I'm sorry about your family prior to your kids.

I loved playing sports for the competition, the failure, the hard work, the friends...might as well try as hard as you can and see where the chips fall.

It'll be good preparation for life...or maybe they end up being great at it.

[Anonymous]

I have a kid playing top level who will not play in college because the schools DC wants to attend don’t have DCs sport. DC will join a club team in college.

I got my kids involved with sports early because I have a lot of friends and family who are teachers of teenagers, and their independent but universal observation is that the kids who play sports are healthier and happier on average. It seems to have a good protective mental benefit.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes. 95% of parents fall into this category it is just that the other 5% are over-represented on this forum.

+1 my kids have been playing club soccer since 2nd grade. Last year one wanted to play volleyball instead. I don’t care AT ALL. She got so much confidence from soccer, plus health/social/exec skill benefits, it was time and money very well spent.

[Anonymous]

More time on the field = less time on a screen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:More time on the field = less time on a screen.

+1 good for mental health and grades to avoid addictive screen time

[Anonymous]

I think about this a lot, OP. I have a suspicion that few people are focused on sports for the reasons they share out loud. My DH was a college athlete (I wasn’t competitive enough) and the difference between our lives in the years after HS is remarkable. We are both introverts from families with histories of mental illness. In his case, having a sport and structure of it continue into adulthood helped him stay stable and launch more easily than me. I really struggled with loneliness and depression in college and early adulthood and realized only later how important the social aspects and physiological impacts of team sports were for me.

So now we are up front with our kid about why they need to be doing a sport. Like us, she is introverted and prone to anxiety. We make sure she has a sport that gives her community and is intense enough that it helps balance her brain chemistry. We’re also very careful about folding in “backup” sports into her schedule. Her main year-round sport isn’t one she’ll be able to do as an adult woman, so we are really strict about her playing tennis, skiing, and doing summer swim (even though she says they’re boring, etc) so she’ll have other things to fall back on as an adult.

[Anonymous]

My kid plays two sports, wants to play in college, and seems to have a talent for both. So we’ll see how far he can go, but is it the focus? No. He just loves to play and as others have said, it’s a better use of his time than staring at screens or partying.

[Anonymous]

I don’t think too many parents start their kids out in sports thinking of college recruitment. However, there comes a time where, if a child is spending too much time and effort in their sport such that they have no time for any other extracurriculars, then they hope that their child will make use of that sport for recruitment.
As you know, good grades alone won’t get someone into a top 50 college and students have to have other extra curriculars to differentiate themselves. If your child had dedicated the last few years of his school life doing nothing but, say soccer, after school and he’s not using that to get recruited, they’ll be at a disadvantage.

I have 2 kids who play the same sport: one plays it at a rec level but does several academic extracurriculars ( research, robotics …) and one kid who is nationally ranked in that sport but has little time for anything else. I just hope that my sports focused kid gets to make use of that when it comes time to apply to colleges.

[Anonymous]

Of course. The vast majority of kids playing sports aren’t doing it for college. My kids started purely for fun. It was also great exercise and kept them from spending countless hours playing video games from elementary through middle school. As they hit high school, one stopped playing which was fine. The other decided to continue and does hope to stand a shot at playing college but that was never part of the plan.

[Anonymous]

My kid started in travel during Covid. School fell apart but coach was there. Friends, structure, life lessons all came from sports.

[Anonymous]

I did it to go to college. My father abandoned us and my mother was a severe addict. The sport was not lucrative but I was rated top 3 nationally and did receive a full scholarship. Given the poor odds in hindsight the scholarship route in some respects was not rational but I was good enough in 10th grade to make it realistic. I am not sure I enjoyed it. I had reasons to be intensely competitive and viewed every competition as a zero sum game. My parents did not go to college and unlike them I was a very good student with high grades, AP courses and high scores. On my own since age 18 and I never get used to DCUM parents and how involved they are in their kids’ lives. I did whatever I wanted to at 18 and because accountability was so important never drank or did drugs or neglected studies and was cautious around women. No safety nets for poor kids.