What is your experience in an extremely competitive area?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My experience was that if you look across freshman, JV and Varsity teams, you could plot kids on an a graph with natural athleticism (speed, size, recovery, agility, coordination) on the X axis and work ethic/determination on the Y axis.

So at a school like you describe, the very top right would be kids who will get major conference D1 offers and a very few who have realistic thoughts of playing professionally. The bottom left are kids who won’t make the freshman team.

The freshman team will include mostly kids high on the work ethic axis and not as high on the natural gifts side — assuming they’ve had that work ethic for years, done travel teams, private training, and done all available open gym type training. JV will be a mix with the older JV players being more on the work side. Varsity will include kids with both natural gifts and a lot of hard work, with some outliers of kids who work absurdly hard to sit on the bench and absolute freak athletes who may not work as hard as they could.

My kid was one of the hard work outliers - he decided in elementary school that he wanted to play for his high school, which happened to be a huge public that always dominates and is usually ranked in the top 25 nationally. Through a combination of like 25+ hours a week of training (not counting travel time or time between games at tournaments) and a big growth spurt, he made his HS varsity team.

It was honestly kinda miserable. He wanted a team experience with the chance to play in front of his classmates and win for the school - like you see in the movies. What he found was a culture where everybody was focused on the next level all the time — everything was about college recruiting, that’s all coaches talked about, and all kids focused on. The team rolled over most opponents, so kids goofed around in games and still won by huge margins, and they celebrated beating bad teams really obnoxiously. When they played another top ranked team and lost, it was all a blame game. Also, my kid was devoting every waking minute to training to be one of the worst players on varsity. He quit after sophomore year, and now says he wish he’d quit earlier.

The one positive outcome is that he knows he can do hard things. He’s taught himself to do some cool stuff (academically and in art and music), and he totally credits his sports experience for giving him the patience, determination, and emotional control to be OK at being bad at something new and sticking with it.

I’m 18:05 and this is a perfect explanation of sports at competitive high schools and also how it went for my kid. This is explained much better than I did. My kid also didn’t have the natural ability but put in all of the work with private training and lessons to ride the bench. He also quit sophomore year. I left that out too.

And like PP, he’s gone on to do amazing things outside of school. I don’t regret it for a second and either does he. Football taught him a lot of hard lessons in grit but that’s also his personality.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you have a super sporty kid it probably won't be a problem? The real athletes still seem to standout. At our large FCPS high school- our kid played Varsity all four years in three different sports.

It depends on the purpose of sport. Is it fun and fitness for everyone, or top teams for a few? I'd argue for the first objective. I don't know why they don't have several teams for each popular sport, and then et the kids in the C, D, E, F or G ranked teams play similar level kids from other schools.

The reason is that they don’t have gyms, locker rooms, fields, coaches, trainers, uniforms, officials, equipment, and busses for c,d,e,f, and g teams. In DC, basketball and volleyball teams fight for gym space all year. Soccer teams fight for field space. Baseball teams practice in crazy, unsafe ways.

It's a shame we pay 100% of the taxes for only the top 5% of kids to get to participate, while everyone else subsidizes it for them.

That's what rec/community sports leagues are for.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you have a super sporty kid it probably won't be a problem? The real athletes still seem to standout. At our large FCPS high school- our kid played Varsity all four years in three different sports.

It depends on the purpose of sport. Is it fun and fitness for everyone, or top teams for a few? I'd argue for the first objective. I don't know why they don't have several teams for each popular sport, and then et the kids in the C, D, E, F or G ranked teams play similar level kids from other schools.

The reason is that they don’t have gyms, locker rooms, fields, coaches, trainers, uniforms, officials, equipment, and busses for c,d,e,f, and g teams. In DC, basketball and volleyball teams fight for gym space all year. Soccer teams fight for field space. Baseball teams practice in crazy, unsafe ways.

It's a shame we pay 100% of the taxes for only the top 5% of kids to get to participate, while everyone else subsidizes it for them.

Everyone in Virginia pays taxes, but not every kids will be going to UVA. That's how life is.

[Anonymous]

Size / speed / athleticism / grit matter for football. If they're already playing the conflicting sport at a national level, why not stick with that?

[Anonymous]

Not football and at a small private in MD--even though sports are not the school's primary focus and typically only a handful of kids go on to play in college, we were truly surprised at how intense the training and expectations were. DS is sporty and works hard, but it was extraordinarily difficult to play more than one sport for his HS--especially since he was expected to play year round with his club team for his primary sport.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you have a super sporty kid it probably won't be a problem? The real athletes still seem to standout. At our large FCPS high school- our kid played Varsity all four years in three different sports.

It depends on the purpose of sport. Is it fun and fitness for everyone, or top teams for a few? I'd argue for the first objective. I don't know why they don't have several teams for each popular sport, and then et the kids in the C, D, E, F or G ranked teams play similar level kids from other schools.

The reason they don't do this is a lack of resources. There are barely enough feilds/courts for the JV and Varsity teams to practice and play on. Everyone is competing for the same after-school and weekend practice and game times. Where would teams C, D, E, F, and G play their games and conduct their practices? Space is really the biggest obstacle, but there is also cost. Public schools don't have enough money to pay their teachers to teach your kid to read. Where is the money to pay for the coaching staff of teams C, D, E, F and G going to come from?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you have a super sporty kid it probably won't be a problem? The real athletes still seem to standout. At our large FCPS high school- our kid played Varsity all four years in three different sports.

It depends on the purpose of sport. Is it fun and fitness for everyone, or top teams for a few? I'd argue for the first objective. I don't know why they don't have several teams for each popular sport, and then et the kids in the C, D, E, F or G ranked teams play similar level kids from other schools.

The reason is that they don’t have gyms, locker rooms, fields, coaches, trainers, uniforms, officials, equipment, and busses for c,d,e,f, and g teams. In DC, basketball and volleyball teams fight for gym space all year. Soccer teams fight for field space. Baseball teams practice in crazy, unsafe ways.

It's a shame we pay 100% of the taxes for only the top 5% of kids to get to participate, while everyone else subsidizes it for them.

Everyone in Virginia pays taxes, but not every kids will be going to UVA. That's how life is.

Also, CHILDLESS adults pay taxes that go to schools. Their non-existent kids are not playing sports and NOT GOING TO SCHOOL. So ridiculous.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you have a super sporty kid it probably won't be a problem? The real athletes still seem to standout. At our large FCPS high school- our kid played Varsity all four years in three different sports.

Super inequitable. Not every kid has tiger parents forcing them to practice for hours after school and spending $$$$ on after school enrichment.

Oh wait, this is the athletics board. Carry on, then.