When your kid has a "bad birthday" for a sport

[Anonymous]

When my kids were young enough for birthdays to really matter we addressed it matter of factory “Yeah, that’s a bummer. But you’ll have fun on X team and if a few years it’ll at even out.”

Birthdays only really matter at an age when sports should be about having fun and learning skills anyway. Sure, they may not have a chance to shine, but that’s just for ego, and such is life.

I definitely see how birthdays matter when young (I have swimmers and divers and it definitely makes a difference in what opportunities they get) but those are the breaks and they’re learning life lessons by dealing with it. The truly talented will rise to the top regardless.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My child has a terrible birthday. Worst day possible. It actually forced them to try harder to keep up with peers, and now my child is ranked nationally at that sport.

Total opposite for my son. He just quit soccer altogether.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This makes a huge difference for swimmers. Consider this:

A 13 year old with a summer birthday is swimming against kids who are a month or less into the age of 11. In most cases, the 13 year old has an adult’s body. You can see when the kids line up. Same with making cuts for certain meets. Some kids can make those cuts weeks or days before aging out of that group and others would have to make that cut days into the new age. For example:

A kid who is 12 years and 11 months old will almost always more make the cut over a kid who is 11 years and 2 weeks old. Of course there are exceptions, but they are fairly rare.

My kid has a bad birthday for lots of swim cuts.

When is your kids birthday?

[Anonymous]

Change the sport. DS did tennis, DD did equestrian. Birthdays didn’t matter.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Change the sport. DS did tennis, DD did equestrian. Birthdays didn’t matter.

Um...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This makes a huge difference for swimmers. Consider this:

A 13 year old with a summer birthday is swimming against kids who are a month or less into the age of 11. In most cases, the 13 year old has an adult’s body. You can see when the kids line up. Same with making cuts for certain meets. Some kids can make those cuts weeks or days before aging out of that group and others would have to make that cut days into the new age. For example:

A kid who is 12 years and 11 months old will almost always more make the cut over a kid who is 11 years and 2 weeks old. Of course there are exceptions, but they are fairly rare.

My kid has a bad birthday for lots of swim cuts.

When is your kids birthday?

How is this helpful?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When my kids were young enough for birthdays to really matter we addressed it matter of factory “Yeah, that’s a bummer. But you’ll have fun on X team and if a few years it’ll at even out.”

Birthdays only really matter at an age when sports should be about having fun and learning skills anyway. Sure, they may not have a chance to shine, but that’s just for ego, and such is life.

I definitely see how birthdays matter when young (I have swimmers and divers and it definitely makes a difference in what opportunities they get) but those are the breaks and they’re learning life lessons by dealing with it. The truly talented will rise to the top regardless.

Agree with this. Birthdays do factor in when kids are playing sports in early years, but those years are just about having fun and learning some skills. By high school, everything pretty much evens out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When my kids were young enough for birthdays to really matter we addressed it matter of factory “Yeah, that’s a bummer. But you’ll have fun on X team and if a few years it’ll at even out.”

Birthdays only really matter at an age when sports should be about having fun and learning skills anyway. Sure, they may not have a chance to shine, but that’s just for ego, and such is life.

I definitely see how birthdays matter when young (I have swimmers and divers and it definitely makes a difference in what opportunities they get) but those are the breaks and they’re learning life lessons by dealing with it. The truly talented will rise to the top regardless.

Agree with this. Birthdays do factor in when kids are playing sports in early years, but those years are just about having fun and learning some skills. By high school, everything pretty much evens out.

Eh, it affects 11, 12 and 13 year olds. I don’t consider that the early years for some kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This makes a huge difference for swimmers. Consider this:

A 13 year old with a summer birthday is swimming against kids who are a month or less into the age of 11. In most cases, the 13 year old has an adult’s body. You can see when the kids line up. Same with making cuts for certain meets. Some kids can make those cuts weeks or days before aging out of that group and others would have to make that cut days into the new age. For example:

A kid who is 12 years and 11 months old will almost always more make the cut over a kid who is 11 years and 2 weeks old. Of course there are exceptions, but they are fairly rare.

My kid has a bad birthday for lots of swim cuts.

When is your kids birthday?

How is this helpful?

I’m just curious because I have swimmers and I feel like birthdays aren’t a huge deal in year round age group swimming because there are so many meets throughout the year and your kid is likely to be on the older side of his/her age group for some type of big invitational meet. I do see that having a birthday shortly before SC champs (like my January birthday kid) is a disadvantage for SC age group district/state/national competitions, but there are so many other opportunities that it shouldn’t limit long term progression (my Jan kid always does best at invitationals in Nov, December regional champs, and early January invitational/travel meet). Plus there is long course, which favors a whole other range of birthdays.

If you are only talking about summer league swimming then yes, summer birthdays clearly have a huge advantage. But summer league is not really where anything “matters’ long term.

[Anonymous]

^^ I am talking about making it to big meets like a showcase classic, nasa, etc.

Ones where the fastest kids on the east coast go. I’m not talking about something like jos. Meets with very hard cuts to make.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:^^ I am talking about making it to big meets like a showcase classic, nasa, etc.

Ones where the fastest kids on the east coast go. I’m not talking about something like jos. Meets with very hard cuts to make.

Meets of that type happen in both spring and winter (typically April and December). Can’t be the “worst age” for both.

[Anonymous]

Malcolm Gladwell wrote about this issue and the prevalence of January and February birthdays in elite ice hockey.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This makes a huge difference for swimmers. Consider this:

A 13 year old with a summer birthday is swimming against kids who are a month or less into the age of 11. In most cases, the 13 year old has an adult’s body. You can see when the kids line up. Same with making cuts for certain meets. Some kids can make those cuts weeks or days before aging out of that group and others would have to make that cut days into the new age. For example:

A kid who is 12 years and 11 months old will almost always more make the cut over a kid who is 11 years and 2 weeks old. Of course there are exceptions, but they are fairly rare.

My kid has a bad birthday for lots of swim cuts.

When is your kids birthday?

How is this helpful?

Different poster here. Even though my birthday wasn't the worst, I hit puberty way after my swimming friends. When I got up on the blocks, it looked like a ten year old competing against grown women. I went into synchronized swimming instead. In the end I never grew to the average height of elite swimmers these days.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This makes a huge difference for swimmers. Consider this:

A 13 year old with a summer birthday is swimming against kids who are a month or less into the age of 11. In most cases, the 13 year old has an adult’s body. You can see when the kids line up. Same with making cuts for certain meets. Some kids can make those cuts weeks or days before aging out of that group and others would have to make that cut days into the new age. For example:

A kid who is 12 years and 11 months old will almost always more make the cut over a kid who is 11 years and 2 weeks old. Of course there are exceptions, but they are fairly rare.

My kid has a bad birthday for lots of swim cuts.

When is your kids birthday?

How is this helpful?

Different poster here. Even though my birthday wasn't the worst, I hit puberty way after my swimming friends. When I got up on the blocks, it looked like a ten year old competing against grown women. I went into synchronized swimming instead. In the end I never grew to the average height of elite swimmers these days.

Right, but how is knowing a kid's actual birthday important? The actual day of your birthday didn't change when you hit puberty or how tall you ended up being. How is knowing this kid's birthday going to help this discussion?

[Anonymous]

My son has a bad birthday for soccer and good birthday for basketball