Is the traditional American high school experience of playing sports dead?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is only true in the UMC/wealthy school districts- which on a whole, are are small percentage of American high schools.

Your kid could play on almost any varsity team at a title 1 or even middle class district- and many of these are D1 schools.

That’s a pretty much uneducated opinion from someone who knows nothing. You obviously don’t follow sports. Many of the top names in basketball grew up in poverty. By high school the top are recruited to residential schools specializing in their sport.

Pro sports are also recruiting more international players. Eastern Europeans are playing basketball, Dominicans make up a large amount of baseball players, Canadians play hockey year round.

Students in middle class or low income school districts cannot just play any varsity sport. I can’t figure out why you would even think that.

Exceptions might be swimming, soccer, track, sports that nobody cares about. They might be walk ons.

This is a braid dead take that’s about 20 years behind the times.

Some of you wish this wasn’t the case. So many brag about their high IQs and your children all have high IQs. There’s also genetics that involve athletic ability most involving the legs and running. Height is genetics. Muscle tone is genetics. Kids with determination might be able to overcome what they are naturally lacking and play competitively but it’s not as easy as naturally athletic.

What exactly do you think is from 2005?

No one is disputing athleticism being largely genetic. But WHY do you think only poor kids have athletic genes?

No, it’s not just kids in lower income schools. Athletes come from every type of school. It was another poster who claimed that athletes are only from upper middle class towns. Really stupid comment.

That is not at all what that poster said or implied. You just misunderstood their comment.

I mixed up the quotes. One poster somewhere was giving us facts that maybe one or two kids from title 1 or middle class schools will make D1 but most are from upper middle class schools. Maybe in swimming where most schools don’t have a swimming pool but the big sports have players from everywhere.

[Anonymous]

Find a no cut sport. Football and lacrosse are traditional team sports that don’t cut at our school. Some kids may never play varsity but that’s fair. You can have a team sport experience.

[Anonymous]

School teams were difficult to make for the most popular sports when I was a kid (boys and girls basketball, softball, baseball, girls volleyball, boys soccer). My high school had something like 600-700 per grade, hard to pin down a number because there were a lot of drop outs. I'm 41, so the big school/cut sports thing isn't new.

[Anonymous]

The problem is some of the high schools in this area are huge (like 3000+ kids). It’s harder to make teams with those kinds of numbers, whereas I went to a HS with 800 kids and some teams were begging for any sort of participant , even unathletic ones like me.

[Anonymous]

So much of this is dependent on your school...I can only share my experiences that probably not worth much but here goes...

Growing up, I was at a HS that was really small - only about 100 kids per graduating class. No, it wasn't private. It was just one of those silly Pennsylvania things were there are a ton of schools because of the whacked system there. And, we bordered the city of Pittsburgh and were surrounded by much larger districts.

Anybody and everybody could participate in pretty much whatever sport they wanted because there just weren't enough kids. I joined the swim team my junior and senior years and lettered and was the team captain my senior year.

Now here in Central VA, my kids HS class is around 500 kids and it's not so easy to make a team. Even if you make the team, you may not see much playing time. My son played club soccer and played a ton at the club, but barely got on the field at his HS team. Some of it was coach politics, but it's not easy regardless.

Good luck!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am confused.

So many kids try out for sports that they have to make a lot of cuts. How is that evidence that high school sports are dead?

They are saying that you can't start a new sport in high school, which is, for the most part, true.

This was also generally true for my middle of nowhere not big high school 25 years ago.

There is always so much whining on this board about sports. People in this area aren’t generally used to being told “no” or not just being able to buy their way out of discomfort.

+1 for my public high school 40 years ago (yikes!). You couldn't just walk on to any team you wanted. People got cut from the popular sports then too, and in fact there were fewer sports, especially for girls. Not everyone played sports in high school.

Today, it is the same in public school - not eveyone makes the team; and many private schools require everyone to play a sport, so sports is even a bigger part of hiih school at those schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I always thought that a big part of the American high school experience is playing sports. That is why sports are featured so prominently in any teen movies or TV shows. Yet, it’s basically impossible to pass tryouts at the high school level if you haven’t played the sport from a young age besides cross country/track and swimming. And even for those two sports, you need to start them from a young age to excel at them and make varsity.

It just feels like sports have become unobtainable. It doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, but it’s sad that what was once a big American tradition is dying.

I was cut as a senior in the 1990's from my softball team. Cut sports have been a thing for a long time. This is nothing new. You find a rec team or a club team or another way to play a sport if you want to keep on playing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So much of this is dependent on your school...I can only share my experiences that probably not worth much but here goes...

Growing up, I was at a HS that was really small - only about 100 kids per graduating class. No, it wasn't private. It was just one of those silly Pennsylvania things were there are a ton of schools because of the whacked system there. And, we bordered the city of Pittsburgh and were surrounded by much larger districts.

Anybody and everybody could participate in pretty much whatever sport they wanted because there just weren't enough kids. I joined the swim team my junior and senior years and lettered and was the team captain my senior year.

Now here in Central VA, my kids HS class is around 500 kids and it's not so easy to make a team. Even if you make the team, you may not see much playing time. My son played club soccer and played a ton at the club, but barely got on the field at his HS team. Some of it was coach politics, but it's not easy regardless.

Good luck!

That's much smaller than most of the local public high schools so actually much easier to make a team at your kid's school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So much of this is dependent on your school...I can only share my experiences that probably not worth much but here goes...

Growing up, I was at a HS that was really small - only about 100 kids per graduating class. No, it wasn't private. It was just one of those silly Pennsylvania things were there are a ton of schools because of the whacked system there. And, we bordered the city of Pittsburgh and were surrounded by much larger districts.

Anybody and everybody could participate in pretty much whatever sport they wanted because there just weren't enough kids. I joined the swim team my junior and senior years and lettered and was the team captain my senior year.

Now here in Central VA, my kids HS class is around 500 kids and it's not so easy to make a team. Even if you make the team, you may not see much playing time. My son played club soccer and played a ton at the club, but barely got on the field at his HS team. Some of it was coach politics, but it's not easy regardless.

Good luck!

That's much smaller than most of the local public high schools so actually much easier to make a team at your kid's school.

STFU Jan. 500 kids per grade is big anywhere. But please do tell us how your snowflake would have made the team if he was ONLY competing against 249 kids rather than 299 kids…

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So much of this is dependent on your school...I can only share my experiences that probably not worth much but here goes...

Growing up, I was at a HS that was really small - only about 100 kids per graduating class. No, it wasn't private. It was just one of those silly Pennsylvania things were there are a ton of schools because of the whacked system there. And, we bordered the city of Pittsburgh and were surrounded by much larger districts.

Anybody and everybody could participate in pretty much whatever sport they wanted because there just weren't enough kids. I joined the swim team my junior and senior years and lettered and was the team captain my senior year.

Now here in Central VA, my kids HS class is around 500 kids and it's not so easy to make a team. Even if you make the team, you may not see much playing time. My son played club soccer and played a ton at the club, but barely got on the field at his HS team. Some of it was coach politics, but it's not easy regardless.

Good luck!

That's much smaller than most of the local public high schools so actually much easier to make a team at your kid's school.

STFU Jan. 500 kids per grade is big anywhere. But please do tell us how your snowflake would have made the team if he was ONLY competing against 249 kids rather than 299 kids…

Why so angry?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So much of this is dependent on your school...I can only share my experiences that probably not worth much but here goes...

Growing up, I was at a HS that was really small - only about 100 kids per graduating class. No, it wasn't private. It was just one of those silly Pennsylvania things were there are a ton of schools because of the whacked system there. And, we bordered the city of Pittsburgh and were surrounded by much larger districts.

Anybody and everybody could participate in pretty much whatever sport they wanted because there just weren't enough kids. I joined the swim team my junior and senior years and lettered and was the team captain my senior year.

Now here in Central VA, my kids HS class is around 500 kids and it's not so easy to make a team. Even if you make the team, you may not see much playing time. My son played club soccer and played a ton at the club, but barely got on the field at his HS team. Some of it was coach politics, but it's not easy regardless.

Good luck!

That's much smaller than most of the local public high schools so actually much easier to make a team at your kid's school.

STFU Jan. 500 kids per grade is big anywhere. But please do tell us how your snowflake would have made the team if he was ONLY competing against 249 kids rather than 299 kids…

In FCPS a 2000 student high school would be considered very small.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So much of this is dependent on your school...I can only share my experiences that probably not worth much but here goes...

Growing up, I was at a HS that was really small - only about 100 kids per graduating class. No, it wasn't private. It was just one of those silly Pennsylvania things were there are a ton of schools because of the whacked system there. And, we bordered the city of Pittsburgh and were surrounded by much larger districts.

Anybody and everybody could participate in pretty much whatever sport they wanted because there just weren't enough kids. I joined the swim team my junior and senior years and lettered and was the team captain my senior year.

Now here in Central VA, my kids HS class is around 500 kids and it's not so easy to make a team. Even if you make the team, you may not see much playing time. My son played club soccer and played a ton at the club, but barely got on the field at his HS team. Some of it was coach politics, but it's not easy regardless.

Good luck!

That's much smaller than most of the local public high schools so actually much easier to make a team at your kid's school.

STFU Jan. 500 kids per grade is big anywhere. But please do tell us how your snowflake would have made the team if he was ONLY competing against 249 kids rather than 299 kids…

In FCPS a 2000 student high school would be considered very small.

It doesn’t matter that idiots “consider” it to be “very small” … it is objectively NOT “very small”…

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So much of this is dependent on your school...I can only share my experiences that probably not worth much but here goes...

Growing up, I was at a HS that was really small - only about 100 kids per graduating class. No, it wasn't private. It was just one of those silly Pennsylvania things were there are a ton of schools because of the whacked system there. And, we bordered the city of Pittsburgh and were surrounded by much larger districts.

Anybody and everybody could participate in pretty much whatever sport they wanted because there just weren't enough kids. I joined the swim team my junior and senior years and lettered and was the team captain my senior year.

Now here in Central VA, my kids HS class is around 500 kids and it's not so easy to make a team. Even if you make the team, you may not see much playing time. My son played club soccer and played a ton at the club, but barely got on the field at his HS team. Some of it was coach politics, but it's not easy regardless.

Good luck!

That's much smaller than most of the local public high schools so actually much easier to make a team at your kid's school.

STFU Jan. 500 kids per grade is big anywhere. But please do tell us how your snowflake would have made the team if he was ONLY competing against 249 kids rather than 299 kids…

In FCPS a 2000 student high school would be considered very small.

WTF are you talking about? That’s bigger than the average high school in FCPS…

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Find a no cut sport. Football and lacrosse are traditional team sports that don’t cut at our school. Some kids may never play varsity but that’s fair. You can have a team sport experience.

Playing football is a good way to end up disabled

[Anonymous]

Why doesn’t Fairfax offer a bus to drive kids to their swim facility? So odd!