Do travel teams really need to travel that much?

[Anonymous]

9:08
Oh boy! First of all, you're not going to have anything to worry about if your son doesn't have decent soccer skills. And he may not. Travel teams are highly selective. For 12 slots you can have as many as 120 players come out for a team at the U-9 level. On the other hand, he may be highly gifted, he may have the skills to go pro. It's a bit early to know either way. You've got at least seven years before travel soccer starts so relax!

[Anonymous]

The loss here is that these travel teams mean that kids can't do much besides travel soccer. What happened to seasons, when you did soccer in the fall, basketball over the winter, and baseball or track in the spring? But now you have to choose a sport. I've seen 1 or 2 parents try to balance soccer and baseball, and as their kids reached 12 or 13 they had to choose one or the other. Maybe a kid would be able to do rec basketball for 3 months in the winter. Theater is definitely out.

I suppose it's good for kids who just love soccer. But for others who would like to experiment with other activities, it's too bad.

The NY Times magazine had a piece a few years ago about how concentrating on one sport is actually bad for kids. They didn't just mean the injuries, although of course that's a problem with intense athletic focus. But they said that you learn different skills from different sports, so that skills you learn as a basketball player would transfer to the soccer field, and give a kid an edge over soccer-only kids.

Signed, a disgruntled parent of two former travel soccer players, who are now doing other sports.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:19:38 I agree and I've got stories of players moved to B teams who ended up being superstars a few years later.

Wasn't Michael Jordan cut from his high school basketball team? A lot of it is about perserverance and dedication.