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[quote=Anonymous]Well darn -- you have to be a parent here.

First -- you and any other adults involved with your child have to spend a little time considering what may work for your kid.  She may be the world's best dressage rider, but if you cannot afford the time and money costs that is not going to happen.

You also have to consider - carefully - your kid.  What are her athletic abilities now, and likely to be in the future with some time and attention, and her willingness to contribute time and attention.  Quite a bit depends on her future growth.  She is 11.  When she is 17 how tall will she be?  If she is headed to close to 6 feet then there are some obvious selections to pursue.  Is she heavy right now?  Would a good first step be simply focusing on improving her fitness level?  Is she not aggressive because she does not know what she should be doing, or is that her personality?

All of those kinds of things are discussions that you and other involved adults need to have and consider.  And -- the big thing -- like many things people do -- kid sports are a slow, incremental improvement thing.  Your kid does not show and start excelling at a sport they have never done.  Kids who lack confidence and who are not physically active need even more time to learn, adjust and improve.

Step 2 is to really consider what you and your family can handle in terms of her participation.  Sports are not something you can drop or add based on how your day is going.  What kind of time and money can your family spend on kid sports.  Some sports cost more than others.  Some sports take more time than others.  No sport is free and easy.

Step 3:  After you have carefully considered what you can do, and what may possibly work well for your kid now and in the future -- then you can sit down with your kid and have some conversations about options.    You need to know the options before even beginning the conversations.

Frankly -- my suggestions with an 11 year old girl at this point would be:

1.  Find a good age appropriate fitness program at a gym or club that she can do almost every day to substantially improve her fitness levels.  This will increase her self confidence in a few weeks and make her better prepared to jump in.

2.  Find a summer swim program that she can join right now.  Again -- this will improve her fitness level and make her a competent swimmer which is an important life long skill.  At 11 you can be very up front with her that the goal is not to turn her into a competitive swimmer.  She can decide to swim the meets or not -- entirely up to her.  But, she has to practice every day with the goal to improve her fitness and to become a good safe swimmer.  It will take a couple of summers to get really good enough, but she will see the improvement very quickly.  Between that and the gym she will be much more fit and self-confidence by the end of summer.

3  Decide if her foot speed is due to being slow, or not being in shape, or not trying hard to push herself, or not being confident in what she is doing, or some combination.  The ability to run fast for more than a short distance factors into what sports she may or may not be best suited.  Kids can be big and quick, but you would not be looking to get them into a 100m foot race.  But -- those kids might be great at volleyball or basketball.

At 11 she is not too old to "start" any sport, but there is catching up that has to be done for sports that kids have been playing at a more competitive level since 8 or 9.  She can catch up so no sport is excluded at this point.  Other sports have not really started to be competitive yet for girls -- volleyball, basketball, track/cross-country, lacrosse, field hockey, wrestling, and others.  Take a look at the sports offered at her middle school and her likely high school.  Other than soccer and maybe (depending on the area) softball -- almost every kid will be "new" to the sport.

Good luck

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