Reply to Anyone enjoy youth sports but shocked at the politics?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Take a youth team of, let’s say, 10 kids. It will pretty much always go something like this:

1 kid: clearly the most skilled kid on the team, very obvious
2 kids:  clearly behind on skills, very obvious 
7 kids: average, fine, not remarkable either way

“Politics” won’t matter much for the first 3 kids, but it will influence the experience of the remaining 7- sometimes heavily. Parent friendships/influence, kid friendships, other social factors etc etc.

I have never seen it go any other way. Literally ever. 3 kids. Some sports and teams it will only matter a little (pretty tolerable), other times it will matter a lot (can be hard to take).

All you can do is try to keep your kids playing in teams/sports where the politics are there (they always will be), but at a tolerable level. It is also important to ask yourself if it is bothering your child, or just bothering YOU. Often the kids are fine and having fun either way. Sometimes the kids do notice or feel a bit demoralized- in that case, likely time to move to a different team or organization. 
[/quote]

These people put their kids into team sports, give away their power to coaches, and come here and complain.  Am I missing something?

My kids do swimming and tennis.  In tennis and swimming, the results are recorded so there are NO favourtism or nepotism.  [/quote]

Yeah, you’re missing something. Some kids prefer team sports over individual sports. I have two like this. I was a swimmer and tried to get them into it. But they just don’t get motivated by the individual aspect. They like the excitement of a team competition and the social interaction that is inherent to the team practices and games. They do like summer swim because it has some of that. But winter swim is very individual before high school, and you can’t make our high school team without being a good club swimmer already.

I do like seeing how unselfish my kids are on a team setting — they truly care more about the game outcome than how they played individually.

I’ve seen some parents push individual over team sports despite what their kids actually prefer. I think that’s the wrong way to do it and it will backfire. A love of the sport is needed for long term enjoyment and success.[/quote]

Both Agassi and Graf pushed their own kids into team sports because they found their own tennis experience depressing and isolating.

I know one played on the USC baseball team (maybe graduated) and they live hanging out with other parents and seeing their kid just having a great time with teammates.

Obviously, they are extreme examples.[/quote]

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