Reply to s/o How do kids on travel teams get everything done

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I've had two kids play travel throughout some of all of the high school years.  My oldest is a very academically motivated kid who is a good, but not great athlete.  She has never struggled much with balancing soccer, her other ECs and school at her highly competitive (but not magnet) public high school.  Until high school she practiced 2 or 3 days a week at most and never had to travel far for tournaments or league games.  High school soccer is every day, but most clubs cut way back on club soccer during the high school season, so that wasn't a problem.  She loves playing, and soccer has been a huge stress reliever.  She has sometimes stayed up late with homework, but rarely past 11:30 until the hell that was junior year (but junior year is awful whether you are playing sports or not).

My other player is on a much more intense team.  His schedule has been much more challenging, because he takes longer to get his work done and has had practice 4 times a week for most of the year since 8th grade, plus significant travel for games.  When things started to ramp up in 7th grade, we had a lot of battles about why we thought he needed to strive for all As (our answer: because he was capable of getting As without too much difficulty so long as he put the work in).  He constantly mentioned that most of his friends got a lot of Bs and their parents were fine with that.  In 8th grade, one of the older players at his club got recruited to play at a great academic and soccer school, and he had a conversation with my son about how important grades were for the recruiting process.  [b]It was an amazing light bulb moment, and he has killed himself to maintain a good GPA ever since with no pressure from us.  Getting the work done is brutal though, and he's frequently up past midnight.  Sometimes he doesn't even get home from practice until 10:00.[/b]

In terms of supports, we have a full-time babysitter for our younger children, and my inlaws are nearby and willing to help with driving.  My husband and I both work full time, but have fairly flexible schedules, and we arrange our time in the office around driving commitments.  We relied heavily on carpools before my older child could drive, and have definitely worked to recruit families we like into teams with an eye to both social and carpool opportunities.  We eat staggered dinners a lot of nights, but I always stay up to eat with whoever is home latest.  We would never have done all this if we didn't love soccer or didn't consider weekend soccer trips a fun family event.        [/quote]

Do you think the bolded is a positive?  No kid should be at practice until 10pm and no kid should be up past midnight doing homework.  He is either taking classes too hard for him to get the work done efficiently or you his extra curriculars are too much for him to maintain normalcy.  You are drinking the kook-aid from one kid and taking your son on a not so fun ride.  [/quote]

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