TJ football - okay to play or not
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Anonymous
Crew requires discipline and teamwork, and is often a plus in college applications. If you think colleges drool over introverted TJ kids whose applications provide no sign that they exist outside of their academic bubble, you are in for a rude awakening. |
Anonymous
Are we talking about crew or tennis? Most successful professional male tennis players today are at least 6 feet tall (Federer, Nadal, Djovokic, Murray, Wawrinka). Chung Hyeon, the up-and-coming Korean player, is 6'1. Smaller players like David Ferrer and Kei Niskikora have not been able to break through and win majors. But we're talking about high school tennis here, not the pro circuit. At this level, shorter tennis players often excel. The hypothetical Asian kid at TJ who supposedly would get smashed like a bug on a football field very well could end a top five player regionally. |
Anonymous
Because tennis requires much more than brute strength. It requires strength, skill and most importantly INTELLIGENCE which lot Asians and Indians kids have, what a surprise. Lleyton Hewitt is 5"11 and he beat Sampras, who is 6"1, to win the 2001 US open. Until Federer, Sampras was the most grand slam winner. Hewitt proved that your assumption about at least 6 feet tall is severely flawed. |
Anonymous
DP, but for petesake, one tennis player an inch under 6 feet does not in any way disprove the statement that "Most successful professional male tennis players today are at least 6 feet tall." |
Anonymous
+1 on the fact that crew is a brutal number of hours. My kid doesn't go to TJ. We added up and DC spends 40+ hours a week on crew and travel to/from. Thankfully still maintains a nearly straight A average with many APs. School is boring to DC, so being involved in crew works for DC. But, I have seen many kids in crew who are not as strong academically and they really struggle to maintain good grades. Unless you're a really great rower, the grades for rowing trade off is not a beneficial one. I only a know a few kids who got into schools a significant caliber above what they would have gotten into just based on grades. |
Anonymous
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Just want to add my voice to the never football no way group. I have 2 teens. One had 3 concussions (soccer football) and significant difficulty recovering from the third with lifelong significant disability. Other DC has 2 concussions. Wants to play football, but I said I will never sign the paperwork to permit it.
Recent article in Brain demonstrates clearly that it can be "hits" not only "concussions" that cause the CTE. (This is what our doc said after concussion #3 -- it is multiple sub concussive hits over time that do extensive damage.) The truth is no one should be playing football anymore - neither adults nor kids. Flag or no-contact football seems fine. Takeaway is: Collectively, these results raise concern that repetitive neurotrauma, independent of concussion, may induce early CTE brain pathologies, even in teenagers and young adults. Cumulative exposure to such injuries may also increase risk for other tau protein neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease (Stein et al., 2015b). These considerations are important not only for understanding and differentiating concussion, TBI, and CTE, but also to inform clinical practice, return-to-play protocols, and public health policy. See: http://www.bu.edu/research/articles/bu-led-study-may-explain-cte-without-concussions/ https://academic.oup.com/brain/article/141/2/422/4815697 |
Anonymous
Crew parent here from a different school. My kid rows and I think it is fantastic, the time commitment and expense notwithstanding, and I totally get the value for a college application. Just to expand on this post, though, there are not that many men's college rowing programs -- maybe in the vicinity of 75, while there are ~150 women's college rowing programs because of Title IX. So if your kid wants to row in college (and even potentially get recruited, although that really is all about height on top of everything else from what I can see), men will have fewer options than women. I do think that no matter whether you kid wants to continue with rowing in college, it's amazing for physical fitness, discipline, and teamwork. So that's going to look good on a college application and have benefits for the kid no matter what. |
Anonymous
You are micromanaging your kid too much. |
Anonymous
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Does your kid run? Even a little?
Running is the easiest -- and IMHO, best -- sport for a kid to do in high school. Anyone can do it if they train slowly and properly, it doesn't require massive equipment or parental transportation or involvement, and it's a great balance between team sport and individual sport. Also lots of opportunity to challenge yourself and focus on resilience, mental toughness and quantifiable self-improvement (goals/better times), regardless of what your teammates or competitors are doing. Spring track has a a ton of different events to try. As the weather warms up between now and then, send him out to do some walk/run intervals to get himself a little more in shape. (2 min walk / 2 min run x 7 times x 3 days a week - adust the run intervals up a minute each week, but keep the walk intervals steady) Then there's always cross country in the fall. In our school, it usually fields a brainy bunch, and they have a great time bonding on long training runs together. |
Anonymous
DP. But maybe not. I think parents up to and including senior year of HS should put their foot down when it comes to playing football. It’s a health and safety thing. I also think that parents of TJ kids need to know their kids and step in if things get out of control. The Tzj school psychologist just did the youth survey results and talked about how important it was in TJ’s environment for parents to keep an eye on work-life balance and stress management and intervene ibefore kids run themselves into the ground. For example, don’t let a kid who struggled to get sophomore year work done with 2APs take 5 APs junior year. And if OPs kid is having trouble adjusting to a TJ workload and grades aren’t great and the kid is not getting enough sleep, the parent should put their foot down before letting the kid pick up what is easily the most time intensive sport, with practice every day, all weekend, all spring break etc., plus a long commute. Plus, freshman year spring semester homework picks up—IBET project, the (god awful) robot project, the Romeo and Juliet project, plus Math 3-5 is harder and more time intensive than RS. PP— I think you are smart to be talking with your kid about what about how much time they are able to devote to a sport. Because crew is a brutal time commitment. Agree with PP about track and field. My understanding is that practice runs every night, but kids can do that by showing up at 2 or 3 practices a week, their choice which ones. Your kid might or might not have the talent for it, but they candidness something in track or field they can do, get out a couple evenings a week in the spring for practice. |
Anonymous
OP here. Exactly my feelings, and you have said better than I probably could have. There is no micromanaging going on here, just trying to understand work-life balance from other parents experience so that we could make informed decisions and not just say Yes / No to their demands. If he was going to a base school this would be so much easier and we wouldn't need to worry about all the different aspects of it. Parents need to be very actively involved whether we like it or not when it comes to TJ, mainly due to the workload and that it is commuter school doesn't make it any easier. |
Anonymous
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You all are proving the point. These are decisions your kid should be making. That you are debating what classes to take or what sports to play (I get it on the football, not questioning that) says a lot.
You should really evaluate how involved you are with your kids choices. At some point, they need to own them. |
Anonymous
At a base school, I would agree. And I would have said the same thing before I ended up with a kid at TJ. But I ended up being much less involved in MS than the first year or 2 of HS. TJ is so different than a base school. It’s hard to explain, but parents end up having to be a lot more involved when your kid is trying to do something that demands so much from them— especially at the beginning. The school repeatedly asks parents, starting on Day 1, to please— make sure your kid sleeps. Make sure your kid doesn’t over register. Make sure your kid does not over commit. Make sure your kid does not have unrealistic expectations. Because that’s how kids crash and burn. And boys, especially, are vulnerable, because a 14-15 year old boy tends to have terrible EF skills. By junior year, your kid should be able to plan their own schedule and activities. But in 9th grade, coming from MS, where you got easy As with minimal effort, parents still need to be involved. And if your kid was leaving at 7 am, and wanted to get home after 9pm, every single night, and then eat and shower and start into 4-5 hours of homework, every night, and still be looking at some Bs, you would be concerned too. |