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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Take a look at your high school football, basketball and baseball games. The OVERWHELMING majority of these kids play varsity in multiple sports. [/quote]

This must be a small and remote private school. [b]The unfortunate reality in most communities is that single-sport specialization occurs by middle school. [/b]Which is awful. Even professional NBA and MLB coaches are lamenting the early specialization of today's athletes. People who play multiple sports tend to be better overall athletes and more resilient to repetitive-use injuries. I think the best approach is to simply pretend it's still 1984 and change sports with the seasons and ignore the pressure to specialize early.  [/quote]

And yet the talented multi sport athletes will continue to make the high school teams over the less talented kids who were forced to “specialize” at the age of 7.

I agree with your final point.  Just because everybody else is doing something one way doesn’t mean it’s the best way.

That being said, OP is going the other way.  Her 7 year old isn’t an athlete by any stretch of the definition- he’s a little kid.  Maybe she should consider cutting back to let him play with toys or take a nap or something.[/quote]

Sort of... Our high school has about 400 people per class in a wealthy suburb, and I know of only one boy who is a 3-sport varsity athlete and will play one of those sports in college.  Of those sports, lacrosse is the most competitive in our school and all but the 1 kid I mentioned specialized pretty early and played a lot of club lax. I know of several kids who do two sports, but their second sport is a no-cut sport like cross country, track, or football.   I know of a few girls who play a combination of lax, soccer, basketball, and volleyball.[/quote]

Why is the bar now three sports?  Most of the best athletes at our large high school play two sports at a high level; very few specialize in just one.[/quote]

My point is that playing more than one varsity sport is getting tough unless one of your second or third sports is a no-cut sport like football, track, or cross-country.  We have one boy that could do it at our high school, and he's 6'4, very fast and strong, and both of his parents were D1 athletes.  He's the exception, not the rule.  95% of our kids need to pick a main sport and prioritize it if they want to make the high school team.  It's fine to play other sports for fun, but by a certain age, you pick one main sport and resolve conflicts in its favor.  [/quote]

It sounds like there just aren’t many gifted athletes at your wealthy suburban school, which honestly isn’t shocking.[/quote]

DP.  Our high school also doesn't have kids who make multiple selective teams.  For example, there is no crossover at our high school that I am aware of in boys' varsity basketball, baseball, lacrosse, or soccer.  [/quote]

Seems like many responding are thinking back to their own experience 30 years ago. The reality is there is very little crossover at the high school level unless you’re talking a main sport and a no cut sport. There are zero kids playing basketball and football. Basketball is one of the hardest teams to make. Basically no crossover. [/quote]

They may be talking about smaller public high schools, or smaller/less competitive private high schools? I have plenty of friends whose kids attend those types of schools and play up to 3 varsity sports. At our large suburban public HS or the large private HS in our area- it is pretty rare to play more than one (unless one of the sports is no-cut). Nearly all of the cut sports teams basically run all year in some capacity (unofficially)…(travel teams, tournaments, camps, off season workouts etc etc). [/quote]

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