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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I am among those who don't get the sports obsession.

I do get playing sports and encouraging kids to play sports. And if a kid shows promise in a sport, or even just really likes it, supporting them in pursuing it. All normal. Sports are great.

But some of you talk about it like becoming an "elite athlete" is the only path to success. Most of my friends are very successful professionally-- lots of Ivy and equivalent grads, lawyers, consultants, etc. Many played sports in adolescence, almost none did so in college. I can think of a handful who did play in college, and only one *might* have been considered elite. That's it.

What they have in common is not athletic prowess but academic success. Great grades, genuine interest in learning and succeeding academically. Good test takers, voracious readers, interested in and engaged with the world. Sports/athletics are pretty beside the point. Some are athletic now, some aren't.

So if your goal is raising kids who are successful in life, I don't understand this fixation on sports. Again, I think it always makes sense to support and encourage a kid in an interest where they show promise, but that could be soccer or music or math or debate club. If your kid isn't that into sports or just isn't good enough to play at a high level, I don't think it really matters in terms of success.

Now, if your kid struggles with reading or math, is disinterested in school, etc? That's an issue. At least if your goal for them is professional success. [/quote]

How old are your kids?

I have a son in middle and high school. Much of their social life revolves around sports. I do not think the parents drive the sports obsession. In our school, the sporty kids are often the more popular kids. Your kid doesn’t have to be popular or want to be popular but if your kid plays soccer or basketball or baseball, he will want to be good. No one is talking about elite athletes, at least no one in my circles. [/quote]

They are popular with each other. They aren't popular with the kids who aren't into what they do. Those other kids are popular with each other and don't really notice your kids any more than your kids notice them.[/quote]

I grew up in the nineties. The popular kids back then and the popular kids now don’t look that different. At my high school in an UMC neighborhood, there were the rich, good looking, smart athletes who played field hockey, lacrosse, tennis, etc who went to an ivy. I worked in finance and you see the same kinds of people there too.[/quote]

The "popular kids" look the same to you because you have a strong personal preference for a certain kind of person, and that preference has been the same since the 90s. So you look at your kids school and you are drawn to the kids who have they same qualities as the kids you were drawn to in high school. You think of these kids as "the popular kids" because you want to be friends with them/want your kids to be friends with them. But the entire thing is based on your personal value system, and plenty of people don't share it.

When I was in high school in the 90s, I played no sports. I did speech and debate, drama, and some service organizations. I had tons of friends, won academic and achievement awards, had the lead in several school plays and stage managed another, and was a class-elected speaker at my high school graduation. There were also kids I went to school with who played multiple varsity sports, served in student government, got great grades, and won awards. We were both "popular" in the sense that people liked us and we had large friend groups and were well known in the school community. You can do this with sports and without it. I knew a guy in high school who was aggressive unathletic, was best known for being the star of the "mathletes" team, and he was extremely well liked, wound up our valedictorian, attended a top school, got an MBA and law degree, and now is an executive at a FANG company. This guy did an independent study to satisfy his gym requirement our senior year in which he took walks and produced a detailed report on how he increased his calorie burn via walking by increasing distance, speed, and utilizing walking techniques of "distance walkers." He was beloved for stuff like this and the school wound up creating a class based on this called "Walking for Fitness" (unofficially known as "Nerd Gym" among students). He was popular!

The only time that sports actually dictate whether kids are socially successful or not are in very narrow, weak schools where sports are the only activity that gets funding or community support and where no one cares about any other metric of success. And becoming popular via sports in a place like that is not a road to success in life unless it is your dream to run a local car dealership chain and serve on the city council of some podunk town in the middle of nowhere.[/quote]

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