I hate youth and high school sports
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Anonymous
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The whole system is ridiculous, and what is more ridiculous is that people support this broken system. You have to play for years just to make it into a high school JV team, and once you make it, you have to spend 20+ hours per week training. It takes time away from academics and other extracurricular.
And all of this time and money invested into sports is for nothing for most parents. Most kids will never play at the NCAA level. It doesn’t matter much for college admissions. I know a kid who has perfect grades and a 35 ACT who was a captain of the varsity football and lacrosse teams (and was class treasurer, NHS president, volunteered, and did part time work), and he got rejected from every remotely selective college. The Ivy Leagues, Notre Dame, Michigan, Duke, Stanford, Vanderbilt, Northwestern, UNC, and UVA all rejected him |
Anonymous
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I don’t get your complaint? Life is not fair? College admissions are weird? Why do you care what other families are doing with their kids?
Also the NCAA athletes are not playing high school sports for the most part. And they certainly are not playing JV |
Anonymous
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The level of training required to make your HS team is pretty ridiculous these days and a lot of families sink a ton of time and cash into making that happen. I’ll give you that. The dmV is especially crazy in this regard.
That said, there is real value in playing sports generally, but in HS especially. Learning to juggle academics with athletics demands, learning the importance of making healthy choices re food/exercise/sleep, and learning how to be a leader on and off the field/court are all a big part of the student-athlete experience. That experience IMO helps prepare kids for college. I think the mistake people make is thinking that HS sports will translate into college acceptances/scholarships. College recruitment is a bonus of course but it should not be the primary purpose of playing your sport in HS. And yes, college admissions do not always follow a predictable formula—but that’s a whole other conversation. |
Anonymous
Break out the 20+ hours of YOUTH and HS training programs please. I just can't get there with the math and my kid is on an ECNL team and plays AAU basketball. |
Anonymous
Most NCAA athletes play high schools sports…100% of all football players, 90%+ for basketball and baseball and softball and LAX et al. Soccer is the one exception for team sports. Yeah, I get that most high schools don’t have fencing teams or other country club NCAA sports (though actually crew probably has 50%+ competing for their high school), but the sheer numbers are slanted towards the team sports. |
Anonymous
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I feel like it’s been detailed as nausea that if you aren’t a recruited athlete, that sports don’t help you much for college.
Of course, if you are recruited then it basically guarantees you admission to the schools recruiting you. |
Anonymous
His teams must not be that good. |
Anonymous
+1 for our ECNL player and another on a top volleyball team. Maybe a tournament weekend would push us close to 20 if you add in travel. Or maybe my nephew who was a golfer and would joyously do two rounds of golf Saturday and Sunday with friends. But otherwise no, unless you are at the elite Olympics level and most of those kids don’t attend public high school. |
Anonymous
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Ok? So if your kids aren’t interested in sports, it’s easy to avoid.
But why do people care that other kids enjoy different things? Some kids love playing sports and all that comes with it. Even as mentioned in the OP, lots of kids are able to maintain high athletic achievements while participating in high level sports. People complain if the sports kids get advantages in college admissions and now they are complaining that it doesn’t yield advantages… We get it. Lots of posters just hate sports even though it doesn’t impact them. |
Anonymous
Basketball, soccer, swim, lacrosse, gymnastics, and even field hockey are all playing club. They are not just playing HS. |
Anonymous
My kid is into sports, and that is a problem. They spend so much time in something that is ultimately unhelpful |
Anonymous
Correct…but PP said they don’t play HS sports, which they do. Those club sports (top teams) all take off during the HS seasons…except soccer which is the one team sport that operates differently. Most top DMV AAU basketball teams are run by the HS coaches of the top DMV teams. You find this in many sports…they are hand-in-glove. |
Anonymous
But it also instills teamwork, cooperation, time management, promotes fitness and exercise as healthy habits, and helps them develop as a well rounded individual. If your kid wasn’t interested in sports, what would you deem worthy of the same amount of time? |
Anonymous
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I think this generation of parents has lost the plot. They have ruined youth sports. It used to be that kids could change sports with the seasons. It's much healthier for students to switch it up every few months. Not just to avoid repetitive stress injuries, but to develop other skills, new friends, etc. But this generation of parents is so performance-fixated that they force their children to choose one sport around the age of 8. And they'll need to play this sport and only this sport for 12 months every year for the next ten years.
This is terrible for 99 percent of children. Parents have only themselves to blame for the abysmal state of youth sports in this country. Their hyper-fixation on performance is toxic and completely at odds with healthy childhoods. |
Anonymous
Serious HS baseball players are getting 8 hours of games, 4 hours of warmups on a normal fall tournament weekend. Plus 2-3 hours daily of practice, conditioning, BP, arm care during weekdays. Kind of surprised the soccer and basketball players at that level aren’t spending enough out of practice time shooting, lifting, etc. to reach 20 hours. But obviously different sports require different time commitments. |