Multi-sport athletes and national leagues
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Anonymous
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I am the parent of a younger competitive player (U13 next year) who is a natural athlete in multiple sports but loves soccer the most. I noticed a post on another thread about a second team being where all the multi-sport athletes are in that club.
I'd be curious to hear from parents of older players approaches for multi-sport athletes. There is definitely a perception that kids have to step into national league teams as early as possible, and I don't love it. Did you intentionally keep your child out of the highest level so they could continue multiple sports competitively? I realize this is very child and family dependent. Maybe I'm just looking for encouragement that committing to multiple sports is okay and looking for insights into how others have navigated this for kids who have expressed interest playing at the college level. Thank you! |
Anonymous
Stay multi sport as long as possible. It is healthier. If they like playing all sports now you are taking away options for them by focusing only on soccer in hopes that they will be good enough or want to play soccer in college. |
Anonymous
| We did NL soccer and travel basketball one season during u13. It’s just hard to balance. There are only so many hours of the day and days in a week and always you’re missing someone’s practice or games weekly. Unless you’re the kid that is such a stud that the coaches don’t care about missing practices and games, it’s just very hard to navigate. And it’s costly. |
Anonymous
| Audrey McKeen did competitive swim for a long time until she specialized in soccer. Also, I think you can do things like rec to balance the stress of NL sport. I know many who do high school sports right after school and then go to soccer practice. Not sure how they manage games that conflict though. That said, I think it can be done and should be done if you can make it work. My kid is of a similar age to the OP so I too am curious about high school aged kids and how they make it work. |
Anonymous
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My son does MLSN AD basketball and travel baseball. We don’t tell the soccer people about any of his other sports. He played at mls fest and then and was top performer. The money in soccer sucks but a kid in his baseball club signed for 4mil out of high school. Despite his love of soccer the finances and scholarship opportunity in baseball are 100x better.
Baseball people love that he’s a multi sport stud. He loves the different challenges. Different teammates. |
Anonymous
| If you find the right coaches and your kid is on the higher end of the respective teams you can manage, but if your kid is on the replaceable end of the team and you miss a lot the kid will eventually be replaced. |
Anonymous
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My DC is a multi-sport athlete and a rising u13 as well. I'll say that the main reason we can pull this off is because our DC's second sport is extremely flexible on practice schedules and competitions. Our DC is doing one of two sports 6-7 days a week, but we don't double up on practices. While my DC is a top athlete in both sports (a starter who will play on a top team in one of the top national leagues), they are not the best at either sport. There's just no way to be as good as the kids that do the same sport 7 days a week. It's a tough journey, and most that we know that do two sports do one sport at a travel level and one at a rec level, where generally the rec sport coach knows that that is their second sport.
Our unspoken agreement with our soccer coach is that as long as we don't miss the major soccer events, we're good. He likes to know why we're missing any events, and he gives less accommodations for those missing a soccer event for another sport. I'll note that we end up missing less soccer activities than some of the best kids, but because they're the best, they get plenty of allowance to do whatever they want. A downside is that we can almost never make the last minute pop-up practices/games/scrimmages, and it means we don't get guest play opportunities. I know others on our team are trying to make the basketball vs. soccer decision going into u13 year, and it's not an easy one. We're fortunate we have a second sport that is very flexible. |
Anonymous
Multi-sport should not mean multiple sports in the same season. That's a recipe for injury as the kid gets older. |
Anonymous
She was quite good at swimming too. Clearly a natural athlete who also works hard. Swimming and other individual sports are a little easier because you aren’t letting down a team if you miss the individual sport for the team sport. The individual sport is whatever you want to make of it. Until high school at least. Then I imagine it’s a problem not to be at practices or competitions because there is team point scoring. For whatever it’s worth, I went D1 in an individual sport and played a seasonal team sport through from 7th-10th grade. There weren’t club teams in our area for that sport, only school teams. So it wasn’t year round. I wasn’t very good, but I wanted to be part of a real team. It was a lot going straight from one practice to the other and ultimately not sustainable. But I am glad I did it as I think it helped with overall athleticism. |
Anonymous
The issue is that most top leagues now are 11-12 months out of the year. |
Anonymous
At the younger ages they aren't. Soccer in the winter doesn't exist for non-high school. |
Anonymous
Most MS-age teams do indoor or futsal, actually, and continue regular practices. |
Anonymous
My assumption, could be incorrect, is the heart of this question is more around high school. Middle school still has rec and other options to balance soccer with other sports (put futsal in this bucket). I think it gets much harder once you hit 9th grade. I am generally curious on high school kids make this work as they presumably have high school sports (hard to miss a lot) and practice and games. |
Anonymous
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The odds of being a top tier elite athlete in multiple sports after puberty is extremely slim
Top level competition after puberty have already shed most of the weak and middle athletes. Mainly the talented and dedicated remain. Outside top level competition is of course different |
Anonymous
| My DC is in high school and currently managing to balance NL level play and HS sports. It is possible at the freshman/JV level for HS, or Varsity in off-season (winter), but I think would be more challenging or impossible at the Varsity level, particularly with team sports. Playing two sports in season means that most days we are picking DC up from HS practice with a prepared snack, rushing to travel practice, getting home late, and trying to catch up with homework on the weekends. I also get the impression that most NL league coaches do not like players to be doing both, though I think the cross-training is valuable, as is the exposure to different coaches and peer groups. |