Reply to Why are youth and high school sports so competitive to get into now?

Forum Index » Sports General Discussion

Reply to "Why are youth and high school sports so competitive to get into now?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I don't believe this is even a NOVA issue since it is happening all over America, whether it is California, Texas, Massachusetts, and so on. You have to put your kid in competitive sports at a young age to even have a chance of playing at the high school level. There aren't many rec options once you get to the middle school level, and every school team by then has competitive tryouts. There is no way to pick up a new sport by late elementary or middle school. Kids have to determine their interests at their young age or else it is too late. I don't want to encourage my kids to get into sports because I know it is going to suck for them in the end.

It is especially frustrating when there is basically nothing you get in return for investing so much into youth sports. Most kids will never play in the NCAA, and varsity sports don't matter much for college admissions. I don't know how it is reasonable for any family to invest so much time and money and risking their health for basically nothing. [/quote]

Lol. Wow. Most people who play sports from pickup at the local park to pronhall of famers play because it is fun. And exercise. Also some people do go far sstarting late. Why not just do rec for a couple of sports and have fun meeting people and exercising

what a terrible attitude[/quote]

[b]The rec experiences in many sports aren't all that great.[/b]  It's part of the hired gun problem.  You would expect that the kids that are in competitive programs would seek better competition, but nope there they are swimming in summer leagues playing in rec tournaments, practicing their slide tackles on kids.  So, you have kids practicing three or more times per week all year long with professional coaches playing against kids that have had maybe a dozen practices in the year.  See what I mean, driven from the field.

Then most of the rec leagues have reduced scope of play.  We did rec league basketball four practices four games.  Yeah, it was fun, but not enough.  Most of the rec kids just don't want to keep doing if after a season or two.[/quote]

I can confirm the bolded part (but it may be different for different sports). One year in, you have a lot of player turn around and you feel that your kid cannot make progress because the level is so low. You look around and find clubs, then you realize that your kid is terrible compared to the kids who were playing club. You have the frustrating choice of continuing rec or the costly choice of moving to club. There is rarely something in between. I would not call this a hired gun problem though, it is capitalism at it's finest. [/quote]

The bolded does not have to be true. My 12 year old is in a rec league where a lot of kids simply decided not to play travel (just do a bunch of rec sports). The level of play is fairly high and the kids who have left over the past few years are often inferior to the kids who stay. Many quality coaches. Teams stick together for years. Families practice on their own outside of practice so kids get quality reps even without many team practices a week, so the kids progress well.

Unfortunately for my younger kids this stopped being true after my 12 year old, and so we do see the bolded. Tons of turnover, low level of play because everyone feels they have to get out.

But it's a collective action problem. Not an inherent to rec problem.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics