Do all sports favor the big kids?

[Anonymous]

Much of track and field is not for the stocky.

[Anonymous]

Wrestling.

Greatest sport for life. If you can survive everything else in life is easier.

[Anonymous]

Everyone cares about size. Except gymnastics/figure skating (they care too, just in the other direction.)

I see the soccer coaches eyes just light up when a big tall girl steps onto the field to try out.

[Anonymous]

My kid wants to be a horse racing jockey, that sport favors small kids.

But seriously, yes kids who are bigger & stronger at age 15 usually get noticed by college coaches.

[Anonymous]

In most of the team sports you mentioned- yes.

That said, there are other factors. Also depends on what age & “level” you are talking about (college? high school? top travel teams?)

For example, baseball- there are plenty of average sized or smaller players who start on high school teams. Strength and speed matter nearly as much as pure size/height (other than maybe for pitching). For college recruiting, though? Height is a much bigger issue.

I assume you are talking about youth sports here, and at certain ages (the ages where there is a vast difference in who has hit puberty and who has not)- the size issue is the most pronounced that it will ever be. Two boys the same age can be basically “grown men vs little boy”( physically). It can be discouraging, for sure.

[Anonymous]

OP - talking about youth sports right now. Have two large kids. Technically/sport ability they are pretty good but I definitely think that they have an advantage purely because of their size. I have a 9.5 year old girl who is 80 pounds and 4'8" tall.

[Anonymous]

Yes, it is a bummer that the team sports favors the bigger kids, at least once they get to be teenagers. I have a very athletic kid who is one of the best on his soccer team and one of the better ones on his baseball team. He is 9 and 4'2" and 55 lbs.

In soccer he is fast and agile and can and does score. He plays wing or striker, depending on where the coach needs him.

In baseball he is currently playing mostly infield and he is a pretty good pitcher, at least at this level. The bigger issue with the infield is that he is a lefty. It's ok now because he is a good fielder with quick reflexes but it won't always be that way. If he continues with baseball, he is going to have to rely on his speed and his arm to be an outfielder. I'm pretty sure he isn't going to be tall enough to play first base.

He loves sports and is good at them but I worry when all the kids hit puberty. We think he is also going to be a late bloomer in that area, so its going to be tough.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Baseball don't care. Especially with modern stats analysis. Alejandro Kirk (Blue Jays catcher) case in point. If you watched the World Series last year, you might remember that the announcers spent the whole series making fun of how fat he is. And only 5'8".

Wrong. Baseball cares a lot.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes, it is a bummer that the team sports favors the bigger kids, at least once they get to be teenagers. I have a very athletic kid who is one of the best on his soccer team and one of the better ones on his baseball team. He is 9 and 4'2" and 55 lbs.

In soccer he is fast and agile and can and does score. He plays wing or striker, depending on where the coach needs him.

In baseball he is currently playing mostly infield and he is a pretty good pitcher, at least at this level. The bigger issue with the infield is that he is a lefty. It's ok now because he is a good fielder with quick reflexes but it won't always be that way. If he continues with baseball, he is going to have to rely on his speed and his arm to be an outfielder. I'm pretty sure he isn't going to be tall enough to play first base.

He loves sports and is good at them but I worry when all the kids hit puberty. We think he is also going to be a late bloomer in that area, so its going to be tough.

Your kid is only 9, so just wait and see what happens.

On the plus side of being smaller when younger, is that we saw so many players where their only attribute was that they're big. And they never really learned how to do anything properly. It eventually gets to a point where those players can't keep up with the rest of the players and can't really do anything else.

At the middle school level, I was happy to see smaller players we knew make their teams. I think those players were deserving due to their high skill and iq level. I was kind of worried that they wouldn't get a fair opportunity due to their size but they all made it that year.

There was one player at sixth grade, who was on the smaller side but when we saw him the following year, he had a growth spurt and I hardly recognized him anymore.

So just wait and see what happens.

btw to answer OP's question, I would think in baseball size is less of a factor and knew some really good small players at the youth level. I forget which MLB player said baseball is a sport where size doesn't matter. And in basketball, I see smaller players wreck havoc on the court by being quick, aggressive and having a high basketball iq. Always getting steals, always killing other teams with smart plays, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wrestling.

Greatest sport for life. If you can survive everything else in life is easier.

Wrestling is the answer for an undersized kid. Late bloomers can do especially well, because a 106 pound junior/senior will be wrestling freshmen most of the time.

[Anonymous]

Size doesn’t matter in field hockey, though I would say there is an advantage for a goalie to be bigger.

[Anonymous]

Most physical activities favor certain body types. My kid is naturally slim with long limbs. She does ballet and I think it's likely that she received more positive reinforcement early on because her body type suits the activity so well. I also think she has some natural talent in terms of body awareness and natural grace.

It's nice she's found an activity that suits her physically because I think it makes it easier to stick with it. I played basketball as a kid and really loved the sport, but was not suited to it at all (short, small) and couldn't progress very far. I worked very hard and did improve a lot, and that was rewarding, to see how technique and hard work could help even someone not physically suited. But ultimately I had to quit because I was never going to make a HS team and would have spent all four years riding the bench, even on JV.

But this is funny because I'm sure some people recoiled at my description of how my kid is well suited to ballet (they will view it as "toxic" that I'm saying that being thin and long-limbed is a good thing in this context) but no one really blinks when you say that obviously height or size helps athletes in sports like basketball or football.

But whether anyone likes it or not, some body types are well suited for certain things. It might not be fair in the sense that it means not everyone has equal opportunity to excel, but it's just the way the world is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP - talking about youth sports right now. Have two large kids. Technically/sport ability they are pretty good but I definitely think that they have an advantage purely because of their size. I have a 9.5 year old girl who is 80 pounds and 4'8" tall.

Size is a plus for most of the major team sports -at all ages & levels.

That said, size of youth players does not always correspond to size in high school. Sometimes it does, sometimes it does not. You can probably have some idea of this based on family height/genes but even then, there are outliers.

It isn’t really worth thinking about at the youth levels IMHO. As kids get to middle school age, it may begin to factor in a lot more, and some kids/parents may choose to reevaluate what to focus on.

[Anonymous]

Speed skating! Size doesn't matter so much. If you didn't know, the DMV is one of the country's major producers of top short track skaters.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, it is a bummer that the team sports favors the bigger kids, at least once they get to be teenagers. I have a very athletic kid who is one of the best on his soccer team and one of the better ones on his baseball team. He is 9 and 4'2" and 55 lbs.

In soccer he is fast and agile and can and does score. He plays wing or striker, depending on where the coach needs him.

In baseball he is currently playing mostly infield and he is a pretty good pitcher, at least at this level. The bigger issue with the infield is that he is a lefty. It's ok now because he is a good fielder with quick reflexes but it won't always be that way. If he continues with baseball, he is going to have to rely on his speed and his arm to be an outfielder. I'm pretty sure he isn't going to be tall enough to play first base.

He loves sports and is good at them but I worry when all the kids hit puberty. We think he is also going to be a late bloomer in that area, so its going to be tough.

Your kid is only 9, so just wait and see what happens.

On the plus side of being smaller when younger, is that we saw so many players where their only attribute was that they're big. And they never really learned how to do anything properly. It eventually gets to a point where those players can't keep up with the rest of the players and can't really do anything else.

At the middle school level, I was happy to see smaller players we knew make their teams. I think those players were deserving due to their high skill and iq level. I was kind of worried that they wouldn't get a fair opportunity due to their size but they all made it that year.

There was one player at sixth grade, who was on the smaller side but when we saw him the following year, he had a growth spurt and I hardly recognized him anymore.

So just wait and see what happens.

btw to answer OP's question, I would think in baseball size is less of a factor and knew some really good small players at the youth level. I forget which MLB player said baseball is a sport where size doesn't matter. And in basketball, I see smaller players wreck havoc on the court by being quick, aggressive and having a high basketball iq. Always getting steals, always killing other teams with smart plays, etc.

This is the OP of that post. I hope you are right. My son is adopted so we don’t know his genetics. His birth mother is 5’0”, but so am I so any child I have would have small genetics. We don’t know anything else.