Reply to Daughter is really good (not great) at swimming--should we transition to water polo for college?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Such a bad idea to approach college this way.[/quote]

My spouse has coworkers who spend boatloads of money on travel sports and private coaching for their kids in the hopes that colleges will find them desirable and offer scholarships.  If they put that same money into a college fund or academic tutoring, they'd probably come out ahead and have a greater chance of success.[/quote]

Just curious -- do the coworkers SAY this is why they spent this money?  I've never met a sports parent who talked that way.  I'm the parent of kid who got private coaching and travel teams because he begged us, and he trained on his own obsessively.  Now his playing days are behind him, but he recently said to me about a new interest (one that will take years of hard work to master) "I'm glad that I know from sports what it takes to get good at something.  If I hadn't had that experience, I wouldn't have the confidence to do this."  In my mind, THAT'S what we paid for.

Totally agree that OP's approach is nuts, and I can't imagine pushing kids to be involved in sports.  We always had to push the other way -- to tell DS to come home, to get some rest. Kid would beg us for "just 15 more minutes" or "just 5 more shots" when it was 10 PM on a school night, pitch dark and raining.  If your kid isn't doing that AND wildly talented to boot, then the idea of college scholarships is a pipe dream.[/quote]

I was a D1 college swimmer on scholarship and this is spot on. I used to get into arguments with my parents because I wanted to go from field hockey straight to swim practice every weeknight, 3 hours of swimming on Sat and Sun, every swim meet the coaches were taking kids to. My parents would tell me I was doing too much and exhausting myself. I ended up quitting field hockey halfway through high school but that was my decision once coaches (not my parents) started talking college scholarships. I was super focused on never missing a swim practice. I missed one day the year I was 15. It was all me and not my parents pushing me. They couldn’t understand why I wanted to run myself into the ground like I was but that was the training base that got me to and through college.

I hated water polo FWIW. As PPs said it requires you to be aggressive and I am so not. I am competitive in a more quiet way. I heard a story of women putting bottle caps in their suits for college water polo. They would use them to scratch their opponents underwater. I hated when we got to play water polo as a “treat” during practice. I would just read water and stay out of the fray. [/quote]

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