Reply to Reducing the academic load to play elite soccer.

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Yeah, the thing I don't get is doing this for soccer. Great, so they get an MLS job for a few years. Then what?

It could make sense for basketball or football, for rare athletes.[/quote]

Investment banking, dentistry, and consulting to name a few: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/soccer-insider/wp/2018/03/03/they-were-top-mls-draft-picks-but-when-their-soccer-dreams-changed-they-walked-away/

I think you underestimate how attractive a pro sports career looks on a resume (at least a career in a sport that doesn't typically lead to traumatic brain injuries).  A lot of former pros go into finance, marketing, or commercial real estate, but the short answer is that taking a few years off the traditional career path treadmill to play sports is as likely to be a career booster as not, regardless of which direction you want to go in. [/quote]

Pro sports career?  Who is saying that.  Op is talking about lowered level academics to accommodate YOUTH sports.[/quote]

OP is talking about U17 year olds playing DA soccer who (presumably) hope to go pro or who plan to play D1 as a fallback.  A parent with a kid in this situation should be thinking what happens down the line if they do achieve their soccer dreams, which for most kids will mean a few years in USL or MLS at best (assuming we are talking about boys).

Going back to OPs question, it is indeed common for U17 and U19 starters to dial back on academics at least somewhat, but the degree to which it happens depends on where the kids are and what their goals are.  Players at those ages at DAs affiliated with an MLS club commonly either attend the club's residential academy and get schooling there (Philadelphia Union has a boarding academy, for example) or they take online classes.  This gives them the opportunity to practice with the first (pro) team.  You can't really do that otherwise, because the pro teams typically practice during normal school hours.

Kids who are more focused on D1 sports and/or highly academic schools and are confident they will be recruited often take a lighter course load than their peers who are trying to get into the schools on academic merit alone.  Typically the coaches at the target college will tell recruits what they need to do in terms of number of APs, GPA, and test scores in order to have a realistic shot of making it through admissions.  Every school is different, but for my recruited kid, he was told that a total number of 6 APs was fine so long as he took at least three during junior year.  My non-athlete and most of his friends took 10-12. [/quote]

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