Strong but small athlete

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In baseball, for the good teams, being large won't get you much by 13/14U. You need to also be fast, strong, and have high baseball i.q., as well as obviously being very skilled at hitting and on the field. But yes, size matters. That's why sports are such a good way to learn about life's unfairness. Find a no-cut sport, or find a different outlet. Even for the best athletes, it's hard to make the big high school teams!

And, in this area, have connections. My kids has all of it and he was passed over for kids whose parents are well connected. E.g. the Mom on school board, etc.

Connections will NOT help you in individual sports such as swimming, tennis, golf, etc.. If student A is a +5 golfer and student B is a +6 golfer, no coaches would dare to pick student B, unless the school wants to get sued.

[Anonymous]

Wrestling. My son didn’t continue with it but a lot of smaller boys were very successful in this sport. Track and cross country too.

I understand because my son was nowhere near small compared to the average population but was when you looked on the team in 9th grade. He made the team and never got playing time. He dropped it for the following year. The massive growth spurt hit that year and he grew about 7 inches from starting hs to now, when he is about to be a junior but he doesn’t want to go back.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wrestling. My son didn’t continue with it but a lot of smaller boys were very successful in this sport. Track and cross country too.

I understand because my son was nowhere near small compared to the average population but was when you looked on the team in 9th grade. He made the team and never got playing time. He dropped it for the following year. The massive growth spurt hit that year and he grew about 7 inches from starting hs to now, when he is about to be a junior but he doesn’t want to go back.

What sport? Basketball?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Has this always been the way with youth sports? If not when did it start? I was a kid in the 1980s and played a lot of sports (soccer competitively, other sports were considered “rec”), but I don’t remember size being a big issue one way or another. Maybe I was oblivious as a kid?

I think it's a problem in high school sports because they don't have a lot of teams in US high schools - is it just varsity and JV, and you're cut if you don't make those?

I was on my high school's 5th ranked volleyball team with the other kids doing it for fun rather than glory, and we played other schools' 5th ranked teams.

Yes, it is varsity or JV in publics here. Freshman teams for basketball and football only.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Basketball is brutal if you are zoned to a big public high school. The kids under 6 feet who even want a chance of playing JV have to be absolutely incredibly athletes. It really is the toughest sport for HS b/c no matter how hard they work, they can't make themselves grow taller.

Agree basketball is the most heartbreaking sport for boys. Especially given many public HS varsity coaches recruit for a few transfers, taking even more spots away from the in boundary kids. That doesn't seem as prevalent in soccer and soccer rosters sre much larger.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Op here—DS loves sport, will continue to play and train outside of team. As long as he wants to continue playing we will support him. I grew up with sisters and our oldest is a girl so this is really my first experience with the size/strength/growth timing issue with boys so was really just asking how other supported their kids. I fully understand the competition for spots in HS, but I guess I’m just a little surprised to be feeling that so intensely at this age when there is such a range of when boys hit puberty and grow. I wrongly assumed coaches would be more open to fostering strong athletes who have not had their growth spurts yet but many/most seem more interested in big boys only. I’m seeing this with friends’ kids too—baseball, basketball, and lacrosse seem to be the three where I hear about this most.

The truth is- by high school age- coaches want to win. They generally aren’t going to wait around for a kid to grow. They’ll choose kids who have already grown (and assume they will only get physically stronger from there with training).

It does stink- my DS ran into this and ended up quitting his sport altogether.

By high school age yes, but favoring the big kids begins as soon as the first boys start puberty in 12u. My son was going into 6th when he got his first “too small” comment for baseball. At that point, some boys already had sprouted and developed broad shoulders. My son was not close.

However, if you look at the general size of the parents, my son will most likely be bigger than all the early sprouting kids. Three years later he’s begun to catch up to some. But, decisions made by the 12u-14u coaches eliminate these kids from opportunities.

This is so sad.My DS is average height now but really thin and does not have broad shoulders. We are tall families and all males are over 6”, but we tend to be late sprouters. I am worried DS will be cut off at middle school and quit his only sport he enjoyed…

[Anonymous]

A lot have talked about baseball and IME it is more about early puberty/strength than sheer size.

We know a kid who is a rising freshman who is 5’5” full grown, and maybe 140-150lbs of solid muscle. Has been done growing for awhile now and is the carbon copy of his dad (an ethnicity that is often short). Really good player. He has no problem making teams- strong, fast, etc. Very Altuve like. Plays 2B of course. His shortness will not hold him back even at a large classification HS. But this kid is physically a grown man.

Contrast that with my older DS who also 5’5” as a rising freshman- but 110lbs and barely started puberty- essentially a child. Not at all the same thing.

It is puberty that makes a difference, more than just size. Yes, my son will be a lot bigger in the end- currently 5’11” and probably has a few inches to go. Tall parents. Yes coaches know that a lot of the small kids will grow eventually- - but they aren’t going to wait for years for a late puberty kid to grow, either. There are only so many roster spots. My DS quit baseball after freshman year and found other things to do. It’s just a sport, and that is life.

Anyway- IMO it is a lot more about puberty than size. Smaller kids can succeed in sports like baseball if they hit puberty on the earlier side and get their strength etc early.

[Anonymous]

Agree with PP that it’s more about strength than size per se, but the strength often comes with increased testosterone which of course comes with puberty—ie not necessarily something a kid can control. DS 13 is obsessively eating protein and doing push ups and trying to get stronger but our late bloomer genes are not helping him at all. He’s got a great attitude and plays on a competitive but not cut throat team so he’s just going to keep working hard and we’ll see what happens when he hits high school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:That's why you see Asian people gravitate towards golf, tennis, and now Pickleball (it is now an official HS varsity sport in Montgomery County in fall '24) because these sports require skills and mental toughness rather than physical brute force. FWIW, my DS is 5'7" and he plays golf at an ACC school.

I really hate it when people assume athletic kids are stupid. Basketball kids, for example, understand the complex rules of the game by 5th grade better than 99% of the adults I see at games, and they can apply them to make decisions while moving at full speed and being hit by multiple bodies.

That’s why you see HS players jump off the “wrong” foot when sprinting down court and being hit by multiple guys — that guy decided in a millisecond that he needs to jump off the wrong foot because he knows how HS refs count steps (which is different than in the NCAA and NBA), when refs consider the dribble to have been picked up, and he knows what angle he can attack the basket at to draw a blocking foul rather than a charge, so he had to adjust on the fly. None of this is about “brute force”, and reducing the intelligence and split second decision making of these athletes to “brute force” is really offensive. Not to mention that it often comes from a pretty ugly place in people who assume that athlete is a sport often played by black kids can’t be smart.

[Anonymous]

DS is in a similar situation with track. He competes with a USATF club which has dual-age meets and groups kids by calendar birth year. Thanks to his late birth month, he’s currently 12 competing in the 13-14 group. He’s had to be patient with, for example, high jump, where he’s up against lanky teenagers who have 5-6 inches on him.

For years he thought he sucked, because he always placed in the middle of the pack when racing the older kids. This spring for middle school track he finally got to compete with his own grade and realized that no, he’s actually decently strong and fast for his age. It helped put things in perspective for him.

They all catch up and get where they’re going eventually, but it stinks having to wait and lose out on team spots and self-confidence. If they love the sport and want to stay with it, they have to find some way of getting joy and reward out of it while waiting for things to equalize.

DS is coping with the waiting period by focusing on what he can control right now: trying to improve on his performances at each meet, having fun with his friends, and looking to the older and bigger kids as inspiration for where he can be in a year or two.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:That's why you see Asian people gravitate towards golf, tennis, and now Pickleball (it is now an official HS varsity sport in Montgomery County in fall '24) because these sports require skills and mental toughness rather than physical brute force. FWIW, my DS is 5'7" and he plays golf at an ACC school.

Yes, because Asians are so smart. Those Americans are just big and dumb.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That's why you see Asian people gravitate towards golf, tennis, and now Pickleball (it is now an official HS varsity sport in Montgomery County in fall '24) because these sports require skills and mental toughness rather than physical brute force. FWIW, my DS is 5'7" and he plays golf at an ACC school.

I really hate it when people assume athletic kids are stupid. Basketball kids, for example, understand the complex rules of the game by 5th grade better than 99% of the adults I see at games, and they can apply them to make decisions while moving at full speed and being hit by multiple bodies.

That’s why you see HS players jump off the “wrong” foot when sprinting down court and being hit by multiple guys — that guy decided in a millisecond that he needs to jump off the wrong foot because he knows how HS refs count steps (which is different than in the NCAA and NBA), when refs consider the dribble to have been picked up, and he knows what angle he can attack the basket at to draw a blocking foul rather than a charge, so he had to adjust on the fly. None of this is about “brute force”, and reducing the intelligence and split second decision making of these athletes to “brute force” is really offensive. Not to mention that it often comes from a pretty ugly place in people who assume that athlete is a sport often played by black kids can’t be smart.

This. The Asian's parent comment was really stupid and sounds like sour grapes. Yes, your really smart kid is so advanced they play pickleball - the same sport my 90 year old stroke survivor grandma 'excels' in. Gotcha.

[Anonymous]

Lmao ar pickleball requiring mental toughness. Really, tell us more!