When to specialize?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You cant - and shouldnt- play two sports at once. When people talk about multi-sport they dont mean at the same time/season. Thats ludicrous.

With club/travel taking over more and more of the youth sports world, more and more sports are year round/overlap.

I'm not saying that's how it should be, I'm just saying you see it more and more often.

My 14 year old son plays baseball and basketball (both travel). Our strategy is to prioritize the seasonally “correct” sport at all times. Meaning, if his baseball team has winter practice he’ll go if he can make it, but there is no chance he’ll skip basketball for it. Similarly, as basketball drags on into spring, he might go to baseball practice over basketball practice (but probably a basketball game over baseball practice unless he’s already missed more than one baseball practice).

This seems to work for him (and us) but we have also been lucky I suppose in that none of his coaches have been lunatics who don’t understand or remember childhood.

This is what we've done (not baseball/basketball but lax and basketball). It just demonstrates how awful soccer is with club coaches and directors seeking out the next Christian Pulisic but you got to feed the travel soccer fees and salaries.

No other sport seems to want to demand as much "practice" time as the other sports. Soccer starts in the late summer and basically runs through June and there are generally no excuses. All the other sports seem to understand there is an offseason and take time off for long stretches. The AAU season starts after the normal season is over. Most HS lax travel programs have a few practices in the fall and winter and take off much of the spring for HS (youth is a little different with HOCO). Football has fall and that's it. But, soccer runs all year. Maybe we've been lucky but most of the coaches we've crossed paths with in travel sports have accommodated the view that missing practice in the off season for in season sports and games was okay.

I think soccer is somehow trying to create a system that competes internationally. It seems to be the only sport where the elite club teams expressly prohibit your playing for your HS team. That said, it is also the only US sport where kids are turning professional at 14 like the phenom from Philadelphia that will be playing for Manchester City when he turns 16 and is playing for the MLS team at 14 & 15. It's fairly common for 14, 15 and 16 year old phenoms in Europe turning pro.

Which is proving my point. Those kids are what 1 in 100,000. 1 in a million? The rest of them are just missing opportunities to play other sports because soccer directors have hoodwinked parents and kids that they can't miss footsal on a random Tuesday in January for basketball practice.

The thing that most parents don't understand is that there are kids out there that are just going to get it and no matter how much training is only going to get their kid in position to sniff that kids jock. Those top end kids still need training but that is really to just take them from an 11 to a 15.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You cant - and shouldnt- play two sports at once. When people talk about multi-sport they dont mean at the same time/season. Thats ludicrous.

With club/travel taking over more and more of the youth sports world, more and more sports are year round/overlap.

I'm not saying that's how it should be, I'm just saying you see it more and more often.

My 14 year old son plays baseball and basketball (both travel). Our strategy is to prioritize the seasonally “correct” sport at all times. Meaning, if his baseball team has winter practice he’ll go if he can make it, but there is no chance he’ll skip basketball for it. Similarly, as basketball drags on into spring, he might go to baseball practice over basketball practice (but probably a basketball game over baseball practice unless he’s already missed more than one baseball practice).

This seems to work for him (and us) but we have also been lucky I suppose in that none of his coaches have been lunatics who don’t understand or remember childhood.

This is what we've done (not baseball/basketball but lax and basketball). It just demonstrates how awful soccer is with club coaches and directors seeking out the next Christian Pulisic but you got to feed the travel soccer fees and salaries.

No other sport seems to want to demand as much "practice" time as the other sports. Soccer starts in the late summer and basically runs through June and there are generally no excuses. All the other sports seem to understand there is an offseason and take time off for long stretches. The AAU season starts after the normal season is over. Most HS lax travel programs have a few practices in the fall and winter and take off much of the spring for HS (youth is a little different with HOCO). Football has fall and that's it. But, soccer runs all year. Maybe we've been lucky but most of the coaches we've crossed paths with in travel sports have accommodated the view that missing practice in the off season for in season sports and games was okay.

I think soccer is somehow trying to create a system that competes internationally. It seems to be the only sport where the elite club teams expressly prohibit your playing for your HS team. That said, it is also the only US sport where kids are turning professional at 14 like the phenom from Philadelphia that will be playing for Manchester City when he turns 16 and is playing for the MLS team at 14 & 15. It's fairly common for 14, 15 and 16 year old phenoms in Europe turning pro.

Which is proving my point. Those kids are what 1 in 100,000. 1 in a million? The rest of them are just missing opportunities to play other sports because soccer directors have hoodwinked parents and kids that they can't miss footsal on a random Tuesday in January for basketball practice.

The thing that most parents don't understand is that there are kids out there that are just going to get it and no matter how much training is only going to get their kid in position to sniff that kids jock. Those top end kids still need training but that is really to just take them from an 11 to a 15.

Well, sort of. Messi will say he lived and breathed the soccer ball and was practicing his technical skills at all hours starting at 5. The ones that turn pro don't just get it, but also put in incredible hours of work to make them 100x better than the kid that may be a top D1 recruit.