I hate youth and high school sports

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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

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.

+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.

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.

Your kid shouldn’t be spending that much time on fall baseball, it’s completely unnecessary and a great way to get them injured.

He’s playing college ball and is just fine.

I do appreciate the sentiment, although it comes off as arrogance. I am a huge believer in playing multiple sports and not specializing at young ages. I was specifically referring to serious high school players who aren’t in season for another sport. FWIW I do believe proper conditioning and arm care is critical to keeping baseball players healthy, and that takes time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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

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.

+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.

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.

Your kid shouldn’t be spending that much time on fall baseball, it’s completely unnecessary and a great way to get them injured.

He’s playing college ball and is just fine.

I do appreciate the sentiment, although it comes off as arrogance. I am a huge believer in playing multiple sports and not specializing at young ages. I was specifically referring to serious high school players who aren’t in season for another sport. FWIW I do believe proper conditioning and arm care is critical to keeping baseball players healthy, and that takes time.

It shouldn’t come off as arrogance when it’s in reply to a rather know-it-all post. There are plenty of serious HS baseball players who are not devoting 20 hours per week in the off-season (fall, for example) to baseball.

Glad you appreciate the sentiment, though. Even though your kid is fine it would be silly to pretend that there hasn’t been a huge upsurge in overuse injuries in the youth baseball set over the last couple of decades.

[Anonymous]

Wrestling is easily more than 20 hours a week.

[Anonymous]

Eh, my kids do HS all season (cc, track& field, track) and we've spent countless hours at meets, small fortune on shoes, gym, etc.

Is it all for naught? My kids aren't breaking records and only occasionally PR. Def no college recruitment, right?

But for us, it's not about college recruitment or some brag-worthy accolade.
There's waaaaay more to it than just hours of practice and D1 bound schools.
Commraderie, teamwork, health &fitness, purpose, teamwork, etc .

[Anonymous]

If this young man loves the sports and wants to play he should keep looking. The top schools are selective and every part of the application, game tape and interactions with the coaches and future team mates matter. We toured colleges where the top recruits were obviously the ones everyone wanted - but they can only go to one school, leaving spots for other players and so on.

[Anonymous]

The OP football team must have been terrible for the student to not get decent looks from some decent schools.

[Anonymous]

There has always been, and always will be, a small subset of parents/kids who are obsessed (and unrealistic about) sports success.

There will always be very few kids who are able to play any sport beyond the high school level.

The root of today’s problem is the high level of competitiveness to make high school teams. High schools have become much larger than ever before. To solve the problems in youth sports, we would need to either (1) separate sports from high schools altogether or (2) somehow have more sports opportunities for high schoolers- smaller schools and/or more teams per school.

The overwhelming majority of parents just want their kids to have a chance to be a part of a HS team- hence the early focus on competitiveness & playing one sport only.

That said, it won’t change. HS sports is a big part of our culture and there simply is not funding to field more teams/fields/courts and/or fund smaller high schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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

His teams must not be that good.

My money is on him being asian or white. But if captain of the football team, probably white.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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

Good for you?

My kid enjoyed high school sports. It was well worth it for him. It had absolutely zero to do with college admissions. He had early acceptance to his program of choice without sports being involved.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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

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.

+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.

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.

Your kid shouldn’t be spending that much time on fall baseball, it’s completely unnecessary and a great way to get them injured.

He’s playing college ball and is just fine.

I do appreciate the sentiment, although it comes off as arrogance. I am a huge believer in playing multiple sports and not specializing at young ages. I was specifically referring to serious high school players who aren’t in season for another sport. FWIW I do believe proper conditioning and arm care is critical to keeping baseball players healthy, and that takes time.

It shouldn’t come off as arrogance when it’s in reply to a rather know-it-all post. There are plenty of serious HS baseball players who are not devoting 20 hours per week in the off-season (fall, for example) to baseball.

Glad you appreciate the sentiment, though. Even though your kid is fine it would be silly to pretend that there hasn’t been a huge upsurge in overuse injuries in the youth baseball set over the last couple of decades.

DP - Where are these serious HS baseball players who don’t devote an ungodly amount of time to baseball in the off season? Which HS are you at?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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

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.

+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.

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.

Your kid shouldn’t be spending that much time on fall baseball, it’s completely unnecessary and a great way to get them injured.

He’s playing college ball and is just fine.

I do appreciate the sentiment, although it comes off as arrogance. I am a huge believer in playing multiple sports and not specializing at young ages. I was specifically referring to serious high school players who aren’t in season for another sport. FWIW I do believe proper conditioning and arm care is critical to keeping baseball players healthy, and that takes time.

It shouldn’t come off as arrogance when it’s in reply to a rather know-it-all post. There are plenty of serious HS baseball players who are not devoting 20 hours per week in the off-season (fall, for example) to baseball.

Glad you appreciate the sentiment, though. Even though your kid is fine it would be silly to pretend that there hasn’t been a huge upsurge in overuse injuries in the youth baseball set over the last couple of decades.

DP - Where are these serious HS baseball players who don’t devote an ungodly amount of time to baseball in the off season? Which HS are you at?

A lot of hs baseball players at my local high school play football. That takes up from August through November.

[Anonymous]

I hate it but for different reasons. There are no good ways for good enough kids to just play on good enough teams for fun. You reach a point where you basically have to play travel or there is no longer a team/league for you and it sucks. My DD enjoys sports and wants to play a different one each season, and she doesn’t want to dedicate her life to perfecting one specific sport, doesn’t need to drive or fly hours to compete, and doesn’t care about playing in college. The crazy competition has ruined the fun.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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

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.

Basketball, soccer, swim, lacrosse, gymnastics, and even field hockey are all playing club. They are not just playing HS.

And for gymnastics, club is the only thing that matters. Legitimate D1 prospects are doing 30+ hours a week. Most (but not all) states don't allow gymnasts to do high school and club at the same time. Because of how the club gymnasts season is structured, it's incredibly difficult to take a season off of club to do HS, so high school is very much second or even third tier. It used to be strong HS gymnasts could join D3 college teams, but even that is increasingly rare. These days, to have a shot at D3 you have to be doing 25-30 hours a week in club, if not more. Qualifiers to level 10 nationals are going to some D3 school! It's absolutely insane.

Are there even HS gymnastics teams in the DMV?

I don’t disagree that there are minimal or zero HS teams in D1 sports like fencing, gymnastics, hockey (there are some private and public HS teams…but few), etc.

Soccer is the outlier in that every HS has a team but it’s standard for club teams to discourage/prohibit playing in HS.

Baseball, football, lax, basketball…everyone plays HS and none of the top club teams (there are none for football) play during the HS season.

Yes, there are HS gymnastics teams in FCPS for both boys and girls. The good ones are, unsurprisingly, near the good gyms.

[Anonymous]

NP here.
There was an enlightening article in the NYT a while back and one in the WaPo.
The NYT one was "Why Have We Allowed Money to Ruin Youth Sports?" ( https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/28/opinion/youth-sports.html ) , an interview with author Linda Flanagan. For non-subscribers, here is an excerpt.

Jessica Grose: I was excited to read your book because it explained something I have been noticing since my kids started wanting to play sports: the lack of low-stakes, local community options. I’d love to hear you explain where these options went.

Linda Flanagan: I identify three main reasons children’s sports has moved from this low-key, relaxed, around-the-corner kind of play to this intense, expensive, privatized version. The first is money.

The seeds of this were planted in the ’70s, when we had a bad recession and public funding for parks and recreation departments declined. Then girls sports really picked up in the ’90s, so there was more demand.

Also in the ’90s, Disney built the Wide World of Sports Complex, which proved to be wildly successful. It started the beginning of travel sports and sports tourism because Disney’s success then was observed by other communities who thought: If they can build a sports complex, why don’t we try it in our little town? Those are the places that are pulling in teams and tournaments and competitions where those private entities have their games.

Then, in 2008, we had another recession, which led to a further decline in public spending and a realization among private enterprise that they can make money off this.

a second reason Flanagan mentioned is the rise of "modern parenting" trends:

...It used to be that parents were the ones who had the lives, and kids had to adapt to this shift, beginning in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, where kids became the center around which life revolved for the adults.
Now, parents think we have to do everything in our power to make sure that our children have every advantage, and to set them up for a happy and economically satisfying life. If we don’t do it, they will likely fail. As a result, it’s a sign of a good parent to spend $10,000 on travel lacrosse or travel soccer because you’re doing what you have to do to help prepare your kid. That’s the overlay in the back of all this, this mentality that it’s your responsibility as a parent to do this and you’re being a bad parent if you don’t. There’s that guilt that I think many parents feel if they opt out of some of this stuff.

The Post article was about an example of trying to reverse this trend by supporting a local ("in-town") sports league that does not require "travel team" -level expenditures of time or money in order for kids to play at a competitive level.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/09/01/competitive-sports-need-not-be-travel/

On my end, my teen loves to play a certain sport seriously but I've had enough of the 'system'. So, during the season, DC plays on the high-school team and a weekend club/travel team, but on the off-season I've said 'no' to the tournament-only private leagues and DC has a local option connected to the high school. Less "serious"/competitive, but this is IMO what DC needs and it helps develop these local options. Wise parents of some of DC's travel teammates are making similar decisions, fortunately. A few have inflated hopes for their kids' futures and have learned the hard way that (even by throwing $$ at the situation and arranging family life around your kids' sports) you can't engineer an all-star high school (& future) career for a kid that isn't a significant cut above in playing skills/talent and in personal dedication.

On the other hand, a couple of DC's other past teammates have gone on to play in higher (more limited/specialized) tiers of travel-level teams, and I'm genuinely happy to see them flourish, because these kids were very skilled and genuinely very motivated to play hard and fair, and the parents weren't pushing them and were generally quite chill people.

I will add that I have a son and a daughter and the boys' sports teams have always had fathers who are super-intense about the sport they have played themselves and they seem to want to live out their own goals through their sons. There are new-to-the-sport parents who are totally not like this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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

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.

+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.

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.

Your kid shouldn’t be spending that much time on fall baseball, it’s completely unnecessary and a great way to get them injured.

He’s playing college ball and is just fine.

I do appreciate the sentiment, although it comes off as arrogance. I am a huge believer in playing multiple sports and not specializing at young ages. I was specifically referring to serious high school players who aren’t in season for another sport. FWIW I do believe proper conditioning and arm care is critical to keeping baseball players healthy, and that takes time.

It shouldn’t come off as arrogance when it’s in reply to a rather know-it-all post. There are plenty of serious HS baseball players who are not devoting 20 hours per week in the off-season (fall, for example) to baseball.

Glad you appreciate the sentiment, though. Even though your kid is fine it would be silly to pretend that there hasn’t been a huge upsurge in overuse injuries in the youth baseball set over the last couple of decades.

DP - Where are these serious HS baseball players who don’t devote an ungodly amount of time to baseball in the off season? Which HS are you at?

A lot of hs baseball players at my local high school play football. That takes up from August through November.

Yup, and then it’s basketball season…